Returning Due Process to Campus

It's a moral panic, at least in part. Panic explains why due process is ignored and why accusations are considered unassailable. But questioning accusations is not the same as denying them. And while reliving trauma is a risk it can be mitigated by using an intermediary like a lawyer or therapist.

Another piece is the increasing insular nature of some institutions. Ideas ricochet within the walled gardens of higher ed, gain momentum, and lead to results that appear zany to the outside world. Focus is needed to study; but insular practices are creating campuses that are worlds unto themselves.

That's not to say we shouldn't agitate against bad practices in society. Real progress is being made in the real world to combat sexual assault and sex crimes.[1] But it's hard to see how campus protestors are having any positive impact outside their hallowed halls.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nati...

I know a lot of people here already know this story, but it's worth mentioning: while in college, I was railroaded through the judicial system in political retaliation after winning the Presidency of the Student Body. This was 13 years ago now. Crazy story.

Here's a documentary that a bunch of us put together about it:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL11F04BB4661C2CC3

Some aspects the Purdue case resonate with mine. Others not so much.

I did learn a lot about how little oversight there is over these processes and how much corrupt officials count on the qualified immunity doctrine.

I was nearly involved in a sexual assault case in college.

7 of us were in my dorm room, watching a movie on my computer. 3 girls, 4 guys, including myself. My roommate and I had our beds bunked, him on the bottom, me up top. The accuser was laying next to my roommate on his bunk, I was laying on mine, everyone else was in chairs.

The accuser, like halfway through the movie abruptly gets up and leaves without saying a word. Not a "no", "stop" or anything. Just silence and left. The 6 of us remain were like wtf? Then finished the movie and watched another.

The next week, one of the other girls told us guys something to the effect of: "you won't believe the shit I'm hearing. (Accuser) is saying she was sexually assaulted by you guys the night we were watching movies. And I know that didnt happen, I was right there."

We knew we didn't do anything, but we're scared shitless. One of the guys was an international student and was worried about being deported if expelled while on his student visa.

We nipped it in the bud by the lot of us going immediately to the Dean of Students to address it. He hadn't even heard the accusation yet. He believed us that the accusation was bullshit (the accusation was that somone unhooked her bra without her consent). 6 people vs 1 helped a lot. This was in 2000 and Universities assuming guilt was already prevalent then. We were pretty terrified.

I dont know what the accuser's thoughts were. Maybe she was seeking attention. I just dont know and nearly 20 years later, don't care. But she traumatized 6 people with a false allegation spread by rumors.

All of that said, it's important to investigate ALL allegations of assault/abuse, but it's simultaneously important to not rush to judgement and assume guilt. Due process is prescribed in the US Constitution for a reason. (Admittedly this might not hold for all private schools, but it should still be a guiding principle.)

Maybe someday we can find the middle ground between railroading undergrads with no evidence and taking decades to stop predators like Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby and probably countless others.

It has always struck me as a very weird practice for colleges to be adjudicating criminal matters like rape.

Here’s the thing - universities can’t compel people to testify. And there are no consequences for retaliating against witnesses.

Until universities can compel testimony and subpoena evidence from everyone, including non-students/employees, they can’t have fair proceedings.

Until they have that power, they should be severely restricted in what negative negative findings they can make.

An accuser/accused who had to beg people to testify in their support isn’t likely to get justice.

Not sure why the article had to bend into politics. There was more than enough evidence to support their position without going into a Democrats versus Trump/DeVoss angle to make a claim that this was somehow Democrats doing. I think it's fair to say that any time you're having an adversarial process it's going to be difficult on both parties, there's clear cases of abuse that are missed, cases of poor/missed communications between people, cases of anger, cases where both parties were in a bad state to make adult decisions. College campuses in particular are, in America, the first time that real responsibilities of the world are levied at many young adults.

When it comes down to it, in cases of date rape, awkward sexual encounters, spousal/lover abuse, and all the messy areas of humanity in between, there's no way to get every bad actor, sometimes there's not enough evidence, and that's a terrible place to have to be. Sometimes the courts and tribunals are going to get it wrong, and that's another terrible place to be. That doesn't mean that we don't do everything within our power to make places of learning, both inside and outside the classroom, as safe as possible. That doesn't mean we ignore our responsibility to each other to attempt to make right cases of provable injustice. That also means that we don't destroy lives without evidence. Difficult decisions are the cornerstone of adult lives.

There's two double-standards at play:

- victimhood hierarchy - prioritizing obscure identity attributes over the person.

- elite apartheid - celebrities, rich, popular, beautiful don't have to play by the same rules or receive the same punishments as everyone else. Also, the very bottom of society receives far more punishment than the middle.

Furthermore, there are several ambiguous, likely unknowable by anyone else, situations in the case of rape, because it's often a s/he-said situation due often to a lack of unbiased witnesses or solid evidence:

- Whether there was force or not

- Whether there was explicit, implicit or no consent

- If there was consent, was it later revoked or not, explicitly or weakly

- Is the allegation for actual harm or ego-/guilt-/remorse/-alleviation/revenge/enjoyment/attention

Actual rape isn't good, but an unfair/unnecessarily unpleasant process to suss-out what may/may not be possible to discover doesn't help either. It's very tricky.

At least public universities have some accountability to the law.

According to the policy, I'm going to interpret this in the most generous light, but:

1. At 15:12 MT, this had 11 votes and was on the front page 2. Almost immediately after, this was flagged 3. The comments that say "56 minutes ago" where already there 4. It is now 16:54 MT (1:52 ago)

I think there is a bug in HN timestamps, and also (subjectively) the moderation.