In gathering data for a future video and blog entry for The War on Male Students, I
have gone through the entirety of the largest site giving a voice to victims of
wrongful accusations, The Community of the Wrongly Accused, as well as its parent
blog, The False Rape Society. Given that my focus is gender equity in education,
I have compiled a list of wrongful claims of sexual misconduct by or against students,
faculty, or administrators that have been covered by these sites. This list exclusively focuses on posts that include reports on specific incidences of wrongful accusations, and for the sake of space strives to avoid listing multiple posts that address the same incident. While
arranged in no particular order, this list is intended as a condensed resource for those
interested in researching and addressing the problem of wrongful accusations in
education (myself included). I will periodically update this list, and likely add stories from
other sites as well. I’d also like to thank the authors at COTWA for providing
such an incredible public service, and recommend the site to anyone interested
in justice for men and boys. I also highly recommend professor KC Johnson's blog Durham-in-Wonderland, where he extensively covers the infamous 2006 Duke lacrosse false rape case.
This list was last updated on October 2nd, 2012,
and does not include any entries at COTWA after that date. Let me know if I missed one! :D
For
our first video/blog post on misandry as it occurs in the spoken and written word in
education, we’ll focus on one of the most anti-male universities on the face of
the West: Duke University. In the hopes of starting this series on common
ground, we’ll talk about Duke’s 2006 false rape case, a story which many people
know a little about, a few know a lot about, and none know as much as Brooklyn
University professor K.C. Johnson, who co-authored the book Until Proven
Innocent, a highly-recommended chronicle on the infamous false rape case, and blogs at Durham-In-Wonderland.
Although racism against the falsely accused students is also a critical element
of the story, I’m going to focus on the prejudice and the presumption of guilt on
the basis of gender which, as we have seen and will continue to see, affects
all men and all boys in education, regardless of color.
Seligmann at an ATM during the "rape."
In
2006 at Duke university, three male students who were members of the university
lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a stripper at a party. At the
outset, the accused denied the charges. There were multiple problems with the accusation. The accuser changed her story and the names of the men she
accused many times. The DNA found on Crystal Mangum, the accuser, did not match the men she accused. The stripper who came to the lacrosse house on the night of the party declared to reports that she never saw a rape occur, and that Mangum had told her to put marks on her to make it appear she had been assaulted. By the time the
case was over, there were so many problems with the accuser’s story, and so
much evidence in contradiction to it, that instead of acquitting the three
young men, the district attorney, in an extremely rare move by our justice system, declared them innocent.
Wanted: bearers of Y-Chromosomes
But
before they were officially declared innocent, and even while much of the
evidence pointed to their innocence, these three students were subjected to a brutal
hostility that had come to characterize far too much of academic culture. Some
students paraded a banner reading “castrate,” others distributed what amounted
to wanted posters throughout the campus with pictures of the lacrosse team. Protestors showed up outside the lacrosse house banging pots and pans, and elsewhere walked around carrying signs saying "don't be a fan of rapists." At one point, a lacrosse player was surrounded by protestors and ordered to confess. Instead of protecting the students’ due process rights, the Duke
president Richard Brodhead pandered to every political interest, looked the
other way in the face of a bloodthirsty crowd that presumed their guilt, suspended
the team and fired the coach.
The Listening Statement
Many
faculty and administrators in education in general go out of their way to appear
gender-sensitive, and to speak out against prejudice. But in this case, and in
many others as we will see, when that hatred is directed at men and boys, no
one employed at the university seems to notice, much less care. On the
contrary, as Duke protestors were shouting “confess” “confess,” banging pots
and pans and carrying banners reading “castrate,” 88 Duke published in the campus
newspaper that came to be known as the “Listening Statement” laced with a
presumption of guilt against the three accused, and turning a blind eye to the
presumption of guilt espoused by many of the protestors. An
excerpt from the statement reads:
Regardless
of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is
the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism
and sexism; who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what
they live with everyday. The students know that the disaster didn’t begin on
March 13 and won’t end with what the police say or the court decides. Like all
disasters, this one has a history…to the students speaking individually and to
the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for
making yourselves heard.
