In Sept. 22’s Manhasset Times, Dr. Hal Sobel wrote “Protection of women in college threatened.”
In the article’s fourth paragraph, he says, “of course I was wrong,” and after reading on, I agree with that one sentence – he did get everything wrong. Women are not threatened by what the Deparment of Education is proposing.
It is obvious that Dr. Sobel despises President Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos and the administration’s plans to overturn many of the previous president’s overreaching directives.
You may despise the messengers, but the message of Obama’s overreach of Title IX and using it as a weapon is accurate.
In 1972, Title IX began as a Nixon era law barring discrimination on the basis of sex in all publicly funded schools. It evolved to include equal funding of male and female sports teams.
Gradually, it became a way for colleges and universities to deal with sexual assault accusations.
In 1990, Congress passed the Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, requiring all schools receiving federal funding to report every known incident of sexual assault on or adjacent to campus.
What studies showed in the following twenty years were that statistics differed from campus to campus, but none matched the accepted mantra of one in five college women being the victims of sexual assault.
Dr. C. Krebs, RTI International: “People have taken one in five from our previous studies to use as a national average, but we never said that. But that’s how it gets used.” (Campus Kangaroo Courts, The Weekly Standard, 9/25/17 and Campus Sexual Assault Data, The Weekly Standard, 5/15/17)
The most damning blow to the procedure of law in the United States came from the “Dear Colleague Letter” of April 4, 2011 from the Obama administration.
His unlawful (was there any other kind?) overreach trampled constitutional rights and ambiguously redefined sexual assault to include sexual harassment, assault, battery, coercion, verbal or nonverbal aggression, intimidation or hostility on or off campus.
All horrible to be subjected to, of course, and not to be tolerated, but not all equal by definition. (Archives of the Civil Rights Office of Management and Budget) Schools had to comply or lose funding.
The Dear Colleague Letter mandated unjust guidelines to adjudicate rape accusations.
The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of guilt became a “preponderance of evidence,” which gave schools power to decide these cases beyond the rule of law.
But rape is a criminal act, and the accused is entitled to all the protections our justice system has in place, such as presumed innocence, the right to face one’s accuser, the right to legal council, a thorough investigation of evidence and a timely trial if necessary.
Colleges and universities no longer had to consider the rule of law, but could set their own tribunals to determine guilt and punishment. They could refuse to let an attorney represent the accused or refuse to let the accused present evidence. (Archives)
As of now, on college campuses, there is an 85 percent loss of due process, 74 percent without guarantee of presumed innocence, and half do not require impartial fact finders.
The Obama administration made it clear that sticking to the principles of justice was a “ticket to interminable and intrusive federal investigations.” (Detroit News, 9/14/17) I find this sickening.
Dr. Sobel’s figure that 2-8 percent of men accused are falsely accused is dismissed by him as being irrelevant.
I have read that statistic, too. But I, as a mother and grandmother of both boys and girls am not comfortable with even the lowest number of that range. I am horrified that lives can be ruined that way.
That to me is not a non-existent problem.
Read the story as told to Rolling Stone magazine by a young woman who accused men at a fraternity party at UVA of rape.
Nothing this woman claimed could be verified and the university and the police declined to press charges against the men or the fraternity who now have lawsuits pending against the university.
I dislike mentioning this, but sometimes women lie about rape. It is an unfortunate part of life and I wish it was not true.
Not only is it an accusation that can ruin a man’s life if false, but it hurts the real victims of this crime.
My sympathy is real for the true victims of the crime but this article is about the falsely accused.
There are three lawsuits pending against Liberty University for violation of rights of due process when investigating a sexual assault charge that occurred in 2015. No charges were filed against the three men accused, but two of the three were expelled by the university. (The News Advance, 9/11/17)
The last example sounds like something I made up, but I think most readers have heard of the “mattress girl.”
At Columbia University, IMO a school drowning in stupidity and political correctness, Emma Sulkowicz accused a male student of battery and sexual assault during what she claimed was, at first, a consensual sexual encounter.
Both the university and the NYPD investigated and found no evidence to support her charges.
But Sulkowicz was determined to brand the man a rapist and force him from the university campus. She took to carrying her mattress everywhere she went on campus.
The man was scorned, ridiculed and threatened both in person and on social media, but he finished his degree.
New York Magazine gave Emma a sympathetic interview, as did the New York Times (big surprise), and our own Sen. Gillibrand invited Emma to an Obama State of the Union address.
How stupid of her. Incredibly, Columbia awarded Emma course credit for hauling around her mattress, and she also received NOW’s Susan B. Anthony award.
The man was interviewed by Cathy Young of Reason Magazine, and supplied the reporter additional evidence of his innocence by showing the reporter several emails Emma wrote to him within 10 days of the alleged rape: “…we still haven’t really had a …sesh since summmmerrrr..,” and “…whatever I want to sa yoyouyouyou..,” and “I love you,… Where are you?/?/?/?/”
This past July, Columbia settled a lawsuit with the young man and publicly stated the man’s remaining time at Columbia was very difficult for him.” (Mona Charen, senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center 2017)
I do not believe that women will be threatened or harmed by a roll back of the Obama rules. I think equal protection will be restored to men and that is good for everyone. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education agrees.
Its suggestions include presumption of innocence, time to prepare a defense, use of impartial fact finders, allowing legal representation, and a right to appeal… all things we take for granted and want for ourselves and our families.
Lauren Block
Manhasset
