@northwesty, using the death penalty analogy is a little much. People who should not receive the death penalty die. (Maybe not so much these days…which is good).
Expulsion is not worse than going to jail and having your time in jail on your record.
Yes…it matters how many people are expelled. How many have been expelled at Tulane for sexual assault?
It seems odd that you’re willing to have students thrown out for academic failure, for cheating, for fighting, for dealing drugs, for other conduct violations, but not for rape.
@TV4caster: “I take that quote to mean that you feel it is ok for survey questions to be ambiguous. I (and my firm) prefer that our survey questions are as unambiguous as possible.”
Then you clearly misinterpreted. This misinterpretation is puzzling, however, given your own statement that your firm wants its survey prompts to be “as unambiguous as possible” (emphasis added).
As for the vast majority of respondents responding to prompts in a way that’s reliable, I would assume, since you appear to work in a survey-based field, that you know that it isn’t a particular percentage of respondents that interpret a prompt in a particular way, but that rather there are a number of statistical measures of survey prompt reliability—and if you’re unaware of those I’d suggest looking them up, since they’d probably be valuable for your work.
If the possible punishments are less severe then the due process required is less.
As you read, the above is what the University of Montana said. The difference between what the University of Montana said , and what you say northwesty, is the Univ of Montana thinks expulsion is a lesser punishment than jail time and a criminal record. The death penalty did not come up in the book. 
“Now let’s find a way to reduce the 30% of college guys who would force a woman to have sex with them if they knew no one would find out.”
The best ROI by far is to focus on potential victims and bystanders. Colleges can actually do a good job on this. Especially something focused on the red zone of first freshman semester. It is so much more difficult to modify the behavior of the perps.
It is especially dubious to rely upon increased convictions to change perp behavior. Because even the perfect sex assault adjudication process is still doomed to fail the vast majority of the time. Because, as mattress girl herself has told us, all systems have to be based on proof that most rape survivors won’t have.
Don’t rely on increased convictions but when the situation is right, go after convictions.
Says a lot about the perpetrators that they should not be where the focus is.
I think educating males will cut sexual assaults. Won’t eliminate sexual assaults.
Very true, but unless I’m mistaken we even allow people to have lawyers for traffic tickets. There’s no offense so trivial that we force people to represent themselves pro se in court and prohibit them from being able to introduce evidence or to cross-examine their accuser. You can’t expect anyone, much less a scared teenager (of either gender), to have any idea how to represent themselves in a hearing in which they might be expelled or in which their rapist might get off scot-free. And even an experienced lawyer has to be allowed and be given the time to review and gather evidence.
To me, it’s simply wrong that these protections are absent from most of these adjudications. Might as well hand the kids a scalpel and ask them to perform surgery - it’s insane to expect a legitimate or a good result.
These due process protections should be there to help us discover the truth as well as to protect the rights of the accused.
@Alsimon2, I think lawyers are going to be used more and more in school hearings.
Stanford has recently talked about this. School hearings are going to improve over time. Or do you not believe in evolution?
That would be a good step in the right direction. But I’m not resting our hopes for evolution on one conversation at one school. And even if it does happen, it won’t help the kids now.
But frankly, this lawyer and courtroom stuff was figured out centuries ago when our legal system evolved. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the OCR doesn’t act like a bunch of creationists who have turned back the clock 600 years and pushed for a process that - in part - resembles a medieval inquisition 
Put me firmly in the camp that embraces the best thinking in both science and law.
@alsimon2,
I just mentioned Stanford because the school just released how it is going to handle sexual assault. I am pretty sure other schools are talking about this. I just didn’t memorize which schools they are.
One of the issues is what happens when one person can afford a lawyer and the other person can’t. Schools are trying to figure this out.
I don’t think it is going to take 600 years to figure this out. I think the figuring out will happen in my lifetime. I am not planning on living 600 years.
One thing I have learned from being on CC ( being is probably the wrong word) is I am an optimist. I think things can and will get better.
The legal system continues to change and adapt—it’s nowhere near figured out yet.
Also, consider that there are venues such as small claims courts and (certain types of) arbitration, where lawyers don’t figure into the process at all, or if they do it’s in a very diminished way. The idea that everyone always has the option of a lawyer isn’t always valid.
@dfbdfb: Small claims court is for small claims, which is why lawyers are not permitted. If this were an adjudication over being sent to a sexual assault awareness class or something, it would be fine. But this is about expulsion, and that is not a small matter.
It’s true that the legal system changes, but you can’t seriously be arguing that stripping criminal defendants or parties to a civil proceeding of their due process rights or their rights to legal representation is one of the changes you think we should be making to improve things. The fact that the legal system isn’t entirely figured out yet isn’t an argument for disregarding what we have in fact figured out.
