An opinion columnist for an Eastern Illinois newspaper is the latest to question the ability of colleges and universities to adjudicate felony accusations.
Jim Dey, a columnist at the News-Gazette, provided multiple examples of questionable college practices before denouncing the college practice of giving sexual assault accusations more weight than actual evidence. Sadly, the practice of forcing schools to create their own pseudo-court systems comes from the federal government, and it will take more voices like Dey’s to make the Obama administration realize the error.
Dey points to a recent news-making case at Middlebury College, which expelled a student without a hearing months after a separate investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. Dey also mentions comments from Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., who said some horrible things at a congressional hearing, got called out on those things, and then claimed he “misspoke.”
“The ongoing debate over sexual assault on campus and what to do about it reveals a shadow system of justice overseen by individuals unschooled, even indifferent, to due process issues that go along with serious accusations of wrongdoing,” Dey wrote. “Sexual assault is a serious criminal offense in the criminal justice system that carries with it draconian penalties for individuals who are found guilty.”
Dey also notes the difficulty in handling such cases in the criminal justice system when accusations alone are enough to sway a jury. The example Dey uses is that of Luis Roldan, who was convicted of sexual assault with a woman too drunk to consent but whose conviction was overturned by a three-judge appellate panel (consisting of two women and one man).
The conviction was overturned because, the appellate panel found, the prosecution failed to prove that Roldan had sex with a woman he knew to be too drunk to consent. Both had been drinking, and she didn’t remember anything the next morning, but at the time of the sexual encounter, witnesses testified that she seemed “fine” and was walking and talking with no trouble.
“[Roldan] knew [the accuser] had consumed alcohol, but no evidence supports the conclusion that he knew that rather than simply having relaxed inhibitions, she was completely unable to consent,” Judge Joy Cunningham wrote. “Thus, without more, this is insufficient to meet the state’s burden of showing beyond a reasonable doubt that [Roldan] knew [the accuser] was incapable of giving knowing consent.”
Therein lies the trouble in current campus policies that leave room open for accusations that include being drunk to the point of lowering inhibitions but not drunk to the point of incapacitation. In other words, these policies allow accusers to claim that since they would not have done something sober, the encounter was a crime and the person they did it with is therefore a criminal.
“The judicial system requires proof. The shadow college system embraces mere accusation,” Dey concludes. “Given that lowered standard and the politicized nature of the so-called rape culture on campus, rhetorical fireworks and litigation will continue to rise.”
