Category: Due Process

Can Lockdown Learning Liberate Male Students?

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 5, 2020

The COVID-19 cloud hanging over North American universities may contain a ray of sunlight. It may ease what is called “the boy problem” in education—a significantly reduced number of male students and of male achievement in colleges. As bleak as isolated learning may seem to some, it may be more male friendly than many campuses.

Critics denounce off-campus learning as a lesser service being offered at full price. Certainly, the college experience can be enhanced by direct interaction with professors, other students, and organizations. But a radical left ideology dominates the university system, and it is sustained by an army of administrators who implement policies of social control, from speech codes to sexual mores. This often leads to stifled opinions, preferential treatment of some classes of student, accusations of misconduct, speech police, campus hearings with no due process, and punishment with no appeal. There can be advantages to a stripped-down version of learning without the social justice and social control that turns the benefits of interaction into cruel dangers.

An October 2018 article in the New York Times, “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators,” complained,

The ideological bent of those overseeing collegiate life is having the biggest impact on campus culture…I received a disconcerting email this year from a senior staff member in the Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach. The email was soliciting ideas…for a conference, open to all of us, titled “Our Liberation Summit.” The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people.

The conservative professor objected to the political polarization of this campus conference and the power of the administrator. Those who reject any tax-funded conference can sympathize, not because of the politics involved but because of the taxes. The fact that “those overseeing collegiate life” push their own orthodoxy is insult added to injury.

The silver lining of at-home learning: students who attend class in pajamas have little occasion to encounter social justice warrior (SJW) bureaucrats. In on-campus life, they seem to be everywhere.

In 2017, Todd J. Zywicki and Christopher Koopman of George Mason University published a study entitled “The Changing of the Guard: The Political Economy of Administrative Bloat in American Higher Education.” They found,

Universities have increased spending, but very little of that increased spending has been related to classroom instruction; rather, it is being directed toward non-classroom costs. As a result, there has been a growth in academic bureaucracies, as universities focus on hiring employees to manage or administer people, programs, and regulations. Between 2001 and 2011, these sorts of hires have increased 50% faster than the number of classroom instructors. This trend…has become ubiquitous in…American higher education. (p.2). [Data draws on WSJ article “Deans List: Hiring Spree Fattens College Bureaucracy—And Tuition.”]

Focusing on a narrow field of administrators offers a glimpse of the harm these bureaucrats inflict. Consider the impact of one branch on one student population: Title IX on male students, who have been called “the new minority” at colleges. This is particularly true of males from low-income families.

Jim Shelley, the manager of the Men’s Resource Center at Lakeland Community College in Ohio, explains one reason why; campuses feel hostile to them. They feel that college is geared toward protecting and promoting females.

“Not only are there not programs like ours [on other campuses] that are supportive of male students, but at most college campuses the attitude is that men are the problem.…I’ve had male students tell me that their first week in college they were made to feel like potential rapists.”

A great deal of attention in the last decade has been directed to “the boy problem” in education. A few examples include:

Higher Ed Live: Missing Men: Addressing the College Gender Gap
Stanford Professor Postings: Where the Guys Are: Males in Higher Education
Inside Higher Education: The Other Gender Gap
College Stats: Why Men Are Falling Behind in Higher Ed

Logically, administrators seem to be ideally placed to ensure that campuses are welcoming to and not hostile environments for males. In reality, they do the opposite. Just one example are sex specific scholarships that overwhelmingly favor female applicants—often prohibiting male ones—even though Title IX’s implementing regulation, 34 CFR 106, prohibits federally tax-supported scholarships that, “On the basis of sex, provide different amounts or types of such assistance, limit eligibility for such assistance which is of any particular type or source, apply different criteria, or otherwise discriminate.”

A broader overview reveals how badly administrators may be failing or actively harming male students. The overview involves taking universities at their word and examining the makeup of staff, such as Title IX administrators. A popular campus idea is that only another member of a specific gender or race understands the experience of that gender or race; only blacks understand the black experience, etc.

This argument is used to push for a so-called diversity of hiring that gives female students access to female counselors and mentors, for example. Again, this approach leads to preferential hiring based on gender or race—that is, quotas—which are anathema to any system of merit. Nevertheless, socially engineered quotas are normal at universities. If applied even handedly, this should result in a population of administrators that roughly mirrors the population of students. This seems especially important for Title IX administrators who are supposed to ensure non-discrimination based on sex.

What is the gender mix of the student populations? It varies from campus to campus, of course, but an October 2019 article entitled “The Degrees of Separation Between the Genders in College “ in the Washington Post renders a fair sense of it. The article states, “Fifty years ago, 58 percent of U.S. college students were men. Today, 56 percent are women, Education Department estimates show.” This is a commonly cited statistic.

Capture One would expect Title IX administrators, therefore, to be half-female and half-male, or something roughly close to this ratio. A review of the websites of the largest public university in each state, however, reveals a huge gender gap in Title iX staff. In the 51 universities, there were 168 female staffers to 48 male, or 3.5 times more females.