Lynchings: a historic male privilege
Indeed,
this is a story of prejudice and hatred based upon one’s possession of a particular
genetic code. And it does have a history, but not the one Duke professors are
referring to. Our society has a dark history of overreacting to accusations of
rape, too often to the point of assaulting men and boys who are wrongly
accused. From the hanging trees of the south during the days of racial
repression, to the overprotectiveness of fathers that sometimes results in the assault and murder of their daughters' boyfriends. Contrary to the lies
of certain gender ideologues, we have always lived in a culture that is
hypersensitive toward certain forms of male sexual impropriety, even to the
point of reacting with gender-based violence
This is what they call "taking a stand against gender-based violence." Notice anything strange?
Protecting
female students from retaliation when they make allegations of sexual assault
is a key concern of education administrators, and is reinforced by a directive by the Department of Education. But no such concern is voiced in education for
men and boys who are wrongly accused, to the point that students can openly
advocate gender-based violence and male students in not an individual, but a
community effort. The very act of castration is a form of violence directed
against males. What these students are essentially doing is using hate speech
to advocating a hate crime, and they are doing so out of the presumption that those
accused are guilty because they are male. Although academia has an evolved
understanding about recognizing and preventing retaliation against female
students, the Duke case demonstrates that it is it is still in the Stone Age in
doing the same for men and boys who are falsely accused of rape.
In Until
Proven Innocent, Professor K.C. Johnson recounts the words of coach Mike
Pressler: “the faculty was a hell of a lot worse than the students. It was
appalling. These are our educators” (104). Dr. Johnson documents cases in the
chapter “Academic McCarthyism” where faculty used their bully pulpits to sway
their classrooms against the three accused students. Here’s a few passages:
In
late March, [professor] Reeve Huston opened a class by saying that he needed to
break his silence on the lacrosse episode and talk about what he had concluded
from his research on the topic: there was a long-prevalent problem of alpha
males assaulting black females in America and there had been a sexual assault
at 610 North Buchanan.
As
the professor spoke, Ryan McFayden text-messaged Rob Schroeder, asking if they
should walk out. Huston plowed ahead, declaring it obvious that ‘an ejaculation
had occurred.’ Senior Casey Carroll had
had enough. He got up and left the room. McFayden, Schroeder, Jennison, and
Breck Archer followed their teammate. As they left, Huston said, ‘Don’t worry,
this won’t affect your grade.’ The female lacrosse player remained. She later
reported that Huston had devoted the entire session to his ‘analysis’ of the
case.
Down
the hall from Huston’s class, several other players were taking professor Sally
Deutsch’s course in U.S. history…Deutsch departed from the syllabus and
announced that she would discuss how white men, especially in the South, have
disrespected and sexually assaulted black females. ‘We all knew what she was
doing,’ lacrosse player Tony McDevitt later recalled. ‘A couple people asked
questions to try to get her off track, but she persisted. It lasted half an
hour.
Even
after it became clear that the three young men were likely wrongly accused, some
faculty just wouldn’t let it go. After Duke president lifted the suspensions of
falsely accused students Reade Seligman and Collin Finnerty, professor Karla Holloway resigned her position on the Campus Cultures Initiative in protest. Throughout
the spectacle, in order to appease various political interests, the Duke administration made public statements that leaned toward a
presumption of guilt against the three young men accused. As an example, Joe Alleva, Duke's athletic director, said, "Unfortunately, they're young men, and sometimes young men make bad decisions, make some bad judgments. And that's what this whole thing incident is about." While
many of them stated that they will not stand for sexual assault, not a single
one of them publicly stated they would not stand for false accusations of rape.
Seligmann on CBS
The
behavior of the faculty and administration led Reade Seligmann, one of the
falsely accused who was filmed on a security camera at an ATM at the time of
the alleged incident, to say on CBS, “I chose Duke to be my home for four years.
And to see your professors go out and slander you and say these horrible,
untrue things about you, and to have your administration just cut us lose for,
for, based on nothing. Duke took that stance that ‘we wouldn’t stand for this
behavior [i.e. sexual misconduct].’ They didn’t want to take a chance on
standing up for the truth. I can’t imagine representing a school that didn’t
want to represent me."
