A campus sexual assault bill just passed by the Virginia legislature takes a healthy step away from having unqualified college administrators adjudicating accusations of sexual assault.
Two separate but identical bills, passed unanimously in each state chamber, would require a law enforcement representative to look at all cases and decide whether a complaint of sexual assault should be reported to the police. From the Cavalier Daily:
The bill has some problems. The bureaucracy involved in handling a sexual assault complaint is staggering: A student reports a sexual assault to their resident advisor or another school official, that official reports it to the Title IX coordinator, who reports it to a committee. Who knows how long it would take to get the information to the committee? So even though the committee has 72 hours to decide whether to turn the complaint over to police, more days could have passed before they received the complaint in the first time.
This, of course, means more days that a potentially dangerous person is walking around campus while administrators and one person with police knowledge decide whether there’s a threat.
The bill originally required all reports of sexual assault to be sent to the police. But activists didn’t like that, as they claim it will lead to reduced reporting. I’ve written before about how this could be remedied. Basically, universities and advocacy groups might want to try helping accusers through the difficult reporting and investigative process. That way, dangerous people are taken off the street and no one else becomes a victim.
The Virginia bill also allows accusers to participate as much or as little as they want in the process. That’s really a mixed bag. In he said/she said accusations, little to no participation from accusers means the accused will likely not be charged (although the university’s kangaroo courts might still find them responsible without any evidence or cooperation from the accuser). But in cases where there is evidence of sexual assault besides an accusation, participation from the accuser may not be as necessary.
Quoted in the Daily article in support of the bill is Emily Renda, who you may recall was the woman who introduced Rolling Stone “journalist” Sabina Rubin Erdely to the woman named Jackie who was at the center of the now-discredited article about a gang rape. Renda, naturally, likes the Virginia bill.