If this gap resulted from free market factors, then it would be an interesting and harmless anomaly that probably reflects how employment preferences differ between the genders. No solution would be required because no problem would exist. But universities are socially engineered institutions. They receive Title IX funding and other federal benefits on the specific condition of non-discrimination. If blacks constituted 44 percent of a student body while 3.5 times more whites than blacks occupied highly paid positions of authority, there would be a cry of “racism!” No one cries out for male students.

Administrators will not give up their positions easily, simply because they are highly paid and bring status. According to the 2012-13 “Administrators in Higher Education Salary Survey” by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, the average annual salary of a “Chief Executive Officer of a System” in a two-year institution was $291,132; in a four-year institution, $370,470; in a doctoral context, $431,575. By contrast, a 2015-16 report from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found the average salary of a tenured professor at a public college was $78,762. Again, this is not a hard comparison, but it renders a good general sense of the scope of the problem and why the administrators will not easily cede their authority.

Ultimately, the solution is to privatize colleges and run them as businesses in which owners make decisions, usually according to market feedback. In the absence of this and the presence of tax-funding, however, it is blatantly wrong to privilege one class of human being and discriminate against another class in employment and opportunity. It is especially hypocritical to do so within a program that allegedly champions non-discrimination.

If the lockdown of universities loosens the death grip that anti-male administrators have on college campuses, then at least one benefit will come from it. If SJW social justice bureaucrats are shown to be irrelevant, perhaps cash-strapped universities will consider a return to academia and cease to be petri dishes of social experimentation.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/can-lockdown-learning-liberate-male-students/

Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Due Process Fair Campus Act Investigations Title IX

To cripple the abusive campus ‘sex bureaucracy,’ rein in the Title IX coordinators

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 2, 2020

If you want to entrench a government policy, make sure someone’s job depends on enforcing it. Even if that person isn’t a true believer in the program initially, she will be by the time her first paycheck arrives – and increasingly after that. That’s certainly the case with the education system’s Title IX coordinators, who are charged with overseeing schools’ compliance with federal sex discrimination statutes and questionable regulatory dictates.

What do Title IX coordinators do? Their core job duty, at least in theory, is to monitor their institution’s compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which helps ensure that institutions receiving federal money do not tolerate sexual harassment that effectively bars the victim’s access to educational opportunity.

However, regulators’ zeal for stamping out sexual harassment has warped enforcement in ways that violate students’ free speech and due process rights. That’s all thanks to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department of Education, which under the Obama administration issued widely criticized guidance documents elaborating on – and often unreasonably expanding the interpretation of – what counts as harassment. These documents imposed new duties on regulated schools based on a serious misreading of the law, and were instituted without following the appropriate procedures for public notice and comment.

Fortunately, the Trump administration has withdrawn some of the worst guidance documents and issued binding regulations that should discourage schools from curtailing students’ fundamental rights. However, there is at least one more problematic Obama-era Title IX guidance remaining on the books. It describes, at length, the procedures that federal funding recipients must follow in employing Title IX coordinators.

The term “coordinator” appears nowhere in Title IX itself. The requirement originates from a 1975 regulation (34 C.F.R. 106.8) that told funding recipients they had to designate a responsible employee to handle Title IX compliance. The requirement prompted almost no public comment at the time, probably because it was seen as the kind of modest measure that agencies routinely take to carry out a statute, such as telling recipients what color paper they must use in correspondence with an agency.

Yet onto this slender bureaucratic reed, the Obama administration engrafted a complex regulatory regime that essentially created privately administered “sex bureaucracies” within every funding recipient’s management.

Under pressure from this guidance, many colleges and universities expanded their Title IX offices. Harvard University has by my count 58 compliance staff members. Yale University has 22. Even tiny liberal arts colleges have significant Title IX offices: Middlebury has one main Title IX coordinator and six deputies; Amherst has one coordinator and six deputies; Haverford has one and eight deputies.

As these offices have grown, staff duties have expanded to include work going beyond ensuring compliance with the law and instead promoting the “spirit” of Title IX. One Swarthmore coordinator noted to the media that these “jobs are really not just about compliance anymore, but also about campus climate.”

What are these offices doing to promote Title IX’s spirit? As Jeannie Suk and Jacob Gersen discuss in a 2016 California Law Review article, “The Sex Bureaucracy,” many have gone beyond preventing unlawful sex discrimination and instead have expanded into lecturing students on what used to be seen as highly personal decisions about pursuing “healthy” or “safe” romantic and sexual relationships. Most of us learned foundational relationship skills such as “Always use ‘I’ statements” and “Don’t interrupt your partner” from partners, friends, clergy, or private therapists. Yet Title IX coordinators at Swarthmore and the University of Illinois have taken it upon themselves to propound such advice to students

“Is bureaucracy the antonym of desire?” Suk and Gersen ask. Certainly many of us would think so. Are bureaucrats hired to enforce a nondiscrimination statute really well-equipped to serve also as essentially relationship therapists? Much of their advice may be noncontroversial, but some may be less so, especially to students who hold traditional or religious values. Is it infantilizing to young adults to treat them as needing this kind of hectoring? Because of the pandemic-related economic downturn, many universities are in a particularly tight financial situation right now. Wouldn’t it make sense for regulators to give them some more flexibility in this area?