Years
after the event, not a single professor has apologized, and some of the have
moved on to administrative positions. On January 17, 2007, 87 Duke faculty
signed what came to be called the Clarifying Letter in which they claimed that
they really didn’t mean to prejudge the three accused, that they had been
misinterpreted, and that they really weren’t specifically referring the case at
all. If that is true, one must wonder what exactly they were referring to in
the Listening Statement when they said, “this disaster?” In the Clarifying
Letter, they assert that the “disaster” is “the atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and
sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus.”
But if they were commenting on that supposed atmosphere and not the case
itself, why did the author of the Listening Statement, Wahneema Lubiano, in her
original email to faculty inviting them to sign the ad, say, “African &African-American Studies is placing an ad in The Chronicle about the lacrosse team incident”? Why
were the students whose quotations they claimed to listen to referring to the
case specifically, and implying the guilt of the three accused
If
the faculty were truly concerned with not pre-judging the students accused and
adding to the hysteria and public hatred directed against them on the basis of
their birth group, why did they wait until 8 months after the fact, at which
point the case was 2/3 of the way over, when most of the evidence that had come
out strongly in in favor of the defendants? Why didn’t they clarify their
statement when people were still banging pots and pans, carrying castrate
banners and distributing wanted posters, when such a clarification would have
done the most good? And if they truly stand against prejudice on the basis of
race, sex, or class, why don’t they care about the fact that the greatest amount
of prejudice was directed against the three young men? If the faculty care so
much about listening to their students, why aren’t they listening to all of
them?
The
answer, of course, is that the Clarifying Letter is not about a re-affirmation
of the values of equality and diversity that, like many such faculty, the
faculty at Duke claim to possess but don’t; it’s about covering their behinds,
because as of January 2007, now that the evidence is strongly suggesting the
three young men were falsely accused, and that people speaking for 5 academic
departments and 10 academic programs had publicly had earlier urged the
community to presume their guilt, the university could be in serious legal
trouble.
In
his book Tenured Radicals – How Politics has Corrupted our Higher Education,
Roger Kimball describes the culture at Duke University, “For months nearly the
entire faculty fell into one of two camps: those who demanded the verdict first
and the trial later, and those whose silence enabled their vigilante colleagues
to set the tone” (xxxi). Which
of the two groups is innocent? When it comes to political disagreements, many
faculty espouse the advice Polonius gave to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, who says “give every man thy ear but few thy voice.” Which is generally
a good professional policy, when disagreements are small. But when
prejudice develops from an attitude among a scattered few to a connected
subculture, when that subculture becomes entrenched, and when it metastasizes
to the point that it manifests itself in institutionalized hatred and bigotry, there
comes a point when remaining silent is no longer a virtue, or as a great man
said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” The truth is that every member
of the faculty and administration is a moral stakeholder in their respective
universities. When it comes to institutionalized prejudice, and when it comes
to civil rights, among those who have a stake in such a structure, there is no
such thing as an uninvolved bystander.
Wendy Murphy, Empress of Evil
The
events drew responses from academia outside Duke as well. As Roger Kimball
reports in Tenured Radicals, “Syracuse University…decided not to accept as
transfers any students from the Duke lacrosse team – not just the three accused
chaps, mind you, but anyone
contaminated by having played lacrosse for Duke” (xxvii). Law professor Wendy
Murphy, an attorney and sex-assault victim advocate, was a frequent media spokesperson
on the Duke case. At one point commented, “I’m really tired of people
suggesting that you’re somehow un-American if you don’t respect the presumption
of innocence, because you know what that sounds like to a victim? Presumption
you’re a liar.” And in case anyone missed it, this is a person who teaches law,
prosecutes people for sex crimes, and is regarded as an authority in the sex-assault
victim advocacy community.
