An Idea So Crazy, It might Work -- Rape on Campus Belongs in the Courts.

From Ann Althouse via Instapundit:

The idea of universities as being somehow outside of the normal justice system, with their own police and disciplinary procedures, is a survival of the era when they were ecclesiastical institutions. Its persistence into the present day serves no real social purpose.

This is from an article written by Megan McArdle

“One in five women is sexually assaulted in college,” says a White House report released last week. “We are here to tell sexual assault survivors that they are not alone. And we’re also here to help schools live up to their obligation to protect students from sexual violence.”
To combat this plague, the White House task force says colleges should take aggressive steps to prevent sexual assault. They also want the schools to have better systems to handle sexual assault, including:

• Someone a survivor can talk to in confidence.
• A comprehensive sexual misconduct policy.
• Trauma-informed training for school officials.
• Better school disciplinary systems.
• Partnerships with the community (meaning students have access to an emergency room with a rape kit, and the campus disciplinary system works with local police while investigating the alleged crime).

Who could object to such seemingly reasonable recommendations? Well, some of them don't sit well with me. 

I’ll start with that statistic, which seems calculated for maximum scare factor. Most people, when reading a report on sexual assault that urges tougher disciplinary requirements, would assume we were talking about sexual assault of the sort that would normally be criminally prosecuted. But here is one of the reports the White House cites, and here is the list of things that the researchers asked about:

• Touching of a sexual nature (forced kissing, touching of private parts, grabbing, fondling, rubbing up against you in a sexual way, even if it is over your clothes).
• Oral sex.
• Sexual intercourse.
• Anal sex.
• Sexual penetration with a finger or object.

I do not want to defend people who kiss women who are unwilling or incapacitated. You may call me antediluvian, but I do not want to put them in jail, either. I would like a statistic that does a better job of separating things that demand immediate prosecution from things that demand harsh social sanction.  

The second thing to note is that the majority of these sexual assaults take place while the victims are incapacitated by drugs or (most usually) alcohol. Yet the word “alcohol” appears just once in the White House report. There is a passing reference to the fact that many of these crimes occur while the victim is non compos mentis, or unconscious, but no suggestion that sexual assault prevention could involve alcohol education or regulation, and no acknowledgement of the difficulty of pursuing disciplinary action when the victim, and frequently the only witness, cannot reliably testify about what happened. 

Ultimately, however, these are quibbles. What’s really worrying is the task force’s ideas about enforcement. Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, explains why this is so disturbing:

While it’s nearly impossible to follow all of these vague, confusing, and sometimes conflicting regulations, the parts that are clear are in many cases very alarming to civil liberties advocates or, indeed, anyone who believes in the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Foremost among the demands since 2011 is that colleges use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard of proof for adjudicating sexual misconduct accusations -- a 50.01 percent likelihood standard that is our nation’s lowest. (In real courts, rape must be proved “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a 98-99 percent likelihood standard.)

This low standard is then used in a disciplinary procedure where students nearly always lack lawyers, no legally trained judge oversees the process, testimony is not under oath, hearsay is freely considered, relevant evidence or even proper notice of the charges may not be given to both parties, students may be forced to incriminate themselves, and whatever “jury” is empaneled may not be of one’s peers.

The task force report from Tuesday actually encourages colleges to make this situation worse. Perhaps recognizing that college hearings are delivering shoddy justice, the task force speaks highly of moving to a “single investigator” model that would entirely dispense with niceties like “hearings” or “the ability to face one’s accuser” by appointing one administrator to act as detective, judge, and jury for campus crimes. It’s difficult to see how this medieval model of campus justice would be more likely to produce just and reliable results.

Rape is perhaps the most serious felony other than murder. Whether one in five women on campus are victims of rape (as the White House claims) or the figure is more like 3 percent (as another study suggests) makes little difference as far as real justice is concerned. Serious crimes call for serious procedures and the consistent involvement of law enforcement professionals. Both victims and those accused on campus deserve better than what they’re getting now -- or what they’re likely to get as a result of the White House task force’s report.

So I wonder how Obama and the Feminist would react if the same standards were applied to Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case?