The Trump administration has made a priority of restoring the rule of law and stopping agency abuse of guidance documents: an executive order lays out procedures for transparency in issuance of guidance documents and restricts executive agencies’ unlawful issuance of guidance documents, and Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand issued a memo prohibiting Department of Justice components from issuing guidance documents that effectively bind the public.

The Trump administration should follow through on its commitment to pull back overreaching guidance and repeal this problematic document, in order to rein in the Title IX coordinators and their abusive sex bureaucracy.

Alison Somin is a legal fellow at Pacific Legal Foundation, which litigates nationwide to achieve court victories enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of individual liberty. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonSomin.

Accountability Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Discrimination Due Process False Allegations Investigations Office for Civil Rights Press Release Sex Education Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Training Victims Violence

Double Jeopardy: SAVE Calls on College Administrators to Assure Due Process Protections for Black Students in Title IX Proceedings

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 28, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart
Telephone: 513-479-3335
Email: info@saveservices.org

Double Jeopardy: SAVE Calls on College Administrators to Assure Due Process Protections for Black Students in Title IX Proceedings

WASHINGTON / July 28, 2020 – SAVE recently released a study that shows black male students face a type of “double jeopardy” by virtue of being male and black. (1) Analyses show although black male students are far outnumbered on college campuses, they are four times more likely than white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated in Title IX proceedings (2), and at one university OCR investigated for racial discrimination, black male students were accused of 50% of the sexual violence reported to the university yet they comprised only 4.2% of the student population. (3)

In 2015, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley raised an alarm to the U.S. Senate HELP committee that, “the rate of complaints and sanctions against male students of color is unreasonably high.” (4) She advised school administrators to, “not only to secure sex equality but also to be on the lookout for racial bias and racially disproportionate impact and for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity – not only against complainants but also against the accused.” (5)

Her powerful words were ignored. Over the past 5 years numerous black males have been caught up in campus Title IX proceedings. Their lawsuits often claim a lack of due process in the procedures.

Grant Neal, a black student athlete, was suspended by Colorado State University – Pueblo for a rape his white partner denied ever happened. (6) Two black males students accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student recently settled a lawsuit against University of Findlay for racial, gender and ethnic discrimination. (7) Nikki Yovino was sentenced to a year in prison for making false rape accusations against two black Sacred Heart University football players whose lives were ruined by her accusations. (8) These are just a few examples.

Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, a major stop along the Underground Railroad, recently dismissed Chaplain Tim Blackmon, its first nonwhite chaplain in its 155-year history. Blackmon claims Wheaton’s Title IX office failed to investigate a previous Title IX complaint against him in a “clear misuse of the Title IX investigative process,” and he was “completely blind-sided by this Title IX investigation.” Blackmon’s attorney believes the professor’s race heavily factored into his firing, and that Wheaton was looking for an excuse to sever its relationship with its first African American chaplain and return to being a predominantly white educational institution. (9)

The impact to black male students and faculty could be even greater than any data or media reports imply since only those who can afford a costly litigation file lawsuits and make the news. More data is needed, but anecdotally black males are disproportionately harmed in campus Title IX proceedings.

SAVE recently spoke with Republican and Democrat offices in the House and Senate regarding this issue. Virtually all staffers agreed members of Congress are concerned about harm to black students and supportive of ways to offer protections to all students, including those of color.

The new Title IX regulation offers necessary due process protections that black students need. By complying with the regulation, college administrators will protect the rights of all students and address the serious problem that black men are accused and punished at unreasonably high rates. At a time when activists on college campuses are clamoring that Black Lives Matter, college administrators should assure they are doing everything they can to help their black students.

Citations:

SAVE is leading the policy movement for fairness and due process on campus: http://www.saveservices.org/

#MeToo Campus Civil Rights Discrimination Due Process False Allegations Free Speech Investigations Office for Civil Rights Sexual Harassment

Black Immigrant Chaplain Claims Christian College Used Bogus Title IX Investigation to Fire Him

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 20, 2020

‘From the outset … race was very much at issue’

A professor’s race heavily factored into his firing on the grounds of making racially and sexually insensitive comments, according to his attorney.

Wheaton College, known informally as the Harvard of evangelical colleges, publicly announced the dismissal of Chaplain Tim Blackmon earlier this month, more than a month after his firing.

The 50-year-old black immigrant from the Netherlands has since vigorously disputed the allegations against him, telling the Chicago Tribune that “they are a complete misconstrual of the comments” he made.

President Philip Ryken justified the college’s firing of Blackmon by publicly accusing him of several violations Wheaton learned about last fall. He had “repeatedly used an ethnic slur” to refer to an Asian employee and suggested that a female staff member sit on his lap during a training session for sexual harassment, according to Wheaton’s statement.

The black chaplain also circulated a meme to employees about masturbation and “arranged” to have the book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra” placed on a female staff member’s desk, the college claimed.

Wheaton claimed that Blackmon “admitted to certain allegations, which is patently untrue,” his attorney Andrew Miltenberg told The College Fix in an email. The ex-chaplain “continues to refute” both the allegations and the context Wheaton applied to them.

“From the outset, Chapl[a]in Blackmon’s race was very much at issue,” contrary to Wheaton’s race-neutral portrayal of the allegations, Miltenberg said.

