Category: Uncategorized

Arizona has more scholarships for women than 36 states combined have for men

Men who want more scholarship money might try a novel tactic: Identify themselves as women.

A review of more than 200 American colleges and universities reveals that they favor women over men by a wide margin in sex-specific scholarships.

The most stark disparities are found at the University of Phoenix (106 female scholarships to 2 male), Auburn University (67 to 1) and Oregon State (51 to 5).

The actual disparities could be higher: The study by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, best known for defending students accused of sexual misconduct, only covered 36 states.

Erin Buzuvis, a Title IX expert and law professor at Western New England University, recently told the Los Angeles Times that sex-specific programs should be reviewed as “segregation projects” that may promote stereotypes.

But she also wants to increase the number of men in female-heavy fields such as nursing and K-12 education.

Buzuvis told The College Fix in an email that she doesn’t “have any examples” of academic programs that are mainly geared toward male students, despite spending her academic career studying sex-based discrimination and blogging on Title IX.

Another law professor told The Fix that students excluded from scholarships because of their sex should consider suing, citing the plain language of Title IX itself.

Women get $641 more at Kent State

The top three states for female-only scholarships among the 36 reviewed by SAVE: Arizona (161), California (117) and Florida (112). The male-only numbers: 3, 4 and 7.

Five of the next seven are reliably red states: Oregon (93), Utah (90), Alabama (87), Indiana and Wyoming (86 each), Wisconsin (77) and Texas (73). The only one of those with double-digit male scholarships was Texas.

Arizona has more women-only scholarships than the 36 states combined have for men, according to the tally, which is based on SAVE’s review of college websites.

Male students thinking of applying to Kent State University in Ohio can quantify the difference in scholarship money.

SAVE said the public university’s associate counsel told the group this month that it offers 11 scholarships for women and two for men. The average women-only scholarship in the prior academic year was $2,208, compared to $1,567 for the average men-only scholarship.

This was a direct violation of Title IX’s implementing regulations, according to SAVE, which limit sex-restricted financial assistance to those forms whose “overall effect” does not discriminate on the basis of sex.

The study found “widespread discriminatory practices” against men: 57 percent of reviewed colleges “facially violate” Title IX with their array of scholarships (a difference of five or more between the sexes), while 27 percent are “borderline” (2-4) and 16 are “non-discriminatory” (0-1).

Female professor files complaint to protest unfair treatment of men

It’s not just scholarships that overwhelmingly favor women. SAVE said more than two dozen schools are already under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for limiting programs to women, such as women-only engineering, science and technology programs.

They include Brown, Yale and Princeton, plus several prominent public universities, including UCLA, the University of California-Berkeley and University of Michigan.

UCLA can thank one of its female professors for its federal investigation.

She told the Los Angeles Times that she filed a Title IX complaint because she objected to the gender-exclusive nature of two workshops hosted by the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The feds told her it was investigating the workshops, which received federal funds.

Fliers for the January workshop on “Women in Mathematics and Public Policy” were frank: “only women will be invited to participate,” according to the Times. A flier for the “Collaborative Workshop for Women in Mathematical Biology,” hosted this June, only welcomed female grad students, PhDs, and researchers.

The female professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she was motivated to complain by increasing favoritism toward women in the sciences and resulting disillusionment among male students.

MORE: Schools offering woman-only scholarships may be in violation of Title IX

A UCLA spokesperson told the Times that it “did not exclude men from participating in the two workshops despite the focus on women,” but did not specify whether any males attended the events. It is also unclear if any transgender women attended either workshop.

Regulatory complaints about the exclusion of men have gotten results in the past few years.

Most recently, Clemson University opened its female-only programs to everyone to end a federal investigation. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan-Flint, helped kick off the trend three years ago with a successful complaint against the University of Michigan’s 91-year-old women-only lounge.

Perry has since filed gender discrimination complaints against against more than 50 institutions, including the University of California-Davis for its STEM programs for middle and high school girls, according to the Times.

Last week he gave an update of his efforts on his American Enterprise Institute blog, after Clemson revised its programs.

“Given the fact that most universities have large and growing diversity staffs (150 at Yale, nearly 100 at Michigan),” he wrote, it’s disappointing that “external complainants like myself” have to file complaints against sex-discrimination practices. This “really should be done internally by universities’ own Title IX and diversity offices.”

‘We cannot have Female Economics 101 and Male Economics 101’

John Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor who has fought for “potty parity” for women in public restrooms, goes even further than his peer Erin Buzuvis at Western New England University.

Regardless of the initial motivation for female-only opportunities in the academy – to reverse gender inequity, “male privilege” and a pattern of higher male enrollment in STEM fields – the practice is not legal, he said in an email.