Wendy
Murphy reveals a problem among many Feminists and sex-assault victim advocates:
the pervasive belief that women who claim to be raped are always telling the
truth. When the false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum was examined, “the doctors
and nurses were unanimous in finding no physical evidence of the attack
described by Crystal – that is, a brutal assault by three, five, or twenty
varsity athletes, lasting half an hour. No bruises. No bleeding. No vaginal or
anal tearing. No grimacing, sweating, changes in vital signs, or other symptoms
ordinarily associated with the serious pain of which she complained” (Johnson 32).
But
none of that mattered to the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, or SANE nurse, the
last one to see Crystal. “Tara Levicy, the ‘SANE nurse,’ was to play a
little-known but critical role in bringing about the prosecution of the
lacrosse players. A strong feminist who had played a part in a Vagina Monologues production [which is a
play hosted on many college campuses, which we’ll get to later] and who saw
herself as an advocate for rape victims, Levicy was later to acknowledge that
she had never doubted the truthfulness of a single rape accuser” (Johnson 33).
Tara Levicy, In-SANE Nurse
“Over
the subsequent ten months, Levicy would repeatedly tell police that she thought
Mangum had been raped, adjusting her theories to bat aside new evidence that
the charge was false” (Johnson 34). Defense attorney Joe Cheshire later said, “Tara
Levicy’s stridency and inability to even examine an opposite point of view had
a lot to do with the genesis of this case. There are people like her in hospitals
all over this country” (Johnson 378).
You
would think that after this event Duke would be content to lay low and let the
dust settle for a while. You would think that if they did anything, at least it
wouldn’t be rash, especially in the area of sexual misconduct. No. In 2009 Duke adopted a new sexual misconduct policy that radically broadens the definition
of nonconsensual sex, in effect stripping many male students of due process
rights. The policy states, “real or perceived power differentials may create an
unintentional atmosphere of coercion.”
Our education system is overrun by a group of misguided ideologues who
define their existence by words like equality and diversity, but have forgotten
what those words actually mean. They live under the false consciousness that
being progressive is not about eliminating prejudice and bigotry on the basis
of sex, but about “redistributing” that prejudice and bigotry so that it
changes sides, changes faces, and changes victims.
But
what about the more moderate among those in the academia? Surely not all of
them are like that. In what I believe to be most revealing lesson the Duke case can teach
us about the culture of higher education, that answer comes from the behavior
of one of the most moderate members of the Group of 88. It is an element of the
case that is almost never spoken of, and K.C. Johnson tells the story HERE.
*My video has kindly been linked to by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments here (and edited and embedded in their webpage on the right). Thank you to the team at SAVE!*
The greatest threat to the civil rights of male students in
higher education is the April 4th Directive, sometimes called the
“Dear Colleague” letter, issued in 2011 by the federal Department of
Education's Office on Civil Rights, which I will abbreviate from here on as the
OCR. In part 1 of this subseries on the April 4th directive, I’m
going to tell you what parts of the directive are bad for male students, and discuss
its reception.
It’s important to remember that there are many policies and
customs within academia that serve to disenfranchise and punish male students
for the crime of being born male. I’ll be discussing them in more depth in the
future. But this April 4th
Directive - the crown jewel of anti-male policy in higher education – is so
indifferent to the well-being of male students, and so broad in its influence, that
it deserves to be addressed on in depth and on its own.
In theory, the intention of the directive is to compel academic administrations
to render judgments in allegations of sexual misconduct on campus. In practice,
it does so in a way that cuts deeply into the rights of the accused, who are
almost exclusively male. The most egregious part of this Directive is that it
requires all colleges and universities which receive federal funding (in other
words, almost all of them) to adopt the Preponderance of Evidence standard when
determining whether a male student accused of sexual assault is guilty.
Page 10 of the directive says: “In
addressing complaints filed with OCR under Title IX, OCR reviews a school’s
procedures to determine whether the school is using a preponderance of the
evidence standard to evaluate complaint.” The next page reads “In order for a
school’s grievance procedures to be consistent with Title IX standards, the
school must use a preponderance of the evidence standard...the “clear and
convincing” standard…currently used by some schools, is a higher standard of
proof. Grievance procedures that use this higher standard are inconsistent with
the standard of proof established for violations of the civil rights laws, and
are thus not equitable under Title IX. Therefore, preponderance of the evidence
is the appropriate standard for investigating allegations of sexual harassment
or violence.”