Citing Wheaton’s allegedly poor record with racial and ethnic diversity, “especially with the African American community,” the attorney said that Blackmon has been treated far worse than his white colleagues.

Pressure to conform with the prevailing views of the #MeToo movement and the controversies surrounding Title IX investigations resulted in an overreaction from the college, the attorney added.

Ultimately, Wheaton chose to oust Blackmon so that it could maintain the mantle of being an “ethnically diverse” college all the while “return[ing] to its roots – that being a primarily white educational institution,” Miltenberg alleged. Yet the fired employee and his attorney have not decided whether to take legal action yet.

When asked to specify some of the college’s allegations about Blackmon – including the exact racial slur – beyond its curt statement, Director of Marketing Joseph Moore stated: “Wheaton College is not providing further comment.”

That supposed slur, Blackmon told a blogger last week, stemmed from an “inside joke” about the song “Black and Yellow” by the rapper Wiz Khalifa and its relevance to working in a “predominantly white institution.”

Theological articles he shared were ‘ideologically problematic’ for accuser

Wheaton’s internal statement to its community, which Moore provided and which preceded Blackmon’s response, made clear that the college did not find that he engaged in “sexually immoral relationships or physical sexual misconduct.” Rather, its investigation “revealed conduct inconsistent with Wheaton’s policies and commitments.”

Moore did not not provide The Fix with the specific policies and commitments purportedly breached by Blackmon, however.

“To be clear, I was completely blind-sided by this Title IX investigation,” Blackmon said via his attorney in response to Wheaton’s statement.

“I recently learned this was the second time this individual filed a Title IX against me,” the first one occurring in 2017 after Blackmon had “shared five theological articles that the complainant [accuser] deemed ideologically problematic.” (He doesn’t give a more specific description of the accuser; Wheaton’s language suggests at least two women complained.)

Wheaton’s Title IX office didn’t investigate at the time, “as it was a clear misuse of the Title IX investigative process,” the chaplain continued. But in the most recent complaint, he said that “several of my comments have been taken completely out of their factual and, in some cases, religious context.”

He emphasized that no one accused him of “flirtation, inappropriate relationships, sexual misconduct or any sexual action towards anyone,” and neither the accuser nor “any witness, communicate[d] offense or discomfort.”

While it left out his race when justifying his firing, Wheaton emphasized Blackmon’s race when hiring him five years ago as the first nonwhite chaplain in its 155-year history.

Rodney Sisco, director of the Office of Multicultural Development, told The Wheaton Record: “I think change is change, and change is always difficult. Chaplain Blackmon is going to be seen differently.”

While Sisco was personally excited to have a “person of color leading the chaplain’s office,” he suspected that some community members would be “a little worried, asking, ‘Have we made some sort of strange mistake?’” He concluded by saying: “I think there will be some folks who push against the college.”

At the time, only 2.3 percent of the student body was comprised of African Americans. The most recent figures from 2017 put it at 3.03 percent––its white population is at 70.8 percent. (Ranking service College Factual says Wheaton has more “non-resident alien” students than African Americans.) This is at a college that was founded by evangelical abolitionists in 1860 and was a major stop along the Underground Railroad.

“Wheaton has failed in its attempt, if any were even made, to achieve truly measurable and transformative cultural diversity,” Miltenberg, who has represented hundreds of college students accused of sexual misconduct, told The Fix.

‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra’ was a regifted ‘gag’

In a separate public statement, the attorney alleged that Wheaton administrators “are now publicly smearing and defaming my client in the media by using out of context statements and false accusations.”

Contrary to President Ryken’s claim, Blackmon “never asked his secretary to sit on his lap during a sexual harassment training,” and “never harassed anyone, sexually or racially,” according to Miltenberg. The college simply “weaponized the Title IX process to get rid of someone whose words and ideas didn’t always conform to their views.”

The lap allegation, Blackmon told The Roys Report blog last week, stemmed from his critical comments about “the mandatory (but rather patronizing) sexual harassment training video” he was required to watch when starting at Wheaton in September 2015.

He said he told the accuser: “Come on, it’s not like I don’t know what sexual harassment is. It’s not like I’m asking my secretary to sit on my lap and take the training for me.”

The context for another allegation, about his comments to a newly married female employee, was the fact that her “brand-new husband had been pulling all-nighters for grad-school,” Blackmon continued:

As a way of celebrating their newly wedded bliss I said, “Maybe you should surprise him and pay him a conjugal visit.” As to the conjugal-visit comment, I was genuinely trying to commiserate with her about the challenges of graduate school and newlyweds.

Regarding the incident involving “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra,” Miltenberg told The Fix that Blackmon “received the book from a former parishioner.”

That person’s wife wrote about the incident in a comment on a blog post on the Blackmon controversy: “I left the book on Tim’s desk. During our annual Church bazar [sic] I found the book in the donated items as we set up.” She thought that it would be “ironic to put the book on Tim’s desk.”

Later, after she and her husband “laughed about it,” her husband “snuck into Tim’s office and hid it in his library where it sat for years. I guess it made its way to Chicago. I thought it was funny to put a book that silly in Tim’s office. And the idea I was a victim is stupid.”