In most states, people are free to have a lawyer even in small claims court. The reason they usually don’t have a lawyer isn’t because it’s forbidden - it’s because the cost of a lawyer often exceeds the amount of money they’re trying to recover, so it isn’t worth it. That’s why it’s called small claims court, and partly why they were created in the first place.
Yes, I’m sure it’s possible to somewhere dig up a couple of examples of fair, impartial adjudication processes where people are forbidden to engage lawyers, introduce evidence, or cross-examine witnesses. For example, I think a condition of appearing on the “People Court” or the “Judge Judy” TV show is that the parties represent themselves, but the parties all have to voluntarily agree to this and it’s hardly the model I would propose for determining whether a rape occurred. Frankly, I think it’s quite a stretch to believe these type of processes are adequate enough to adjudicate expelling a student for rape. Is that really what you believe?
How is expelling a student from a private college for rape different than firing someone for rape?
Perhaps the solution is to attach hidden, reinforced security cameras in all areas on campus, only to be accessed via some sort of encryption software in the case of a serious felony.
My only qualm about allowing students to have lawyers is what if one of the students can’t afford a lawyer? But that’s a problem that can be solved by appointing a lawyer for a student.
Suppose DOE OCR gives schools this choice.
Option A is that we keep on with Dear Colleague and all pending title ix investigations against your school.
Option B is that Dear Colleague is revoked for you and the investigations cancelled if you agree to provide mandatory training for all incoming freshman along the lines of what the Canada school did and also for bystanders. You can go back to whatever adjudicatory processes you were using previously or you can make up new ones unburdened by the Fed’s.
School A takes option A. School B takes option B. Which school do you think would be safer for your daughter?
And saying “do both” is not allowed.
Option B, and the school chooses to continue adjudicating rape cases (except with clear and convincing instead of preponderance).
There’s this big, massively important problem with your logic: Quite simply, colleges’ disciplinary hearings are not criminal courts. They have no power to deprive someone of life or liberty, and they can’t even impose fines to deprive someone of property.
That’s a pretty good reason for them to not operate under criminal-court rules.
[QUOTE]
There’s this big, massively important problem with your logic: Quite simply, colleges’ disciplinary hearings are not criminal courts. They have no power to deprive someone of life or liberty, and they can’t even impose fines to deprive someone of property.
That’s a pretty good reason for them to not operate under criminal-court rules. /QUOTE
I disagree with the relevance of your conclusion - what you’ve argued is why (private) colleges shouldn’t be required to operate under criminal court rules. But that’s a straw man - almost no one has argued for this. Remember, criminal court rules involve a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, trial by jury, etc.
(Public colleges are a whole other can of worms, but they are largely already required to meet a higher due process standard since they are creations of the state governments. However, frankly I’m not that familiar with procedures at public colleges.)
What I’m saying is that (private) colleges should operate under a higher due process standard than is currently in place at most colleges, and that the Federal government shouldn’t be imposing a standard on colleges that results in an unfair system being created. I’m using analogies to the civil court system, not the criminal court system, to argue for the level of due process standard that fairness requires and as evidence for why it’s necessary to adequately determine the truth. Remember, the civil courts also have no power to deprive someone of life or liberty, but they adhere to an even higher due process standard than I’m arguing for.
There’s no question that private colleges have a lot of latitude in their codes of conduct - they could probably even grant themselves the power to capriciously expel someone for not adhering to a dress code - so I’m not arguing that they’re required to meet this due process standard; I’m saying they should hold themselves to a high standard and should meet this standard in order to run fair proceedings. I’m also saying that many private colleges want to have higher due process protections because they think it’s morally right, but the Federal government is stopping them
Before the OCR’s DCL letter, most private colleges (at least that I was familiar with) conducted these hearings under a “clear and convincing” standard. They also had a number of meditative processes in place as well. The hearings didn’t involve lawyers, etc., but the higher standard of proof roughly balanced this out so that IMO the net process was reasonably fair.
The DCL letter essentially forced private colleges to lower their standard of proof to “preponderance of the evidence” and to make a number of other changes. Many colleges believed this was wrong-headed and imposed by people who didn’t have practical experience with these kinds of cases, thought it would lead to unfair results, and resisted doing this. But they were forced to change by the Federal government. And with this lower standard of proof the other due process protections that I’m arguing for now become much more important.
Further, even if someone believes private colleges should be free to act without that much regard for the parties’ rights, I think we should hold the Federal government (i.e. the DOJ/OCR) up to a very high standard when it comes to respecting everyone’s rights. But that’s just me.