What is the preponderance standard? To put it in context, the highest standard of proof would be the “Beyond a reasonable
doubt” standard, or ~95% certainty that the alleged crime occurred - the
standard normally used in criminal trials. A lower standard would be the “clear and convincing”
standard: ~80% certain that a crime occurred, or “it
is highly probable or reasonably certain that a crime occurred.” The lowest standard before completely reversing the
presumption of innocence is the “preponderance of evidence” standard, or 50.01%
certainty that a crime occurred. In other words, the toss of a coin. This is the
standard used to determine guilt for misdemeanors like traffic fines and
parking tickets, and now this incredibly low standard is used to determine
whether male students are guilty of felony offenses. It is my belief, and the
belief of many others, that this demand placed upon colleges and universities
by the OCR is unethical. Unethical and unconscionable, on the grounds that it such
shows extreme disregard for the rights of the accused, and demonstrates either
an ignorance or an extreme indifference to the suffering experienced by those
falsely accused of sexual assault.
Teri Stoddard is the program director for Stop Abusive andViolent Environments, or SAVE, an organization that speaks on behalf of the
falsely accused. On their website she states: “Campus procedures are not
criminal ones, so the accused do not enjoy Constitutional protections. Now,
jilted lovers can ruin the lives of teachers and students with false
allegations of rape.” And she’s right. Trials conducted in academia are not like criminal trials conducted with
lawyers, judges, rules of evidence, and thorough means of documentation, like
court recorders. In academia, the accused are not afforded the right to
cross-examine their accusers before judgments are entered against them, as they
would in a trial. Page 12 of the directive states: “OCR strongly discourages
schools from allowing the parties to question or cross-examine each other
during the hearing.”
Hans Bader is a former attorney for the
Department of Education. In his article “Why Cross-Examination Rights Matter inCampus Sexual Harassment Cases under Title IX,” he writes of the OCR’s statement
forbidding cross-examination during the hearings, “This is perverse,
since the subjective nature of the legal definition of harassment means that
there is no category of cases in which cross-examination is more useful or
essential to ensure due process.
“Sexual harassment cases commonly turn not only on such
credibility disputes, but also on the complainant’s alleged subjective
emotional state, which makes cross-examination far more essential than in the
ordinary campus discipline case. (By contrast, other kinds of disciplinary
cases often turn solely on objective events that can be verified without
any cross-examination of the accusing witness).
“Even if it did not violate the Constitution, the Department
of Education’s assault on cross-examination would still be unjustified, since
cross-examination has justly been called "the most powerful engine for the discovery of truth ever devised.” In sexual harassment cases
brought in court, the defendant invariably has the opportunity to cross-examine
the accuser, because courts recognize that cross-examination is useful in
exposing false allegations."
Under this directive, students accused of sexual misconduct
are also no longer given due process protections from double jeopardy, a false accuser
may try her case, along with all its other attendant violations of due process,
a second, and even a third time, until a judgment is entered against the man
falsely accused. Page 12 of the directive states, “OCR also recommends that schools provide an appeals process. If a school
provides for appeal of the findings or remedy, it must do so for both parties.”
An article was published in the Chronicle for Higher
Education in June 2011, the title of which reads “In making campuses safer forwomen, a travesty of justice for men.” The author, Professor Christina Hoff
Sommers, informs us, “Marching under the banner of Title IX and freed of
high standards of proof, campus disciplinary committees, once relatively weak
and feckless, will be transformed into powerful instruments of gender justice.
At least, that is the fantasy. But here is the reality: Campus disciplinary
committees—often a casual mix of professors, students, and an assistant dean or
two—are well suited to resolving cases involving purported plagiarism and cheating,
and violations of college rules on drugs and alcohol. But no one considers them
prepared to adjudicate murder, arson, kidnapping cases, or criminal assault.
They lack the training and the resources to investigate and adjudicate
felonies."
