Sen. Bob Casey, in an interview with USA Today about his campus sexual assault bill, claimed that knowing just how many women are sexually assaulted “is important.”
Casey had been asked whether Congress accepts the myth that one-in-five women will be sexually assaulted while in college. Casey immediately followed up his claim that the exact number is important by suggesting the number didn’t really matter.
“The number is important. Even if the argument proves true that it’s not (valid) — that it’s one in six, one in seven, one in ten, one in 20 — that is still way too high,” Casey said. “I have four daughters, two in college. So this hits people in a very personal way. We could spend all day debating numbers. I’m much more concerned about taking action.”
(I wonder what Casey would have said if he had four sons at risk of being wrongly accused.)
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2574118/
In any event, the number truly is important, because it dictates (or should dictate) what action is taken. Of course one sexual assault is too many, but if the one-in-five number is true, then the draconian policies being enacted on college campuses (the guilty-until-proven-innocent-maybe mentality and mandated question-and-answer sessions during sexual activity) probably don’t go far enough.
Numbers that high would suggest that college is the most dangerous place for women in America. It would recommend a return to sex-segregated colleges, or even the abolition of higher education.
But the fact that women are now outpacing men when it comes to college graduation belies the notion that college is a hotbed of sex crime on par with the world’s most dangerous countries. If it were that dangerous, women would be stupid to step foot on any college campus.
But if the number were closer to say, 0.61 percent of women being sexually assaulted annually — a bit more than one in 164 — then such draconian measures are obvious overreactions. “Bystander awareness” programs might be fine for the problem we’re actually dealing with, but not the evisceration of due process rights for accused students, which creates entirely new problems while failing to solve the original, much-exaggerated one.
Now, to be fair, Casey’s bill, the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act, isn’t that bad. It requires colleges to be more transparent in letting accusers and the accused know what the outcome of a campus hearing was (because this basic concept was not currently being practiced). It also requires schools to clearly describe their disciplinary practice, which will help both accusers and accused not be blindsided in trying to maneuver through a turbulent experience.
The bill repeatedly refers to accusers as “victims,” while calling accused students “the accused” at all times, creating an inherent bias. The word “accuser” is used twice, when talking about rights that accused students receive as well as accusers, including the ability to have an “adviser” with them during the process and hearing (lawyers are not explicitly prohibited nor allowed) and the ability to appeal a decision (an affront to double jeopardy).
The bill claims that campus proceedings must be “fair and impartial.” But when the federal government is telling schools to crack down or risk losing federal funds, the marching orders have been clear: Find more students responsible, or else.
And immediately after the “fair and impartial” decree, the bill suggests that the very same “fair and impartial” investigators must be trained “on the issues related to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking and how to conduct an investigation and hearing process that protects the safety of victims and promotes accountability.”
That is not a recipe for a “fair and impartial” hearing; it is actually telling investigators to find students responsible.
The bill also codifies the “preponderance of evidence” standard of proof, meaning those same “fair and impartial” investigators who were just told to find students responsible just have to be 50.01 percent sure a crime was committed.
Liberal attorney Alan Dershowtiz recently wrote about the inherent unfairness of the preponderance standard, suggesting it “means that for every 100 students who are disciplined under this standard, as many as 49 of them may well be innocent.”
He added: “That ratio is unacceptable in any civilized society that cares about the rule of law and the principle of fairness.”
The bill passed in 2013 (a full year before I started covering this issue and before the idea of due process rights for college students appeared on the radar of hysteria-peddlers) as part of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, but only went into effect at the beginning of this academic year.
This is a huge setback for those who have been advocating for due process rights, as it has codified into law 2013 thinking. Back then, people the idea that 20 to 25 percent of college women were being sexually assaulted was still widely accepted, and no one even considered the idea that not every accusation was true or accurate.
Things have changed since then, with more and more people and organizations coming out of the woodwork to acknowledge the flaws of the current campus discipline system.
