Oklahoma’s largest daily newspaper, The Oklahoman, has published an editorial about the current federal policies surrounding campus sexual assault.
The editorial board, like others across the country, has noticed that the current policies being pushed on colleges to address campus sexual assault have led to major due process violations. The Oklahoman editorial board called the policies, which prioritizes finding accused students responsible over the truth, a “constitutionally dubious regime.”
The editorial board based much of its editorial on a recent letter sent by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., accusing the Education Department of overreaching by creating new regulations for colleges and universities that were not adopted through proper channels. Because the new rules for schools amount to regulations — requiring schools to devote funds to implementing them — the rules should have gone through a congressional vote and a comment period.
Lankford suggests that these procedures weren’t followed because legal scholars would have objected.
In one example highlighted by Lankford and The Oklahoman, Tufts University entered a voluntary agreement with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to change its policies without admitting guilty. OCR then told the school it would retroactively find them in violation of Title IX. Tufts, naturally, withdrew from the original agreement and was threatened with a loss of its federal funding.
“In short, even if schools implement show trials for sexual harassment complaints, they can still get dinged for insufficient zeal,” wrote The Oklahoman.
The editorial board concluded that the school needs to be able to differentiate policies for dealing with “crass and boorish — but not illegal — behavior” and illegal behavior. Because right now, when there are accusations that both students involved were intoxicated, one student (usually the male) is typically labeled a rapist without being given the tools to defend himself. This will have far reaching consequences for schools and the general public.
Those consequences include a drop in male enrollment, distrust between the sexes, perhaps more men accusing women of rape to protect themselves at the outset after a drunken hookup or perhaps an attitude that due process rights truly are an impediment to justice and must be removed from the actual legal system.
All are possible under the current culture.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