Sexual assault, and false accusations of sexual assault, are among the most
nebulous crimes in existence. Most cases are he simply said/she said, with no
physical evidence, and where we cannot tell if either party is embellishing,
lying, telling the whole truth, or hiding half of it. The definitions of what
constitutes rape change from person to person, making one person’s rape another’s
false accusation. They are also among of the most politicized crimes in our
jurisprudence. In other words, sexual assault, and false accusations of the
same, are crimes that academia should not be adjudicating if they can help it,
and should instead deferring to law enforcement, who are more properly trained
than university administrations.
Unfortunately, that’s where the second most harmful part of
the April 4th Directive both ties and forces the hands of academic
officials. Previously, colleges and universities tended to conduct mediation
and let the police handle weighty felony decisions. No longer. Page 3 of the
directive reads, “The school’s Title IX investigation is different from
any law enforcement investigation, and a law enforcement investigation does not
relieve the school of its independent Title IX obligation to investigate the
conduct.”
So what happens when police, investigators, and courts use a
higher standard of evidence than academia, when their investigations are mostly
conducted separately, and when the academy feels obligated to render judgments
on felony offenses with bureaucrats whose areas of expertise is presiding over
cases of plagiarism and underage drinking? At times, they will come to
completely different conclusions, and one of them, usually the academy, will
end up looking foolish. An article in the online publication Townhall titled “The Rape of Caleb Warner” reads:
“At the University of North Dakota (UND) the unthinkable has become a
reality. A student has been found guilty of sexual assault despite the fact
that local police refused to charge him with a crime – any crime. In fact, the
police have charged his accuser with lying about the very incident that led to
his campus conviction. And the punishment is not insignificant. Former student
Caleb Warner has been banned by UND from setting foot on any North Dakota
public campus for three years. Meanwhile, his accuser has been wanted by the
Sheriff's Department on the charge of making a false report.
“The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE,
has been the national leader of the opposition to a federal Department of Education mandate, which is forcing more universities to adopt the
preponderance of evidence standard in rape cases. Under this mandate,
universities cannot receive federal funding, including financial aid for
students, unless they adopt the lower standard of proof in rape cases. FIRE
predicted it would result in more wrongful convictions. And FIRE was right.”
FIRE is an organization dedicated to protecting the rights
of free speech and due process in higher education. Since it primarily exists
to protect students from abuses of academic authority, it is in the best
interest of students that they become familiar with the organization and its
website. More on FIRE later.
The next interesting part of the directive is on page 5: “In cases involving potential criminal conduct, school
personnel must determine, consistent with State and local law, whether
appropriate law enforcement or other authorities should be notified.”
The accuser doesn’t have to make a formal claim to law enforcement at all. And the implications
are significant. It is entirely possible that a male student may be falsely
accused and banned from his school without any pretense of due process, without
his accuser ever having brought her claim law enforcement, where he might be
exonerated. What would have happened if Caleb Warner’s false accuser had never made
a formal claim, and had instead relied solely her hangmen in Judicial Affairs? Caleb
Warner would never have been exonerated, either in his local community or in
the national press, as he is now, and the full weight of that accusation would
hang over his head for the rest of his life.
The fifth amendment right of citizens to not falsely incriminate themselves, which
includes their right to remain silent,
and to not testify against themselves, is an often overlooked and misunderstood
element of our jurisprudence. The reason for its existence is that unscrupulous
and/or politically-motivated prosecutors and police can cherry-pick, twist,
embellish, and flat-out lie about what the accused says. Consider this lecture on exercising your right to remain silent by James Duane, former
defense attorney and professor at Regent Law School.
As we can see, it is important that those accused are aware
of their right not to falsely incriminate themselves, and to instead remain
silent. Consider the implications if a falsely accused student had made similar
statement during a university investigation. If the school conducts its
investigation before the police conduct theirs, the falsely accused student,
while he conversing with academic officials in a supposedly private interview, may
not understand, while he is lulled into a false sense of security, that
everything he says can be twisted into lies and used against him in court.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education says, in
its “Guide to Due Process and Fair Procedure on Campus,” "If you have both
a university disciplinary hearing and a criminal trial pending, you will almost
always want to get your disciplinary hearing postponed until after the criminal
matter is settled. Holding the disciplinary hearing before the criminal
trial can be very dangerous, because what you say at the campus hearing-where
you have far fewer protections than in a court of law - can be used against you
in the criminal case."
