The media backlash against a pair of campus sexual assault bills that would protect due process rights for accused students continues with the Huffington Post’s Tyler Kingkade.
Kingkade uses his article to smear fraternities as pushing “bills to limit college rape investigation,” the implication being that they don’t want crimes investigated. The article’s subhead reads: “In some circumstances, colleges would be forbidden from expelling a student for sexual assault.”
Those “circumstances” include not punishing a student based on the quasi-legal system set up by Title IX and the Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague” letter. Under those policies, due process rights are thrown out the window and the colleges are incentivized to find students responsible on the flimsiest of evidence — sometimes solely on the word of the accuser.
Sexual assault, as Kingkade acknowledges, is a crime, but currently schools and advocates are treating it as a disciplinary matter no different than cheating or plagiarism. The North-American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Conference (Kingkade conveniently leaves sororities out of the headline) are supporting bills that make sure crimes are handled by the criminal justice system.
One of the main questions I often get asked by readers — especially new readers — is why colleges are handling crimes in the first place. Colleges and universities wouldn’t be tasked with investigating a murder, so why are they playing prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and appellate when it comes to sexual assault?
Now, it’s not controversial to believe that if a student is convicted of murder that he would be expelled from his university. But instead of letting the legal system do its job, universities, under pressure from the Obama administration, think that takes too long and are instead in favor of conducting their own pseudo-investigations.
The two bills supported by the fraternity and sorority groups would ensure that the proper authorities handle crime, but would leave room for colleges to investigate if the accuser reports to police first. Kingkade does not appear to agree with this.
“The Safe Campus Act, the more comprehensive of the two bills, stipulates that colleges may only investigate an allegation of a criminal sexual assault if the alleged victim agrees to report it to local law enforcement,” Kingkade wrote. “If the alleged victim chooses not to do so, then the school would be forbidden to investigate or carry out any sort of punishment against the student accused of sexual assault, no matter what evidence is available. The school would only be able to offer counseling and academic or interim accommodations to the alleged victim.”
Again, this is a crime we’re talking about. Kingkade also laments the lack of an investigation “no matter what evidence is available.” If evidence were available to make it clear an attack had occurred, an accuser should have no problem going to law enforcement.
I understand that accusers may be distrustful of cops — they’re taught from the moment they get on campus that the cops won’t help them in these situations. But as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said at a recent hearing on campus sexual assault: “I think the fact that law enforcement has done a lousy job on occasion is not a reason to keep law enforcement out. It’s a reason to improve law enforcement in this area.”
It’s also a chance for victims’ advocates to help by being the steady and supportive hand that guides accusers through the legal system.
Avoiding the legal system in favor of campus kangaroo courts and star chambers doesn’t help accusers. An accused student can at most be expelled, free to prey on non-students or even the accuser if she steps foot off campus. But going through the legal system can get a rapist off the streets. If sexual assault is a violent crime, shouldn’t we want violent felons off the street?
That’s precisely what the fraternity and sorority groups want, according to Kevin O’Neill, a lobbyist for the groups.
“Our position has always been that if you commit a crime of violence against a student, we think the first stop should be the police station, not the dean’s office,” O’Neill told the Washington Examiner.
And having the police investigate campus crimes is not an extreme idea. In fact, a poll commissioned by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network found that a majority of voters, including women, believe that sexual assault should be handled by the legal system. Eighty-nine percent of men and 82 percent of women strongly or somewhat agreed that the police, not colleges, should be responsible for finding students guilty of sexual assault. Just 39 percent of men and 38 percent of women strongly or somewhat agreed that colleges should be the primary decision-makers.
That’s a pretty firm finding for the legal system. So it is Kingkade, not the fraternities, sororities and others supporting the due process bills, who is actually on the wrong side of the issue.
