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Campus Sexual Assault Tag

In 2017, Oberlin College was sued by an expelled male student who had been found responsible for sexual assault in a campus disciplinary hearing. The student, identified only as John Doe, alleged a seriously flawed hearing process as well as discrimination on the basis of sex because the process allegedly was biased against men. We first covered the case, and the motion to dismiss filed by Oberlin, in Lawsuit: Oberlin College sexual assault hearing process rigged, 100% conviction rate:

Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar send an email to the college community on August 23, 2018, followed by a similar email to alumni, regarding faculty sexual misconduct. The situation presented was stark: The college received "several" accusations of faculty sexual misconduct from alumni, leading certain faculty members to resign rather than participate in an investigation.

It's kind of weird this story is coming out now when Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan's name has become prominent in talks of who should be the next Speaker of the House. Jordan worked as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995. Now former wrestlers during that time claim Jordan ignored sexual abuse allegations against the team's physician Dr. Richard Strauss.

I was in Durham, NC, earlier this week, where my wife received treatment from doctors at Duke Medical Center. With plenty of time to spare, it occurred to me that I should get a selfie at the Duke Lacrosse house to post on the website. While the 2006 prosecution and April 2007 dropping of all charges pre-dated Legal Insurrection, the false accusations, mob mentality, and faculty perfidy seemed to be a prelude to the campus due process disregard emboldened later by the Obama administration.

The lack of a fair and due process for men going through campus sexual assault disciplinary processes has been a frequent topic here. We long ago warned of these Kangaroo courts for men on campus, resulting from a directive from the Obama Department of Education. That directive has been jettisoned by the Trump Education Department, but many schools still cling to it because ideologically the campus culture presumes that there is a "rape culture" and that men are aggressors.

Oberlin College faces two serious lawsuits arising out of social justice activism on campus. One suit, by a local bakery boycotted by Oberlin students and administration based on apparently false claims the bakery racially profiled students, has been permitted to move forward. We reported on that decision in Court: Gibson’s Bakery lawsuit against Oberlin College can continue in full::

In late December I wrote about a lawsuit brought by an expelled Oberlin College male student Lawsuit: Oberlin College sexual assault hearing process rigged, 100% conviction rate:
A male student who was expelled from campus in October 2016 for alleged sexual assault has filed a federal lawsuit against Oberlin. Though the lawsuit was filed in June 2017, it has not received any publicity. Yet the lawsuit contains allegations which, if proven, reflect that Oberlin’s system for adjudicating sexual assault accusations was fundamentally biased against males, at least during the 2015-2016 academic year.

The more cases of campus sexual assault adjudications we cover, the more we see patterns. There frequently is an ongoing consensual sexual relationship in which only some of the interactions were claimed to be non-consensual; a delay in reporting the alleged assault; a process in which the accused is left uncertain as to the charges against him; an inability to be represented by counsel or anyone who could give substantive assistance; a university investigation under pressure to "believe" the accuser; the inability to call a key witnesses, the issue of whether there was sufficient affirmative consent (there being no claim that the female said "No"), and of course, the use of alcohol in varying degrees.

Oberlin College is suffering financially and in enrollment after several years of negative publicity regarding racial, gender, anti-Semitic and social justice activism on campus. I documented that history in September 2017, Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems. Those financial and enrollment problems also more recently received attention at Inside Higher Ed.

We're witnessing a perfect storm of sorts as various elements of leftist policy and ideology converge into an historical moment in which being accused of sexual harassment/abuse means being guilty.  Being guilty, in turn, means the immediate loss of one's career, one's reputation, and one's livelihood. The accused is not able to confront his accusers, or even know their names, nor does he know, in many cases, that an allegation has been made or an investigation underway.  He finds out when he is fired from his job, dragged through the mud, and is, what we'd say in any other circumstance, victimized. There's a problem here, one that we on the right may not be as willing to see because the majority of the people being taken down (so far) are unsavory persons populating socio-political worlds—Hollywood, politics, the media—in which we are "the deplorables."  It's not hard to feel vindicated in some cases and Schadenfreude in others.

We previously reported on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's major policy speech in which she promised a departure from the Obama-era guidance on how universities and colleges must handle sexual assault cases. That guidance has resulted in a substantial lack of basic due process for accused students in a process fairly described as "kangaroo courts." Another aspect of that lack of due process was equally explosive but only now is gaining recognition - the possibly discriminatory impact on black males. This has been the subject of articles in The Atlantic and Reason, as well as a recently released research paper.

The war on male college students under the mantle of Title IX continues.  A USC student was accused of raping a fellow student in her dorm room, and after being cleared by security video, could still be expelled. CBS News reports:
Security video from outside a local nightclub has cleared a USC student of rape, CBS Los Angeles reports. Armaan Premjee was accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old student in her dorm room but video from the Banditos club near campus tells a different story.

Last Friday, in the civil suit regarding the Sabrina Erdely story about an alleged gang rape at UVA---the attention-getting piece that portrayed "Jackie" as victim extraordinaire---the periodical Rolling Stone and journalist Sabrina Erdely were found guilty of defamation with actual malice:
A 10-person jury in Richmond, Va., found that Rolling Stone defamed a university administrator who was in charge of handling student complaints of sexual misconduct at the school... In a lawsuit filed last year, then-UVA associate dean of students Nicole Eramo alleged that the article and interviews Ms. Erdely gave about her reporting cast the administrator as the callous villain of its tale and falsely asserted that she discouraged a student identified only as “Jackie” from taking her rape allegations to the police.