In America, we like to think that the days of black men being falsely accused of crimes at disproportionately high rates are behind us. Gone are the days of Tom Robinson-like figures. Now, “black lives matter,” so black due process must matter too, right?
Or does it? It didn’t a few years ago when I was falsely accused of sexual harassment by two of my fellow Savannah State University students. One morning, I got an email saying I was suspended. No further explanation. Moments later, a campuswide email alert with my photo was sent out telling students to call security immediately if they saw me. All because I had been accused, not found guilty, of sexual harassment. Just two weeks before the day I would have become the first in my family to graduate from college, I was suspended on an accusation. No questions were asked; no evidence was provided.
While I know this can happen to students of any race or gender, the rate at which it affects black men cannot be understated. This is not just my opinion. Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that “the rate of complaints and sanctions against male students of color is unreasonably high” and that school administrators needed “to be on the lookout for racial bias.” From Emmett Till to Walter McMillian, the biased belief that black men are “aggressive” or “dangerous” has been the catalyst for many false accusations.
According to the about one-third of campus sexual assault cases in which the race of the accused student is known, black students are four times as likely as white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated during disciplinary proceedings. In fact, the Center for Prosecutor Integrity has found “parallels between the treatment of Black men accused of rape during the infamous Jim Crow period, and the adjudication of sexual assault cases in the current era.”
Even men of color in powerful positions aren’t free from false accusations. In 2019, there were calls for Virginia’s black Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax to resign because he’d been accused of sexual assault — accused, not proven guilty. Of this ordeal, Fairfax recently said, “It recalls a history in Virginia and in our nation where African Americans and particularly African American men are presumed to be guilty, are treated inhumanely, are given no due process … I have a son, and I have a daughter. I never want my daughter to be assaulted, and I never want my son to be falsely accused. And yet this is the real world we live in.”
But that doesn’t have to be our world. Two years ago, things started to move in the right direction when then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued new guidelines that instilled some basic fairness into campus sexual assault proceedings. The reforms established (1) that a college must actually investigate allegations of sexual assault or harassment and do so in a timely manner; (2) that accused students can’t be suspended or expelled until and unless they’re found guilty; (3) that all evidence must be disclosed, not just the evidence that is beneficial to the alleged victim; (4) that investigations cannot be conducted by administrators with a conflict of interest; (5) that an accuser’s rights and privacy are protected; (6) that an accuser is allowed to take steps to avoid contact with the accused even if they haven’t pressed criminal charges; and (7) that both parties can appeal the administration’s decision. These reforms protected both parties in a Title IX accusation and began to heal campus cultures with an air of equal protection and total fairness.
But now, the Biden administration wants to roll back these protections and return to the days when being accused was the same as being guilty. Removing due process from campus proceedings is unfair to all students, but I fear it will, once again, disproportionately harm black men.
I was falsely accused before the DeVos reforms were in place. Without those protections, I was robbed of my right to defend myself and endured a yearslong battle just to receive the degree I was two weeks away from earning. If these reforms are rolled back, college campuses will not be a safe place for young men, particularly young men of color.
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights recently announced that it plans to review Title IX, solicit the public’s input on the regulations, and perhaps ultimately make revisions. It is critical that the Office of Civil Rights takes all students’ rights into account. We’ve come too far as a country to go back to the days when one baseless accusation is all it takes to ruin a life.
Joseph Roberts is a law student at Golden Gate University School of Law.
