The Duke Lacrosse False Rape Case / Misandry in Education

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).

At the end of the ordeal, David Evans, one of the falsely accused, said, "This woman [i.e. Crystal Mangum] has destroyed everything I worked for in my life." Reade Seligmann left Duke and went on to graduate from Brown University in 2010, but as we will see, in terms of misandry, the culture at Brown is not much better.

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.”

The vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said, "Members of the men'sbasketball team could be punished for consensual sexual activity simply because they are 'perceived' as more powerful than other students after winning the national championship.” The director of Duke university’s women’s center justified the policy by saying of rapists, "The higher [the] IQ, the more manipulative they are, the more cunning they are…imagine the sex offenders we have here at Duke—cream of the crop."

Given Duke’s history, it’s a wonder why young men continue to attend. I spend so much time talking about Duke because it is so emblematic of the culture of higher education. And when we view that culture for what it is, we perceive the source of a great many problems facing male students as a group. For example, why is that that, despite the incredible gaps in educational achievement between male and female students that have persisted for over 30 years, diversity administrators sit on their hands and do nothing, while continuing to pour funding and energy into programs for female students? Why is it that college-age students can parade around a banner reading “castrate” and faculty can say the most slanderous things about male students based on nothing more than their genetic code, and no administrator says or does anything, but little boys who are 9 and 6-years-old are suspended for sexual harassment for saying that a teacher is cute, or for singing “I’m sexy and I know it?” What is going on?

 Freshman orientation at Hamilton College

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.

The War on Male Students - Introduction

Education is a core issue for men and boys, and can be categorized into three main areas: educational attainment, misandry, and civil rights. All three are severely entrenched problems.

Educational Attainment

Graduation data from the National Center for Education Statistics demonstrates that the graduation rates of men and boys are on a steep decline with no end in sight:

As educational attainment among male students has declined over the last 40 years, the requirement of postsecondary education in the workforce has radically increased. The chart to the right is an excerpt from a presentation by Judith Loredo, Assistant Commissioner for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, at the 2012 Project MALES Symposium at UT Austin:

Also, men and boys in education:

Commit 80% of suicides (overall). College men ages of 18-24 commit suicide at six times the rate of women. Sources here and here.

Are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and 80% of those put on Ritalin (lower ed). Sources here and here

Are 75% of students diagnosed with learning disabilities. Source here.

Are 33% more likely than girls to drop out of high school. Source: Peg Tyre, “The Trouble with Boys.” Newsweek, January 30, 2006. Data cited from U.S. Department of Education.

Are much less likely to participate in student government, academic clubs, music, the performing arts, and student clubs. Source here.

Are suspended twice as often and expelled three times as often as girls (lower ed). Source here.

By age 12, boys are 60% more likely to have repeated at least one grade. Source: Peg Tyre, “The Trouble with Boys.” Newsweek, January 30, 2006. Data from U.S. Department of Education.

Receive the majority of Ds and Fs and the minority of As (lower ed). Source: Dr. Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, The Minds Of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

These gender inequities are apparent across the lines of race and class, but tend to be more severe among male students of color.

The gap between male and female students in literacy skills is six times the gender gap in math skills (where boys are ahead). Source: Educational Testing Services (ETS) Gender Study, “Trends by Subject, Fourth through Twelfth Grades,” Figure 2-1. Cited in Misreading Masculinity by Thomas Newkirk, p. 35.

The number of boys who said they did not like school rose 71% between 1980 and 2001. Source: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, Monitoring the Future Study, 1980 to 2001. Cited in National Center for Education Statistics, Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women: 2004, p. 45, Figure 13: “How do you feel about school?”

 Misandry

Misandry is sexism against men and boys. It can be expressed in a myriad of ways. For a detailed and extensive definition, please see the page on misandry. Here are two examples: 

When two young men were exonerated after being falsely accused of date rape at Vassar College, the Assistant Dean of Students Catherine Comins said: "Men who are falsely accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience. They have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration. 'How do I see women?' 'If I didn't violate her, could I have?' 'Do I have the potential to do to her what they say I did?' Those are good questions."

 

Here is a poster that for years was hung on the window of the Women's Resource Center at the University of Ottawa in Canada (source here):

 

Civil Rights

The most pervasive civil rights violations in schools today are free speech and due process violations.  This is especially true for men and boys accused of sexual misconduct. For examples, see blog posts and videos (below) on The April 4th Directive (higher education) and Sexual Harassment Hysteria in Lower Education.

 

 

More on this page will be added in the future.

The April 4th Directive - the Death of Due Process for Male Students

*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 4^th 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 4^th 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 4^th 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 4^th 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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik

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 4^th 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 5^th 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 4^th 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.

Students for Liberty is a student community dedicated to broadening the discourse on freedom of speech and due process on college campuses. In their article More Likely Than Not: The Office of Civil Rights’ Encroachment on Due Process, author David Deerson states,

“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 4^th 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.

Who among us will speak in their defense?

Dating - Overprotective Fathers

Due to the multitude of imported videos used in this particular argument, I will refrain from making a blog post and simply link to the video. At issue:

"As young men we are often threatened with violence by the fathers of our girlfriends as a warning against our prospective misconduct, for no other reason than because we are the boyfriend. Consider: if our own parents had threatened our girlfriends with violence, and at times perpetrated that violence upon them, would society find it acceptable? Why are so many young men injured and killed by overprotective fathers for trivial and non-violent offenses? And how does this tradition of chivalry jive with the Feminist idea that in the traditional family women were oppressed by men, rather than protected by them?"