Ashe Schow writes frequently for the Washington Examiner to alert readers of troubling patterns of sexual assault policies on campus. Sexual assault itself is of course troubling, but so is now how universities are dealing with it when it allegedly happens on their campuses. As troubling as they are, somebody has to get thew news out there, especially when many other media outlets focus on the 1 in 5 figure of students experiencing sexual assault.
This time news comes out of California. As Schow writes early on in the piece, “of course the new policy is coming out of California, which led the way in inserting campus bureaucrats into the bedroom with its “affirmative consent” policies.”
Under these “affirmative consent” policies, a student must receive consent during each stage of sexual activity. And, of course if a student accused of sexual assault says he did receive consent, his accuser could just as easily say he did not, and it becomes a nasty game of he said she said.
In order to prove consent then, the verbal consent would have to be recorded. May sound awkward, sure, but what else could prove innocent or guilt under such a faulty policy?
California won’t even allow recordings though, with the mindset being, once more, about consent. Should a student record the consent, and there’s an issue with consent there, he could even be expelled. Distributing the video for all to see is one thing, but it’s a problem when a student can’t even record consent to prove his innocence. This comes from UCLA’s Title IX officer’s Q&A with Daily Bruin, a school newspaper. The relevant details of the policy can be found in the new student conduct procedures.
Schow also points to an issue with a mandatory two year sentence minimum, especially because students are not able to accurately defend themselves to begin with, never mind when they can’t use what evidence they do have.
Nobody is arguing that it should be easier for a student to get sexually assaulted. But California has indeed “led the way in inserting campus bureaucrats into the bedroom” and the awkwardness of it all is the least of what problems it may cause for many.
