@Thomas,
I don't believe Hawkeye was referring to a statute or court decision, but to University policy and "due process."
Here is a recent example:
Student expelled from Duke for Sexual Misconduct
A female student alleged that student Lewis McLeod raped her after the two met at a bar and returned to his fraternity house that evening. McLeod claims the sex was consensual and came to a stop after she started crying.
Police investigated the matter and declined to charge McLeod, and the woman reported the incident to the Student Conduct Office at Duke.
Quote:n March, a three-member Duke disciplinary panel ruled that the female student “had reached an incapacitating level of intoxication that rendered her unable to give consent to sex,” and that “a reasonable person would have known [complainant] was too intoxicated to be able to give consent,”
McLeod was found guilty of sexual misconduct and expelled just months before he was to graduate.
McLeod filed a breach of contract suit against Duke and claimed that the panel refused to hear testimony from key witnesses (among who were his fraternity brothers) but accepted and relied upon hearsay evidence from an anonymous party. He also alleges Duke discouraged him from seeking legal counsel and that the basis for the decision was an unpublished school policy.
Quote:“[W]hen Mr. McLeod’s representative asked for a copy of the policy, Dean Stephen Bryan slammed the door in Mr. McLeod’s face and said, ‘You can get it when you sue us,’” according to the complaint.
A North Carolina Supreme Court judge rejected Duke's motion to dismiss the suit
and enjoined the school from expelling McLeod
Quote:“The plaintiff has demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits as to his contentions that the defendant has breached, violated, or otherwise deprived the plaintiff of material rights related to the misconduct allegations against him and the resulting disciplinary process addressing such allegations,”
The Panel applied the preponderance of evidence standard and so "reasonable doubt" was not even in play. Regardless, one would have expected that the hearing would have been conducted with some measure of fairness.
It's difficult to understand how their refusal to even listen to McLeod's witnesses represents due process, not to mention his inability to confront the anonymous second had "witness." The only student on the panel had done research on "sexual violence."
A critical piece by Brooklyn History Professor K.C. Johnson on the Minding The Campus website contains the following:
Quote:One rationalization for those who defend the OCR’s (Office of Civil Rights) crusade against due process is that students deemed rapists by their colleges don’t really suffer that much—after all, they don’t go to jail, and no one is legally entitled to a college education. This is an absurd claim, of course: being branded a rapist will foreclose significant future educational and employment opportunities. McLeod’s case is a particularly obvious example: he’s Australian, and in the United States on a student visa. He had a job lined up—but will lose the job (and the visa) without a degree, and therefore will be kicked out of the country.
Quote:independent reporter John Tucker covered the hearing, and it seemed as if Wasiolek’s (Duke's Dean Sue Wasiolek - who btw advised the Duke Lacrosse Players not to inform their parents of their proceeding) testimony didn’t go very well for the school. She admitted that Duke had never placed the presumption of expulsion in its published student handbook—but suggested this didn’t matter. “It is an understood practice. ... We didn't feel the need to make it public.” How something that’s not public can be an understood as standard must remain a mystery.
And she appeared to concede that Duke doesn’t take seriously Title IX’s promise of not discriminating on the basis of gender. Noting Duke’s finding that a rape occurs when a panel concludes based on 50.01 percent probability that a student had reached an incapacitating level of intoxication that rendered the student unable to give consent to sex, McLeod’s lawyer asked Wasiolek what happened if both students were drunk. In that case, presumably, “they have raped each other and are subject to expulsion.” Not so, stated Wasiolek: “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.” How this policy can be reconciled with Title IX must remain a mystery.
Not everyone has the standard of reasonable doubt to rely upon for their defense in significant proceedings concerning rape.
KC Johnson Article
Lest anyone assume Professor Johnson is a reactionary misogynist who somehow slipped through Brooklyn College's ideological filter, here is a profile of him:
Johnson Profile