According to Miltenberg, at some point Blackmon “told the complainant the story after he found the surprise gag gift in his [college’s] library and then gave her the book. He thought it was a funny story. That’s all there was to it.” (Blackmon told The Roys Report he shared the story with others, but admitted that it sounded bad when “taken out of its contexts without the prank.”)

Because this was “such a benign event,” the attorney continued, “we believe that Wheaton was looking for an excuse to sever its relationship with its first African American Chaplain” and return to being a predominantly white educational institution.

‘China-man’ was an ‘inside joke’

Regarding the “ethnic slur” he allegedly used repeatedly toward an Asian American employee, Blackmon provided the context to The Roys Report.

When he started working at Wheaton, Blackmon said one of his Korean ministry colleagues was “mistaken” for a professor. They “commiserated about the realities of beginning to work” at the predominantly white institution, comparing their situation to the Wiz Khalifa song “Black and Yellow”:

[A] black pastor from Holland and a Korean ministry associate. I said, “Maybe we should call you the China-man because people can’t even tell one Asian from another, one Chinese from a Korean.” More laughter ensued and for the next couple of weeks we commiserated about the ironies of working in a predominantly white institution, and we soon moved on from our inside joke and got to work.

“This,” said Blackmon, “is what they are considering the racial/ethnic slur.”

Miltenberg also suspects that “Wheaton may have overreacted out of fear of public pressure given the #MeToo movement and other Title IX related controversies as of late”:

Wheaton has repeatedly shifted the landscape in Chaplain Blackmon’s case, at times claiming it was Title IX issue, and other times, suggesting that the situation did not fall under Title IX.

This shifting has impeded Blackmon’s ability to appropriately respond to the allegations as well as “denying him the right to counsel,” Miltenberg said. The college has also ignored its own “employee conflict resolution procedures,” he claimed.

Its actions “have put Chaplain Blackmon’s future very much at risk,” Miltenberg said.

Source: https://www.thecollegefix.com/black-immigrant-chaplain-claims-christian-college-used-bogus-title-ix-investigation-to-fire-him/

Campus Civil Rights Due Process False Allegations Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment

Why Are Some Members of Congress Opposing Due Process Protections for Black Male Students?

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 14, 2020

SAVE

July 14, 2020

During the Senate HELP Committee’s 2015 hearing on campus sexual assault, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley made the surprising observation that in her experience, “male students of color are accused and punished at ‘unreasonably high rates’ in campus sexual misconduct investigations.” (1) Two years later, journalist Emily Yoffe posed this question in The Atlantic: “Is the system biased against men of color?” explaining, “black men make up only about 6 percent of college undergraduates, yet are vastly overrepresented in the cases I’ve tracked.” (2) Lara Bazelon, director of the racial justice clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law, likewise has opined about the troubling racial dynamics at play under the current Title IX system, and urged Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to “take important steps to fix these problems.” (3)

During this time of national reflection on race relationships, stories mount of black men whose lives were irrevocably harmed by false allegations or poorly administered campus tribunals (4). The examples of unfair treatment are numerous and egregious:

Two years ago, Nikki Yovino was sentenced to one year in jail for falsely accusing two black male football players, students at Sacred Heart University, of sexual assault (5).
Grant Neal, a black student athlete suspended by Colorado State University-Pueblo for a rape his white partner denied ever happened, sued and settled with his university (6).
Two black male students accused of sexual assault recently settled a lawsuit against University of Findlay for racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination (7).

Black faculty members also have been targeted by the campus kangaroo courts. The nation’s first elected black governor, former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, penned a scathing letter regarding his “unimaginable nightmare at Virginia Commonwealth University” after he was erroneously accused of sexual misconduct. He aptly titled his letter, “Secretary DeVos Right to Restore Due Process on Campus.” (9) Similarly, Howard University castigated law professor Reginald Robinson for allegations of sexual harassment, although his actions were clearly an expression of academic freedom consistent with university policy. (10)

So how widespread is the problem?

In 2017, the Office for Civil Rights investigated Colgate University for potential race discrimination in its sexual assault adjudication process. During the course of the investigation, the institution had to reveal the embarrassing fact that “black male students were accused of 50% of the sexual violations reported to the university,” (11) even though black students represent only 5.2% of all undergraduate students (12).

More recently, Title IX For All analyzed demographic data from the approximately 650 lawsuits filed against institutions of higher education since 2011. Among the 30% of cases in which the race of the accused student was known, black students are four times as likely as white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated in Title IX disciplinary proceedings. Title IX For All concludes, “These findings come at a time when public officials who have long regarded themselves as champions of civil rights for minorities suspected or accused of crimes advocate a heightened awareness of their rights, while simultaneously working to undermine their rights in higher education settings.” (13)

The new Title IX regulation will ensure fairness, equitability, and credibility, and will support and assist sexual assault complainants, as well (14). Some members of Congress in both the Senate (15) and the House of Representatives (16) have urged Secretary DeVos to rescind the new regulation with vague claims that it is harmful to students.

At a time when activists across the country are clamoring that Black Lives Matter, why are some members of Congress opposed to a regulation that will help improve the lives of black men?

