By Professor Doom
Most people don’t
realize that our campuses have a “private” court system on them. Whenever
there’s a claim of wrongdoing, from minor quibbles over policy to brutal gang
rape, quirks in our laws allow the campus to handle it.
Faculty
(proudly): “So, after the defendant finished his defense, I was secretly
escorted in to the committee to provide additional testimony and evidence, and
I didn’t leave until I was certain the committee would convict. The defendant
never knew what hit him!”
Me:
“Say…don’t you teach legal courses on this campus?”
Faculty
(puffing): “Of course I do. I’m a lawyer and have a Juris Doctorate...”
--not
exaggerating. The gentle reader should consider which is worse, that our system
is this rigged, or that our law teachers
are this ignorant of the concept of Due Process.
I’ve done what I
can to expose the wild incompetence of the rulers of our campuses, and I assure
the gentle reader that this incompetence encompasses our kangaroo
campus court system. This corrupted system has created atrocities in both
directions, punishing the obviously innocent (when it’s a vulnerable white
male), or giving rape-y
administrators a free pass, depending, apparently, on which would be most foul
at the moment.
The Federal
government, pouring as it does insane amounts of student loan money on campus,
got mildly irked at the corruption (it hates competition, after all) and so
attached some (more) strings to the money, with a piece of legislation referred
to often as “Title IX.” Part of Title IX involves sex crimes, and it formalizes
how administration should pursue alleged sex crimes on campus.
Now, absolutely
admin will still give themselves a free pass when it comes to sex crimes, so
all they’ve done with the new regulation is turned the kangaroo court system
into a chamber of horrors for students, particularly male students, who find
themselves punished outrageously on the basis of thin accusations at best.
And along comes
Trump.
Once again, while
the mainstream media pours endless hate on everything he does (some of it even
justified), yet another of his actions does provide a dash of hope. He
appointed Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education; there was, of course, a primal
howl of incandescent rage over this, but considering how the Department of
Education has a track record of 100% failure since inception, I (and, I
imagine, any rational person) was hard pressed to worry how the “completely
unqualified” (as the press described her, endlessly) DeVos could possibly make
things worse.
So, what’s she
been doing?
Betsy DeVos: The Era of Weaponized Title IX in Campus Rape Cases
Is Over
"Through intimidation and coercion, the failed system
has clearly pushed schools to overreach," says DeVos.
Apparently, only a
female can step in to save males from the incredible abuses of the Title IX
kangaroo court system. Bottom line, the Title IX “guidelines” were making the
rigged system even more rigged:
The new guidance encourages—and in some
cases requires—university administrators to neglect the rights of accused
students. It specifies, for instance, that colleges should use a
"preponderance of the evidence" standard for determining guilt;
officials need only be 51 percent sure an accusation is credible to expel an
accused perpetrator. It also discourages officials from allowing students to
cross-examine each other, because that might be too traumatizing for a survivor
of sexual assault…
Goodness, how
could anyone look at the above and not see how this was going to cause
problems? DeVos was slammed repeatedly by the press for her lack of
credentials, and supposed lack of ability to make good decisions over a
department which had not made one good decision in its 40 year history,
despite, supposedly all the previous leaders of this department having great
credentials and the ability to make good decisions.
All that against
her, but DeVos “gets it”:
"The notion that a school must
diminish due process rights to better serve the 'victim' only creates more
victims," DeVos' speech says.
This really is the
heart of all government programs: create more dependence upon the programs.
It’s why our welfare rolls keep growing, our prison population keeps growing,
our wars get ever more widespread, and yes, why now we’ve broadened our definition
of victim, above, to include anyone whose claims wouldn’t hold up under even
the slightest cross-examination.
DeVos further
reinforces confidence in her abilities by giving her speech against the horrors
of the latest Title IX interpretations on just the right campus:
On that front, DeVos couldn't have picked
a better campus to deliver her speech: A GMU student, "John Doe,"
was expelled
for engaging in BDSM sex that the university judged
nonconsensual. He later sued GMU and won, since it was obvious to a Virginia
district court that the administration's investigation was biased against Doe
and had deprived him of his due process rights.
Time and again I’ve
shown how kangaroo campus court rulings, despite being “unanimous” amongst the
entire committee, are shown to be utter rubbish when taken to the (corrupt, but
still more) legitimate court system the rest of the country uses. Much as my
“legal expert” anecdote at the beginning of this essay shows, many of the
practices of the kangaroo campus court system are hysterically inappropriate
for a system interested in any level of fairness for the accused. The truly
funny part is how shockingly unaware admin is that their actions are
inappropriate; they always have complete confidence they’re in the right…right
up until the judge (and real lawyers) explain to them just how much they’re
going to have to pay in damages for screwing up so horribly.
Thankfully, DeVos' speech signals that
she intends to do what the Education Department should have done in the first
place, six and a half years ago: subject its guidance to public scrutiny.
YES! Public
scrutiny is needed. A huge part of why the campus courts have gotten away with
so much is because of the Seal of Silence over the whole thing. Any faculty
involved are threatened with termination if they expose any of the wrongdoing
(sometimes they’re threatened with termination if don’t rule the way admin
tells them to…and, again, admin doesn’t see how this might not hold up in a
real court).
She'll no doubt take flak for it, but DeVos is right to criticize
the Obama administration's approach to college sexual assault, and she's right
to reform an utterly dysfunctional system.
The article I’m
quoting from is in Reason Magazine, obviously not a mainstream site (it uses
reason, after all). To clarify the above: she’ll take flak from the Leftwing
hate media which will cast aspersions on any attempt to fix even a tiny aspect
of the massive mess this country is in.
Incidentally, my
favorite joke regarding how bizarre mainstream media is today involves the
hypothetical of Trump personally curing cancer. The CNN headline covering this
would be “Shockingly, Trump declares WAR on oncologists!”
In any event, the
whole Title IX debacle can be fixed quickly, since it only applies to schools
taking Federal money:
End the Federal
student loan scam.
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