While male-only opportunities are vastly disproportionate to those for women on campus, the imbalance is less relevant than the sheer separation of educational opportunity by sex, according to Banzhaf.

Title IX language provides that students cannot “be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination” in federally funded education “on the basis of sex.”

Banzhaf concludes that the “words certainly suggest that any person excluded from a program solely because of gender would have a legal cause of action, even if offered a program arguably ‘equivalent.’”

This is the gender equivalent of the Supreme Court’s rejection of “separate but equal” facilities by race in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Without considering Title IX regulatory exceptions for athletic competition and facilities where students disrobe, even equal footing for sex-restricted programs would violate the law under this theory.

Broadly speaking, “we cannot have Female Economics 101 and Male Economics 101 because we can teach both genders in one class,” Banzhaf wrote.

MORE: 92% of sex-specific scholarships are for women

MORE: Did Tulane agree to ‘stop discriminating against men’ to satisfy OCR?

‘Disastrous for due process’ if resolution passes

On college campuses, accused students often must prove they obtained “affirmative consent” from their partners before and throughout sexual activity. In a few states, it’s the law for college students.

The American Bar Association, which sets academic standards for law schools and recommends legislation, is deciding whether it should be the law for everyone.

Criminal lawyers and advocates of due process are urging the ABA to reject a resolution that they say would flip the burden of proof from the government to the accused in criminal cases.

Mandating affirmative consent would functionally mean the end of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, they argue, by requiring the accused to testify of their innocence.

Resolution 114 is under consideration by the ABA House of Delegates at its annual meetingin San Francisco this week. It would urge legislatures and courts to “define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact.”

MORE: Lawyers object to attempt to quietly redefine sexual assault

It would further provide that “consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances.” The resolution asks courts to instruct juries that an alleged victim did not consent simply because that person “did not resist, verbally or physically, to a specific act.”

Neither the resolution nor the accompanying report define “sexual contact.” The vagueness of the definition could empower the government to prosecute defendants for failing to get explicit permission from their spouses before adjusting sexual positions, even if the spouse physically cooperates, for example.

“Given the ABA’s reputation and influence, it would be disastrous for due process if this resolution were to pass,” Samantha Harris, vice president for procedural advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, wrote in a blog post Monday.

Opponents of the resolution have history on their side: Another prominent legal group voted down a similar resolution three years ago.

Cites heavily disputed theories of neurobiological response

While affirmative consent is a popular concept on campus and is often promoted in mandatory sexual-consent training, it is hard to define in a legal sense.

Like other definitions, the resolution and report devised by the ABA’s Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence affirms that consent can be conveyed through actions as well as words. But the furthest the report goes to specify actions that demonstrate consent is to cite two vague state criminal definitions.

In Wisconsin, consent can be shown through “overt actions” that indicate “a freely given agreement to have sexual intercourse or sexual contact.” California’s code requires “positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will.”

Due process lawsuits stemming from Title IX adjudications often explain at length how an accuser showed consent through overt actions or positive cooperation, but later disputed that the encounter was consensual throughout.

MORE: Memory, neuroscience experts warn of junk science in Title IX training

The report suggests that without affirmative consent in the criminal law, potential victims will be required to physically fight their aggressors in order to demonstrate their lack of consent.

It cites heavily disputed theories, sometimes compared to the “repressed memory” movement, that victims may seize up during sexual assault, physically unable to vocalize or demonstrate their lack of consent. The report approvingly cites Michigan State University psychologist Rebecca Campbell as an expert in the “neurobiology of trauma as it relates to sexual violence.” Campbell is not a neuroscientist.

“A history of sexual violence, and of the status of women as the sexual property of men, still informs the law governing sexual assault, and that should stop,” concludes the report, written by the chair of the commission, Mark Schickman, and the chair of the ABA’s Criminal Justice Section, Lucian Dervan. “The proposed definition is a step in that direction.”

Guilty ‘merely upon evidence of a sex act with nothing more’

Among the groups opposing the resolution is the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which says it would prove an offense occurred “merely upon evidence of a sex act with nothing more.”

The resolution shifts the burden of proof to the accused for each act, undefined, within a larger sexual encounter, and “assumes guilt in the absence of any evidence regarding consent,” the association wrote last month.

“This radical change in the law would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendments and the Presumption of Innocence,” the group argues. “The resolution will often force the defendant to testify in order to present evidence that consent was expressed.”

More technically, the ABA resolution would turn sexual assault into a “strict liability” crime that ignores “the mental state of the accused,” putting it out of whack with criminal liability in general.

The association accuses the ABA report authors of misrepresenting the American Law Institute’s consideration of the affirmative consent standard for its “model penal code” in 2016.