Citations:

Campus Dating Violence Department of Education Domestic Violence Due Process Investigations Office for Civil Rights Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Victims

PR: New Sexual Assault Regulation Will Benefit Victims, For Numerous Reasons

Post author By saveadmin
Post date May 8, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

New Sexual Assault Regulation Will Benefit Victims, For Numerous Reasons

WASHINGTON / May 8, 2020 – SAVE is today releasing an analysis that enumerates the many ways by which the newly released Title IX regulation will benefit victims of campus sexual assault. Title IX is the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools. The new regulation was released on Wednesday by the Department of Education (1).

Titled, “Analysis: New Title IX Regulation Will Support and Assist Complainants in Multiple Ways,” the SAVE report identifies seven broad ways that the new federal regulation benefits victims and survivors:

Establishes a legally enforceable duty of universities to respond to such cases in a timely manner.
Requires the school to investigate allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and harassment.
Requires the school to offer complainants supportive measures, such as class or dorm reassignments or no-contact orders, even if an investigation is not initiated.
Defines the procedures to properly investigate and adjudicate such complaints.
Promotes victim autonomy by allowing the complainant to participate in dispute resolution or withdraw a complaint if desired.
Ensures complainants are not required to disclose any confidential medical, psychological, or similar records.
Discourages minor complaints that tend to dilute the availability of resources and harm the credibility of future victims.

Nashville attorney Michelle Owens provides examples of lawsuits from her own practice that fall into the category of minor and trivial complaints:

A student who was charged under Title IX for allegedly touching a girl on her head. This was not on a date or in a romantic setting.
One client was charged for sexual misconduct for touching a student on her elbow at a dance because he was trying to move her out of the way of another person.
One male student was charged for giving an honest compliment to a friend on her outfit.

The new SAVE document identifies 28 legally enforceable provisions in the new regulation that will benefit and support victims. Three examples of these provisions are: “Complainants are assured that unwelcome conduct that is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive will not be tolerated at their institution;” “Complainants are assured that respondents that are deemed an immediate threat to safety will be removed from campus;” and “Complainants must be provided an advisor free of charge to conduct cross-examination on their behalf.”

SAVE has identified numerous cases in which campus disciplinary committees, sometimes derisively referred to as “kangaroo courts,” have shortchanged victims (2). The Independent Women’s Forum argues that “Survivors should praise efforts to ensure that disciplinary decisions are not overturned by courts or regarded as illegitimate in the court of public opinion.” (3)

There is no evidence that the previous campus policies have succeeded in reducing campus sexual assault. A recent report from the American Association of Universities revealed an actual increase in campus sexual assaults from 2015 to 2019 (4).

The SAVE analysis is available online: http://www.saveservices.org/2020/05/analysis-new-title-ix-regulation-will-support-and-assist-complainants-in-multiple-ways/

Links:

Campus Due Process Free Speech Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment

PR: 266 Professors Nationwide Issue Call for Prompt Restoration of Free Speech and Due Process on Campus

Post author By saveadmin
Post date May 4, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

266 Professors Nationwide Issue Call for Prompt Restoration of Free Speech and Due Process on Campus

WASHINGTON / May 4, 2020 – A group of 266 distinguished faculty members today is releasing a Faculty Resolution in Support of the Prompt Restoration of Free Speech and Due Process on Campus. The co-signers come from 43 states and represent a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds and political persuasions. The Resolution concludes with an urgent appeal: “the undersigned professors call on lawmakers and university administrators to assure the prompt implementation of new policies that will clarify grievance procedures, enhance free speech, and embrace fairness for all.”

Among other institutions, the group includes professors from 25 law schools: Brooklyn Law School, University of California – Berkeley, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland-Marshall School of Law, Denver University, Duke University, George Mason University, Harvard Law School, University of Hawaii, Howard University, Indiana University, John Marshall Law School, University of Kentucky, Marquette University, University of Minnesota, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, Notre Dame University, Ohio Northern University, University of Pittsburgh, University of St. Thomas, University of San Diego, Stanford University, Touro College, University of Virginia, and Washington University.

Since 2011, groups such as the American Association of University Professors have issued statements condemning the growing encroachments on free speech and due process. In 2016, the AAUP Council adopted a report, “The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX,” which highlights that as a result of federal sexual assault policies, free speech considerations “have been relegated to the background or ignored altogether.” (1)

Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law Emerita at the New York Law School and former President of the American Civil Liberties Union, has lamented that free expression on campus has become “an endangered species.” (2) The National Association of Scholars has called for the upcoming Higher Education Act reauthorization to include provisions to enhance free speech (3).

There are numerous examples of faculty members whose constitutionally based due process rights have been curtailed (4). At Northwestern University, professor Laura Kipnis was subjected to a months-long investigation because two students complained her criticism of her campus’ sexual harassment policy allegedly created a “chilling effect” on other students who wanted to file a sexual misconduct report (5).

