A Georgia legislator who has fiercely defended due process rights for college students accused of sexual assault is calling for the resignation of Georgia Tech’s president. State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who in January held a hearing on the lack of due process provided by Georgia Tech and other state universities, called on Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson to resign over the concerns.
“He’s up for his contract renewal come April,” Ehrhart said. “The Regents, I think they’re frustrated with him. The alumni, I think they’re massively frustrated with him. He’s costing them [the school’s reputation], he’s costing their sons and daughters a safe environment on that campus, and they’re fed up with it, I think. We need somebody like a Mitch Daniels at Purdue to come in and have the guts to stand up to these activists in their cabinets, sweep them out of there and do the right thing, and they just won’t do that at Tech.”
Ehrhart called the lack of due process rights afforded to accused students “outrageous,” and discussed the tragedy of the situation.
“It’s such a great school. But the president and the administration are just clueless when it comes to due process on that campus and protecting all those kids,” Ehrhart said. “If I have to talk to another brokenhearted mother about their fine son where any allegation is a conviction and they toss these kids out of school after three and a half years, sometimes just before graduation, it’s just tragic.”
Ehrhart said whoever replaces Peterson will need to “clean house” at Georgia Tech in order to start giving students a fair process, or else the school needs to bring in someone with a “backbone.”
At a hearing in January, Ehrhart heard from the mother of a male student accused of sexual misconduct. The young man let his female friend stay in his apartment while she waited for her roommate to return to their dorm because she had lost her keys. Instead of sending the drunk young woman to wait alone in the cold and dark early morning hours, the young man kept her safe at his apartment. Sometime later, a friend of the young woman accused the young man of holding the alleged victim against her will.
Text messages from the young woman thanking the young man for allowing her to stay at his place while she waited were disallowed in the young man’s hearing. The young woman didn’t even believe she was a victim, yet because of the accusation of the third party, the young man was suspended.
Another male student was expelled after he rebuffed the advances of another male student. That student was eventually reinstated by the school’s Board of Regents after the student filed a lawsuit.
Sexual assault isn’t the only issue where students are denied due process. At the same hearing, an attorney for one Georgia Tech fraternity detailed the accusations against his clients and how they were provably false, yet the fraternity members were still punished.
A woman accused members of the fraternity of hurling racial slurs at her as she walked outside. Yet the windows where these slurs allegedly originated were painted shut, and the students who lived in the rooms with those windows were out of town, so the doors were locked and no one could get in. Also, surveillance video showed the accuser walking in front of the fraternity without incident.
Normally this would mean there was no case, but since this is Georgia Tech, a lack of evidence and evidence to the contrary instead means evidence of guilt. Because no fraternity member would admit to the alleged crime, the entire fraternity was punished.
Because of stories like this, Ehrhart threatened in the hearing to withhold funds from his state’s colleges and universities if they didn’t begin offering students due process.
“If you don’t protect the students of this state with due process, don’t come looking for money,” Ehrhart said.
The Georgia legislator made good on his threat by denying Georgia Tech’s request for $47 million for a new building, yet that wasn’t enough to get President Peterson to start implementing due process protections.
“My responsibility is to the taxpayers. I can’t throw good money after bad,” Ehrhart told the Atlantic Journal-Constitution. “And I’m not going to fund these individuals who make these decisions. Taking away a $47 million Taj Mahal is not going to harm the students.”
But Ehrhart also suggested Peterson could redeem himself.
“What I want him to do is go in there and do the right thing. I think he can still survive. I don’t have a personal grievance with Bud Peterson, but I do have a problem with what’s happening on Tech’s campus,” Ehrhart said. “There’s a total lack of due process.”
He added that the president needs to recognize that the accused are innocent until proven guilty. “We grant that to criminals, why not to students?” Ehrhart asked.
Ehrhart also said he’s been contacted by rape crisis centers who agree that the schools are harming students, including accusers.
“These Title 9 bureaucrats on campuses are screwing up their cases. They trample over the evidence. They tell these young women, ‘Don’t go to the police, don’t go to the authorities’ who have experience in this,” Ehrhart said. “The rape crisis counselors are saying these people don’t have any idea how they’re harming these young women.”
Ehrhart reiterated that because sexual assault is a crime, the police, not campus administrators, should handle it. He added that because a college education is a property right, students threatened with expulsion or suspension or being branded a racist or a rapist deserve due process to defend themselves against the allegation.
Ehrhart may be one of the only legislators in the country who is standing up for due process this aggressively. More legislators need to follow his lead.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
