U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used a Nov. 16 press release to unveil a new draft rule proposal for the Department of Education to address a chaotic situation that has developed at universities across the nation.
Due process—fair treatment through the normal judicial system—is a basic American civil right granted by the U.S. Constitution to all citizens.
In recent years, many colleges in the United States have adopted new policies for handling sexual-assault allegations. Instead of letting law enforcement handle cases of alleged sexual assault/harassment, college administrators were encouraged to set up their own on-campus investigative systems and pronounce judgment on the cases all by themselves.
That’s right. Let that sink in for a minute. Colleges have been setting up their own internal “court” systems to hear these “he said, she said” cases—except, with the way the hearings were set up, the “he said” part was often just skipped over completely.
Had the universities shown these newly created “campus courts” resulted in fair and neutral rulings between the students appearing before them, this wouldn’t be such an urgent issue.
Politicized Outcomes
It turns out these U.S. universities have been setting up internal court systems to try students for sexual-related offenses right on campus, because radical feminists and political activists have been agitating for these kinds of policies. That means this entire recent shift in policy at U.S. colleges was fostered to drive certain preordained politicized outcomes from the start.The college hookup and drinking cultures made the institution of these new sexual misconduct rules a disaster waiting to happen, and it didn’t take long for examples of obvious miscarriages of justice to occur. Drunken students having sex and regretting it later has long been a part of college life. But in the present campus atmosphere, there are many willing to criminalize such behavior in order to make politically motivated examples out of some students.
Whatever the good intentions might have been, what practically resulted was a system in which accused male students weren’t allowed to face their accuser, and they and their representatives weren’t allowed to cross-examine the accuser, or even see evidence, if any, that was being presented against them.
During the eight years of the Obama administration, then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appeared to be asleep at the wheel as one major university after another installed what essentially were on-campus kangaroo courts, in order to hold politically motivated show trials.
Media Response
Of great interest has been the mainstream media’s reaction to the announcement of this proposal.To hear radical leftist activists on university campuses tell it, this “due process for accused male students” issue had just been decided. For all time.
And then along comes this insufferable Betsy DeVos! Who does she think she is?!
And now as due-process rights are returned to U.S. college campuses, where they’ve been under a sustained assault for the past decade, once again the American left is found stridently objecting. This is very revealing.
It’s very telling that in recent years, the American left has dropped its mask and shown the world its true naked face in declaring war on the entire concept of due process for all. The most recent example of this was the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The left is making it very clear they most certainly don’t believe in due process for their political opposition.
When your opponent shows you their true nature, believe them.
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