At last, some good campus news: The Trump administration is going to require colleges to allow cross-examination in sex-assault cases.
In draft Education Department rules that leaked in August, schools were merely given the option of giving the accused the right to cross-examine their accusers. Even that would be progress, since Obama-era rules essentially forbid that basic fairness — a lunacy that has led regular courts to repeatedly overrule the findings of campus tribunals when they lead to lawsuits.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ team recognizes that accusers face a special burden in face-to-face hearings, so the two sides could sit in different rooms, with questions relayed by a neutral party and the defense barred from asking about the accuser’s sexual history and other inappropriate questions.
Basic rights for the accused are a keystone of justice, and it’s a sad fact that campus sex-assault claims can prove false — infamously so in such cases as the Duke lacrosse prosecutions, Rolling Stone’s retracted University of Virginia story and Columbia’s Mattress Girl.
The Education Department likely will publish the new rules this month, the Wall Street Journal reports, with a public comment period to follow before they go into effect.
The change can’t come soon enough.
j3utton on November 2nd, 2018 at 13:59 UTC »
How about representation for the accused?... or better yet... WHY THE FUCK ARE COLLEGES EVEN HANDLING THESE INVESTIGATIONS? If there is an accusation hand it over to the fucking police to have it handled properly.
mcbosco25 on November 2nd, 2018 at 12:23 UTC »
These kangaroo courts need to go in general. It's all fine and dandy that we're at least making them more "fair" versus the ridiculously biased procedure put in by the Obama administration. Anything like rape or sexual assault should be investigated by law enforcement, and handled in a real court of law.
I understand that these were instituted for sexual harrassment or sex based discrimination, but they have expanded their jurisdiction FAR past anything resonable and they really need to be paired down or abolished in whole. I feel that the possibilty of the power overreach like we've seen in these courts are enough of a reason to get rid of them considering the constitutionality of a court set up almost entirely by the executive, controlled by the executive, and which lack any semblence of due process.
ngoni on November 2nd, 2018 at 11:50 UTC »
The only people qualified to investigate and adjudicate these cases are law enforcement and the judicial system respectively. Schools have no place attempting to be Columbo and Perry Mason.