SAVE urges the prompt implementation of the new Title IX regulation, which is expected to be issued soon. The Faculty Resolution in Support of the Prompt Restoration of Free Speech and Due Process on Campus can be viewed online. The names are listed in alphabetical order by state: http://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/Faculty-Resolution-5.2.2020.pdf

Links:

Campus Due Process Sexual Harassment

Title IX Coordinators Should Embrace New Regulation to Reduce Liability Risks

Post author By saveadmin
Post date April 23, 2020

2020 will be a year in which institutions of higher education (IHEs) suffer heavy financial losses. The COVID-19 shutdown is costing them many millions of dollars in lost revenues.

Significant losses due to mounting litigation are also at an all-time high. Never before have costs been higher for IHEs to defend themselves in lawsuits brought by alleged sexual assault perpetrators or victims claiming mistreatment by their institutions. IHEs must implement policies and procedures to reduce the high cost of sexual assault claims.

In 2017 United Educators (UE), which provides liability insurance to more than 1,600 schools around the country, launched its Canopy risk management program. Canopy has issued two White Papers on campus sexual assault: “The High Cost of Student-Victim Sexual Assault Claims” (1) and “Sexual Assault Claims: Perpetrator as Plaintiff” (2).

The reports document that between 2011-2015, sexual assault claims resulted in losses averaging nearly $350,000 each, with a few causing losses that exceeded $1 million. Losses in claims by accused students were driven by defense costs, which accounted for 71% of losses. Total losses due to perpetrator claims were almost $9 million, with total defense costs $6.3 million.

Lawsuits by alleged perpetrators or victims included allegations of breach of contract, Title IX violations, and negligence. Alleged types of misconduct by university personnel included the following (2):

Failure to properly train staff on institutional policies
Flawed reporting processes that discouraged complainants from reporting assaults
Unclear policy language with insufficient written descriptions of policies and procedures
Poor investigative practices with inadequate investigator training and lack of clarity about the investigator’s role
Problematic adjudication practices, including poor selection of hearing panelists and inadequate training of hearing officials

Recurring patterns in the United Educators’ claims database reveal a number of needed actions to address sexual violence. Specifically, institutions should ensure that:

Title IX coordinators and investigators have appropriate training or experience and clarity on their roles,
Employees have a clear understanding of reporting obligations,
Sanctions are consistently and fairly applied, and
Campus officials respond quickly to retaliation reports.

UE also noted that alleged “Victims and perpetrators are equally entitled to know what to expect during the school’s internal process” and usually, “both parties to a campus sexual assault matter are the institution’s students and are entitled to the same procedural protections and general equitable treatment.” (3)

But instead of heeding this advice, Title IX coordinators have continued to take actions that place their universities at risk for future litigation.

In March, 2020 it was reported that over 600 lawsuits have been filed on behalf of students (and some school personnel) accused of Title IX-related offenses (4). Numerous high profile cases, such as the complaint against Baylor University (5) and Penn State University’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky case (6) have been featured in national news reports spotlighting institutions’ failure to protect victims.

Complaints alleging Title IX violations also can be opened for investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), resulting in a time-consuming and expensive process for these schools. The University of Southern California (7) and Michigan State University (8) are two recent institutions that were investigated by OCR, resulting in sweeping changes or record fines due to their mishandling of sexual assault claims.

The U.S. Department of Education’s upcoming Title IX regulation will provide both a regulatory framework and procedural guidance so Title IX coordinators can provide a consistent, reliable response to an allegation of sexual assault. All of the above-listed actions from United Educator’s reports are addressed in the new regulation. Compliance with the regulation should result in fewer lawsuits against universities.

Title IX coordinators should embrace the new Title IX regulation to bring an end to the problematic policies and procedures that have resulted in significant financial losses to their institutions.

Citations:

1. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53e530a1e4b021a99e4dc012/t/590501f74402431ac4900596/1493500411575/FN-+RE-+2017.04-+High+Cost+of+Student-Victim+SA+Claims.pdf
2. Canopy, “Sexual Assault Claims: Perpetrator as Plaintiff” (content no longer available on the internet)
3. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53e530a1e4b021a99e4dc012/t/590501f74402431ac4900596/1493500411575/FN-+RE-+2017.04-+High+Cost+of+Student-Victim+SA+Claims.pdf
4. https://www.titleixforall.com/
5. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/24090683/baylor-university-settles-title-ix-lawsuit-which-gang-rape-8-football-players-was-alleged
6. https://www.thefire.org/ocr-penn-state-violated-rights-of-both-complainants-and-respondents-in-title-ix-proceedings/
7. https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-devos-requires-sweeping-changes-usc-after-title-ix-investigation-finds-university-failed-years-protect-students-sexual-abuse
8. https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/09/05/msu-fine-larry-nassar-betsy-devos/2219781001/

Action Alert Campus Due Process

Release the Regs! Release the Regs!

Post author By saveadmin
Post date April 21, 2020

The civil rights of K-12 students, and university students and faculty, continue to be trampled on as each day passes. It is past time for the Department of Education to publish the new Title IX regulations, because “Justice delayed is justice denied.” [1]

We need your help.

Apparently Secretary DeVos and her team are pushing to get the regulations published, but there is a difference of opinion at the White House, as to whether to publish the regulations during the COVID-19 crisis.

