Leef highlights case of college student victimized by Title IX inquisition

George Leef’s latest Forbes column highlights an example of the Obama administration’s “Title IX” madness leading to a federal court case. An Amherst student is challenging the kangaroo court proceeding that led to his expulsion.

The facts revolve around a drunken hookup between two students and the woman’s subsequent efforts at covering up her more than willing participation by blaming the male student and accusing him of assault. Amherst’s administration was equally complicit, however, pronouncing the man guilty on flimsy and incomplete evidence, then refusing to reconsider once evidence that the woman had fabricated her story came to light.

And the dark force driving the school to make an example of the student was the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). …

… Unknown to Doe, Amherst had decided to follow the Obama administrations preferred system for adjudicating sexual assault complaints, namely hiring an investigator who would look into the case, question some witnesses, and then make a presentation to a panel. That panel would then decide on disciplinary action, if any.

But that process was stacked against Doe from the beginning. The investigator was a local attorney who had been trained in the OCR’s witness-believing, guilt-presuming approach to these cases. Moreover, the three members of the panel were all drawn from a group of administrators from local schools who had likewise received this training. They had all gone through a seminar on “the dynamics of sexual misconduct, the factors relevant to a determination of credibility, the appropriate manger in which to receive and evaluate sensitive information… and the application of the preponderance of the evidence standard.”

That last point is particularly noteworthy. The OCR insists on a minimal level of proof to find a student guilty. The evidence need only indicate that it is slightly more likely than not that the student had committed a wrongful act. In practice, this means that an accused male student will be found guilty so long as the female accuser has any credibility at all.