Article from Reason by Robby Soave.
The Education Department has officially released new rules on how to enforce Title IX, the federal statute that forbids sex and gender-based discrimination in public schools.
This guidance will replace an approach, established under the Obama administration, that threatened free expression on college campuses and due process rights for students accused of sexual misconduct. Unlike the Obama-era guidance, the DeVos policies operate in accordance with basic principles of fairness. They are a massive step forward. If colleges are going to be involved in the business of adjudicating sexual assault, this new approach is vastly preferable.
A draft of the new proposals was released in September; the final version differs slightly, according to an Education Department spokesperson familiar with the process.
The biggest change since the draft proposal is that the increasingly popular single-investigator model of sexual misconduct adjudication—in which a sole administrator was charged with investigating the allegation, preparing a report on the matter, and passing judgment—is no longer permitted. Universities will be required to provide a separate decision maker, either an individual or a group, to determine an accused student’s guilt.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Betsy DeVos) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
wpDiscuz
When a individual wants to report a violation of the law, they should go to the law enforcement agency who covers the area of the violation. The college administration has no legal authority to investigate any violation of the law. Any attempt to circumvent the reporting to law enforcement would be obstruction and should be treated as such, no exceptions.
Jim, rxactly…let the school concentrate on “teaching”…God knows the return on investment for that service is dubious enough!