MORE: ‘Victim-centered’ investigations create new victims

To justify its own proposal, the ABA commission cites the ALI proposal at length, saying only that the ALI version is “not yet final.”

The association retorted that “it is final as far as affirmative consent goes – the concept was rejected in a landslide vote” by ALI members, an elite group that includes professors, attorneys, judges and other legal professionals.

The ALI instead adopted a broader definition of consent that includes “willingness” – rather than the contractual “assent” – and says it can be “inferred from behavior,” including “inaction.”

The ABA resolution would “impose novel social legislation designed to dictate social mores” into criminal law, according to the association. It “seeks to impose uncommon requirements in the volatile area of human sexual relations.”

The group also questioned the science proffered by the ABA, saying that “tonic immobility or tonic collapse” is associated with a “traumatic event” such as a “brutal rape with force. The vast majority of consent cases do not include such traumatic events.”

‘This gibberish resolution will result in the conviction of innocent men’

Criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield was less restrained in his opposition to the ABA resolution.

“ALI’s proposal to change the model penal code failed, largely because not everyone there has shit for brains,” he wrote in a blog post. He mocked the House of Delegates as “consisting of the last three full-paying members and lots of third-wave-feminist academics.”

The point of the resolution is “turning law on its head and assuring that any ‘survivor,’ any woman who accuses a man of rape, will prevail,” Greenfield wrote:

Her accusation will be believed. He will be defenseless. She will get her vengeance and he will be punished. …

There’s no reason to remind the ABA that this gibberish resolution will result in the conviction of innocent men. That’s just the price of believing the woman, and they are totally willing to pay that price with other, innocent men’s lives.

The resolution makes all sexual activity “presumptively nonconsensual,” according to FIRE’s Harris. She asks ABA members to consider how affirmative consent has worked on campus, pointing to FIRE’s man-on-the-street interviews with students (below).

MORE: ALI draft said disabled people can’t consent to sex

“As high as the stakes are on campus — where students found responsible face the loss of educational and job opportunities as well as permanent stigma — they are higher still in the criminal context, where those found guilty face imprisonment,” Harris wrote.

The president of the due-process group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments seems more sanguine about the prospects of defeating the resolution, or at least mitigating its impact.

“You may recall that from 2014 to 2016, many state legislatures considered affirmative consent bills – almost all of which we succeeded in defeating,” Ed Bartlett told The College Fixin an email.

His group maintains a through resources page on the dangers of affirmative consent. The concept makes it easy for accusers to “retroactively revoke consent” by claiming they consented to one but not another act, but at its core, affirmative consent simply “infantilizes women.”

MORE: Law prof suggests kangaroo courts look at home, work relationships

In just a few days, the American Bar Association will consider whether to adopt a resolution urging state legislatures to adopt a criminal-law definition of consent similar to the “affirmative consent” standard increasingly popular on college campuses. Given the ABA’s reputation and influence, it would be disastrous for due process if this resolution were to pass.

Here is the resolution (emphasis added):

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges legislatures and courts to define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal burden of verbal or physical resistance.

By making sex presumptively nonconsensual unless and until someone can produce evidence of consent, affirmative consent standards effectively shift the burden of proof to accused parties to prove themselves innocent. For this reason (among others), the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers vigorously opposed the resolution in a statement issued on July 25. NACDL writes:

NACDL opposes ABA Resolution 114 because it shifts the burden of proof by requiring an accused person to prove affirmative consent to each sexual act rather than requiring the prosecution to prove lack of consent. The resolution assumes guilt in the absence of any evidence regarding consent. This radical change in the law would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Presumption of Innocence.

The NACDL also points out that this definition would necessarily undermine the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, since “[t]he resolution will often force the defendant to testify in order to present evidence that consent was expressed.”

Three years ago, the prestigious American Law Institute considered revising its influential Model Penal Code to include an affirmative consent standard. The ALI’s membership overwhelmingly rejected that proposal. The proposed ABA resolution glosses right over that fact, noting simply that “the ALI revision of the [Model Penal Code] is not yet final” — despite the fact that, as the NACDL notes, “it is final as far as affirmative consent goes — the concept was rejected in a landslide vote.”

Affirmative consent standards are already common in campus disciplinary proceedings. On campus, not only has affirmative consent proven confusing, but the state of due process and fair procedure is so bad that over the past eight years, more than 500 accused students have filed lawsuits alleging that they were not afforded even the most basic procedural protections before being found responsible for sexual misconduct. As high as the stakes are on campus — where students found responsible face the loss of educational and job opportunities as well as permanent stigma — they are higher still in the criminal context, where those found guilty face imprisonment.

