Neither President Obama nor Vice President Joe Biden will visit colleges or universities they consider to be lacking when it comes to handling accusations of campus sexual assault. Their wives and other top members of the administration will also not go to schools designated as such.
Does this mean the president and vice president won’t visit any college or university, because the real way to take sexual assault seriously is to turn it over to the police to put rapists behind bars? Of course not, it just means they won’t go to schools that aren’t expelling enough accused students, regardless of the evidence.
The Obama administration has forced schools to disregard the truth and abolish the presumption of innocence in favor of a policy of “listen and believe.” If schools don’t comply, they risk losing their federal funding, and if they don’t side with accusers (or don’t side with accusers quickly enough), they’ll be investigated by the federal government for violating the anti-sex discrimination statute known as Title IX.
Most, if not all, of these cases involve two students, possibly drunk, engaging in sexual activity. Sometimes weeks, months or even years later, one party, usually the woman, will accuse the man of sexual assault. Even if the man provides evidence that the accuser was completely fine before, during and after the encounter, he can and will still be found responsible for sexual assault and branded a “rapist” by campus and media outrage brigades.
This happens even when accusers seem to act from regret over a drunken hookup or try to get back at an ex-boyfriend by making an accusation. And the accused has no way to defend themselves against school administrators under pressure to assume his guilt.
None of this concerns Obama or Biden. Biden spoke at the University of Colorado-Boulder earlier this year (about campus sexual assault, no less). In February 2015, the school settled with an accused student who was suspended for sexual assault, even though the accuser admitted she “may have stretched the truth” about the incident because she was “pissed off” at the man she accused. She told university investigators that she wanted “the s—t to be scared out of him” because she thought he was a nice guy but then “realized he’s just another douchey frat dude.”
His hasty expulsion exemplifies the Obama administration’s approach to the question. So don’t be surprised when Biden, Obama and other members of the administration continue to speak at schools that are being sued by accused students for gender discrimination and violating their due process rights.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