SAVE and other due process advocacy groups [2] say now is the best time to publish the regulations because the campuses are quiet and empty of students. The administrators have the time and capacity to put implementation plans in place before the fall semester begins.

Most importantly, students and faculty deserve the right to have fair and equitable procedures when accused of a sexual misconduct issue. This includes presumption of innocence, timely and adequate written notice, and a meaningful hearing process.

No more Kangaroo Courts! Release the Regs!

Please email the White House today at https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ and tell them to let the Department of Education release the Title IX regulations. When students walk onto campuses in the fall, they should be taking their civil rights with them, not leaving them at home.

[1]https://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/16/betsy-devos-civil-rights-office-240610

[2]https://www.thecollegefix.com/times-up-to-restore-due-process-groups-urge-devos-to-ignore-coronavirus-stalling-tactics-for-title-ix-reform/

Due Process Sexual Assault Title IX

Reform Title IX Now

Post author By saveadmin
Post date April 15, 2020

The Department of Education’s (DOE) reform of Title IX—the law that bans discrimination based on sex at federally-funded schools—has been a long time coming. For three Senators, it has not been long enough. They strenuously object to the impact on how colleges handle accusations of sexual misconduct. No longer will an accused be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Instead, he will be accorded due process.

On March 31, Patty Murray—the leading Democrat on the Senate education committee—Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand sent a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to express their opposition to finalizing the reform. “We urge you not to release the final Title IX rule at this time,” they argued, “and instead to focus on helping schools navigate the urgent issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This is an odd argument. Now seems to be the perfect time for colleges to work on policy and administrative matters. Campuses are empty. No sexual misconduct hearings will be interrupted; students will be spared the confusion of a mid-semester policy change; administrators can implement regulations before the new academic year.

Colleges are hardly caught off guard. The reform began on September 22, 2017 when the DOE withdrew the controversial Dear Colleague Letter (2011) that governed the treatment of sexual misconduct accusations on campus. The Obama-era Letter was widely criticized for mandating a low standard of proof for findings of guilt and encouraging the denial of due process, such as a defendant’s right to a lawyer. The DOE’s replacement guideline was officially made public on November 29, 2018 when the Federal Register published “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance.”

The proposed reform received vast attention and backlash in this time of #MeToo that demands automatic belief of women’s accusations. in January 2018, three national public interest organizations, including the highly influential National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), sued DeVos and the DOE to block the Title IX reform. The lawsuit claimed that the “new and extreme Title IX policy…was issued unlawfully and based on discriminatory beliefs about women and girls as survivors of sexual violence, in violation of the Constitution.” The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.

Senator Murray has also attacked the Title IX proposals. A news release from her office reported on Murray’s statements at a Senate hearing on campus sexual assault. “I stand with you [accusers] and I’m going to keep fighting to stop what happened to you.” Murray accused the DOE of being “callous” and ignoring “the experiences of survivors,” which would “discourage students from coming forward after being sexually assaulted.” Gillibrand has decried DeVos as favoring “predators over survivors.” Warren has stated, “There’s no greater example of how we’re failing students and teachers than Betsy DeVos, the worst Secretary of Education we’ve seen.” These statements do not argue for the delay but for the derailment of DOE’s plans.

Liberals view the new rules as a shift to the right and an abandonment of Obama-era policies. Consider two definitions of a key term, “sexual harassment.” According to the Dear Colleague Letter, “Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. It includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” This broad characterization includes bad jokes and leering glances. By contrast, DeVos uses the reigning Supreme Court definition of “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity.” This is a far more limited definition.

Why, then, are the 3 Senators calling for delay rather than dismantlement? The coronavirus is unlikely to disappear as an issue before the 2020 election. And, if Joe Biden wins, he has promised the reform would be withdrawn. This process would be be easier, however, if policy changes were not already implemented.

Stalling the DOE reform seems to be a conscious strategy of its opponents. According to Tulane University Title IX coordinator, Meredith Smith, the NWLC orchestrated a sequence of delays with various victims rights groups. Smith stated, “So there was this delay strategy happening. We would hear that the Department of Education was about to release the regulations and then the National Women’s Law Center and all these other groups would parachute in and get more and more meetings on the calendar which push [the release date] back.” They requested a long series of meetings with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), for example. During the final public commentary on a regulation, individuals can meet in person or over the phone with OMB officials to share concerns; this process usually takes a couple of days, With the DOE regulation, the first meeting was November 13, 2019, and the process ended on March 27, 2020. It stretched over 4 months.

A recent article in the National Review, entitled “Coronavirus Is No Excuse to Delay the Education Department’s New Title IX Regulations,” declared, “Those making this argument [for postponement] are taking advantage of a crisis to try to keep due process out of college campuses.” They are gaming the system.

The DOE reform returns due process to campuses. It also offers relief to lawsuit-prone schools that now function as police, judge and jury in handling students and faculty accused of sexual misconduct. Increasingly, colleges are sued in federal court by those who were found guilty without a fair hearing. As a headline in the Detroit Free Press stated. “Courts ruling on side of students accused of sexual assault. Here’s why.” The “why” is the violation of their due process rights.

Justice delayed is justice denied. And Justice must not be further denied.

Source: http://www.ifeminists.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.1467