We hope that the ABA’s House of Delegates will reject this resolution as a grave threat to the due process rights of those accused of one of society’s most serious crimes. FIRE will keep you updated on this developing story.

After all, anything that negatively impacted the feelings of women trumped every other concept for which they were ready to man the barricades. A rationalization was that sexual assault had become an “epidemic.” Of course, it became an “epidemic” because the woke eliminated any definition and turned it into “rape is whatever a woman feels it is, whenever she feels it, for good reason, bad reason or no reason.”

It brought a tear to my eye to realize just how horribly fragile and incapable these poor vulnerable and oppressed women were to be utterly incapable of anything from personal responsibility for any choice they made in their life to saying “no.” Or, if they said “yes,” to living with their decision rather than manufacturing excuses the next day, or next year, for why “yes” means whatever the woman wants it to mean.

ALI’s proposal to change the model penal code failed, largely because not everyone there has shit for brains. It’s not that they aren’t still trying to proselytize the heretics, who must hate women since why else would anyone be principled, and they may get there yet.

In the meantime, the ABA apparently shared my concern for the marginalized and has taken up the cause where ALI failed. Resolution 114 will be put to their House of Delegates at its Annual Meeting, consisting of the last three full-paying members and lots of third-wave-feminist academics.

COMMISSION ON DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECTION
CIVIL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE SECTION
REPORT TO THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
RESOLUTION

1 RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges legislatures and courts to define
2 consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give
3 consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to
4 provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the
5 circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal
6 burden of verbal or physical resistance.

What this accomplishes, among other problems, is the flipping of the burden of proof from accuser to accused. If a person says “I did not ‘assent’,” or “I was not competent to ‘assent’,” it then becomes the defendant’s burden to prove the negative.

As they did with the ALI attempt to change the model penal code to eliminate the burden of proof, inter alia, the NACDL opposes this resolution, noting the two most obvious failings,* which I quote at length.

1. Burden-Shifting in Violation of Due Process and Presumption of Innocence:NACDL opposes ABA Resolution 114 because it shifts the burden of proof by requiring an accused person to prove affirmative consent to each sexual act rather than requiring the prosecution to prove lack of consent. The resolution assumes guilt in the absence of any evidence regarding consent. This radical change in the law would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Presumption of Innocence. It offends fundamental and well-established notions of justice. Specifically, Resolution 114 urges legislatures to re-define consent as “the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances . . .” The phrase “expressed by words or action” shifts the burden entirely to the accused. Under Resolution 114 the offense is proven merely upon evidence of a sex act with nothing more. This approach violates the “bedrock and axiomatic and elementary principle whose enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law” – the presumption of innocence. See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 363. As a corollary the provision also guts the accused’s Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. The resolution will often force the defendant to testify in order to present evidence that consent was expressed.

2. Strict Criminal Liability: In flipping the burden of proof the resolution essentially renders sexual assault statutes to be strict liability crimes that focus only the victim and disregard the mental state of the accused. Criminal liability should rarely be based upon an act without considering the mental state of the accused. See Elonis v. United States, 575 US ____, 135 S.Ct. 2001 (2015). The affirmative consent doctrine focuses on the actions and mental state of the complainant without regard for the mental state of the accused.

In a weird way, this is a silly exercise. There is no sentient lawyer who is unaware of why this shift is fundamentally wrong, unconstitutional and contrary to the most fundamental precepts of American jurisprudence. That’s not the point. It’s not as if the ABA isn’t aware, as the proponents of similar nonsense at ALI were aware. They don’t care.

The NACDL is hardly a conservative organization, and is replete with lawyers finely attuned to the demands of social justice. so its opposition here isn’t a product of some misogynistic right-wing conspiracy. The proponents of affirmative consent aren’t necessarily stupid or clueless, but deliberate in their goal of turning law on its head and assuring that any “survivor,” any woman who accuses a man of rape, will prevail. Her accusation will be believed. He will be defenseless. She will get her vengeance and he will be punished.

More to the point, the proponents of this end game will persist in their effort to push the law beyond reason to accomplish their ends. Where ALI fails, the ABA expects to succeed. And given the nature of the few remaining people at the ABA, they very well might.

There’s no reason to remind the ABA that this gibberish resolution will result in the conviction of innocent men. That’s just the price of believing the woman, and they are totally willing to pay that price with other, innocent men’s lives.

Much as I appreciate the NACDL’s efforts to prevent this insanity from undermining constitutional rights, if only when it comes to sexual assault but not for crimes involving less loved victims or hated perpetrators, there is no reasoning involved here. The ABA has chosen its favorite, and will happily undermine law to achieve it. They know. They just don’t give a damn.

*The NACDL offers six points, only the first two of which are set forth here.