But on page 10, the April 4th directive states, “Schools should not wait for the conclusion of a
criminal investigation or criminal proceeding to begin their own Title IX
investigation and, if needed, must take immediate steps to protect the student
in the educational setting. For example, a school should not delay conducting
its own investigation or taking steps to protect the complainant because it
wants to see whether the alleged perpetrator will be found guilty of a crime.”
To their credit, while police may sometimes resort to
unscrupulous tactics, they often have the decency to inform the accused upfront
that anything they say can be used against them in a criminal trial, and that
they have the right to remain silent to avoid falsely incriminating themselves.
Academia, unfortunately, does not yet possess this integrity.
Other parts of the directive are not unethical per se, but
are problematic in that they ignore the suffering of the falsely accused, and
fail to advise academia on how to best protect them. On page 5 the directive
says, “The school also should tell the
complainant that Title IX prohibits retaliation, and that school officials will
not only take steps to prevent retaliation but also take strong responsive
action if it occurs.” Nowhere in the 19 pages of this directive does it mention
protecting the accused from retaliation or from those who create a hostile
environment toward them. The article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reads:
“In 2006 three Duke University lacrosse players were falsely
accused of gang rape. They endured a nightmarish, yearlong ordeal in which
abundant evidence of their innocence seemed not to matter at all—not
to the police, not to the prosecutor, not to Duke's faculty or president. Protesters
gathered outside the lacrosse house carrying a banner with the word CASTRATE, banging pots and pans, and chanting "Confess,
confess!" Student vigilantes plastered the campus with "Wanted"
posters bearing the players' photographs. Duke professors took out
an ad in a local newspaper in support of the pot bangers and poster wielders.
After living under suspicion for months, the players were ultimately exonerated
by prosecutors, who dropped all charges.”
Men and boys who are falsely
accused of sex crimes are sometimes subject to brutal and fatal vigilante attacks. What “strong responsive action” will customs and policies will require
universities to take steps to protect male students from such attacks? The
answer, of course, is none.
So to summarize what is bad about the April 4th directive:
Lowers standard of
evidence to the unethically low “preponderance” standard
Denies the accused party
the due process rights to cross-examine accusers
Violates constitutional due
process protections from double-jeopardy
Infringes upon student’s 5th
amendment right to not falsely incriminate themselves
Investigates independently
from, rather than deferring to, professionals in law enforcement
Fails to protect falsely
accused students from retaliation
The April 4th
Directive represents an unethical and systemic attack on the civil rights of
male students. It is ironic and disconcerting that a department which calls
itself the Office of Civil Rights would overlook these rights, which are widely
regarded as fundamental elements of our jurisprudence, and for good reason.
“Obviously, this is an extremely controversial issue.
Sexual assault, particularly rape, is among the most heinous of crimes,
and too often attitudes about what constitutes consent are insufficient. But
this is not about what constitutes actual sexual assault. This is about
the natural and constitutional rights to due process. It doesn’t take James
Madison to see why 50.0001% is not enough evidence to justify ruining someone’s
life.”
This is not about being on the left or the right. This isn’t
about being black or white, or gay or straight, or even male or female. This is
about whether or not those accused of felony offenses, the conviction of which
destroys reputations, careers, relationships, and often their lives, should be
judged by the same standard of evidence used for traffic fines and parking
tickets.
Please help raise awareness about this important issue by
spreading the word about the unethical and destructive nature of the April 4th
Directive. To learn more, visit at websites like AccusingU.org, a division
of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments. Take a tour of the world’s leading
blog dedicated to giving a voice to victims of false accusations: The Community of the Wrongly Accused. Or browse the work of tenacious defender of due process
on college campuses at thefire.org.
Our young men are mostly unaware that as soon as they set foot
on campus, their universities are effectively holding a gun to their heads. Now
more than ever, they need our help.
