There absolutely should be a different standard for “can continue to be in this school” and “can continue to walk down the public sidewalk”, and also decided by different people.
But having a lower standard of proof means expelling people who haven't actually done what you're expelling them for. That's a whole other thing, and I'm very hesitant about it.
Of course, when the expulsions almost only happen to members of one gender, on the say-so of members of the other gender, it gets extra complicated.
>We’ll argue that this sort of deference is mistaken, for at least two kinds of reasons. One is that, as anti-rape activists have often emphasized, law enforcement procedures themselves are deeply flawed when it comes to their practice of dealing with sexual assault. Another has to do with the connections between knowledge and action, and between knowledge and knowledge ascriptions. We also think that these disparate considerations are more closely interconnected than it may at first appear.
Totally agreed. That doesn't justify instituting another unjust system to somehow counterbalance the existing unjust system. This just shifts the injustice to another class of people, it doesn't eliminate it, and human nature being what it is, people will exploit it for selfish ends.
You can only eliminate injustice by specifically addressing the injustice, not by moving it around.
No, I'm actually presuming that injustice cannot be weighed and compared. Statements like "equally or more unjust" are fallacious. If injustice is demonstrable, then we know where the injustice is and so where to focus our efforts, since presumably our goal ought to be eliminating injustice.
How does creating a whole new system that introduces its own problems and its own injustice further the agenda of eliminating injustice? Now you have two unjust systems.
This is HN, so consider the question of when it's appropriate to throw out a buggy program and rewrite it all from scratch, as opposed to gradually evolving the buggy system to a better state. Rewrites are occasionally justified, but it's widely recognized that this is a rare exception, and I'd argue for many of the same reasons.
> after all, it is undoubtedly easier to change the laws of a university body than to change them in society as a whole
That's not a priori a good thing. Laws should be hard to change. Attempting to bypass this process ignores all the reasons why laws must be hard to change.
The central position taken by the authors comes from MacKinnon's Marxist Theory of the State which argues that such change cannot happen within the state as it exists, with all the relations which have constructed it - the argument being that sexist injustice exists prior to the law, and in the law's veneer of equality, it assumes that there is no fundamental injustice to be corrected - the dogma that justice is blind works against justice, not for it. A system in which justice isn't so poorly sighted, and which, according to the authors, starts from the recognition of injustice prior to the law of the state, would be a just one. I'm not convinced that it's fallacious to talk of being "more" or "less" just, since I'm comfortable saying that a Western European country's legal system is more just than Saudi Arabia's.
>as opposed to gradually evolving the buggy system to a better state
Critical legal theory takes the metalegal position that this gradual evolution is impossible given the totality of relations which determine the law. That is to say, the law is a reflection of the society it rules over, its relations of power, of property, of information, knowledge and other things.
>Laws should be hard to change.
It's hard for me to take that as a priori a good thing when laws as they exist in any system reinforce a likely unjust status quo. The law being hard to change seems like a bad situation to be in if you were a Saudi Arabian woman who wanted to drive five years ago. Nevertheless, it circles back to the main point: there are different standards for the law governing society and the law governing a university.
I've read many fallacious arguments with a veneer of plausibility, but in the end, speculation must explain the facts. The fact is that sporadic revolution followed by iterative refinement only is the only approach that has enjoyed any reliable measure of success in any sphere of human knowledge. The law is not exempt from this.
> Critical legal theory takes the metalegal position that this gradual evolution is impossible given the totality of relations which determine the law.
The clear evidence of social and cultural progress must be remarkably inconvenient for critical legal theory.
> That is to say, the law is a reflection of the society it rules over, its relations of power, of property, of information, knowledge and other things.
And the law only has power in so far as the governed consent to be ruled by it. If you attempt to change it too quickly, you will instead induce bloody conflict. Social and cultural inertia exist.
> Nevertheless, it circles back to the main point: there are different standards for the law governing society and the law governing a university.
I'm sure there are. I still don't see the justification for it, but thanks for the attempt.
This is a really hard problem because you want victims to be helped and not have to go through a grueling process for something they didn’t bring upon themselves, but simultaneously you don’t want to enable false accusations which would put undue burden on someone who didn’t bring that upon themselves either.
The question at hand is whether or not things have gone too far.
Asking whether it has gone too far is like asking if someone died too much. This problem currently has no good solution -barring a true “lie detector”, but even that is insufficient because people can believe things that didn’t happen as they recall, etc., you’d need something more like a “reconstruct the scenario do we the jury can interpret”
I think it's fairly clear that it has, at this point.
1. Sexual assault is defined so broadly it's virtually impossible to legal have sex. "Can I hug you?" "Yes" "Can I kiss you?" "Yes" "Can I squeeze your butt?" "Yes" etc. Did you kiss their neck without asking for and receiving positive, enthusiastic consent? That's sexual assault.
2. There's no recourse if there's an accusation. Notification of a complaint is stated in the form of expulsion. Once expelled, there's no appeals process.
There can and should be an extra judicial system to expect offenders. But this is the wrong one.
The exceptions are related to things like civil asset forfeiture, which are of questionable constitutionality and are similar to the rules we're discussing insofar as they are both worthy of contempt.
The protections afforded to both the accused and the accuser are to provide safeguards for everyone involved.
Because it's not a law, it can't be ruled on in court.
Because it can't be ruled on, they use this form of arbitration to solve what would be a civil matter if the school was a private entity.
Its not nearly as unreasonable as you make it seem.
The point in this case is that it isn't. Both the policy and the procedural rules are imposed by federal requirements.
If it was actually a policy of the school then it would be non-uniform and students could avoid schools with unreasonable policies, or push for changes to the local policy that are more achievable than it is for an individual to change federal policy.