Princeton Rebuked for Not Railroading Men for Rape

Princeton University under federal scrutiny for treating sexual assault as a crime

In a federal probe of Princeton University, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights faulted the Ivy League university for violating the federally recommended standard of proof for cases of rape and sexual assault. Read that again: the “recommended” standard of proof, not an actual law.

Another area (in addition to environmental and energy policy) where the new Republican Congress needs to wrest back from the regulatory bureaucracy the "burden" of deciding what policies are.

Princeton was using the “clear and convincing evidence” standard for its proceedings, which is a higher burden of proof than the federally recommended “preponderance of evidence” but not as high as the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

A "preponderance of evidence" is widely interpreted as a 50.01% chance, little better than a coin flip, while "clear and convincing evidence is regarded a  substantially more than that, but not necessarily as high as "beyond reasonable doubt."  And since we know that women are always right, the accusation itself essentially becomes the "preponderance of evidence."

That’s not the only way Princeton supposedly violated the rights of the accuser (forget the rights of the accused).

“OCR determined that the higher burden of proof was one of a number of examples in which Princeton tilted the scales in favor of the accused,” Tyler Kingkade wrote in the Huffington Post. “For example, accused students at Princeton could appeal a decision made by the university committee investigating sexual assault cases, but students who reported an incident could not.” In the U.S. court system, retrials for exonerated defendants are forbidden as "double jeopardy."

They could always take it to the real legal authorities, the police. That would become their "second bite of the apple." But then they's have to live with the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard. Can't have that.

Also, Princeton let accused students know what the charges were against them – an apparent “no-no” to OCR. Accused students were also told the names of the committee members who would decide their fate, were allowed to call witnesses and have an adviser at the hearing.

Wow, the right to know what they were accused of, who is making the decision and being allowed to call witnesses on their own behalf. But they might actually be able to fight the accusation then!

Accusers had these same rights, but OCR claimed they were not as obvious as the rights of the accused. A Frequently Asked Questions document laid out the rights of accusers and accused, and was referenced in the school’s sexual misconduct policy, but that was apparently not enough for OCR.

OCR also faulted Princeton for not finding men guilty in three cases.

Why not just proclaim the entire male population of the school guilty with no recourse, and be done with it?

This is all driven by the democratic regimes desire to curry favor from the single women that form an important part of their constituency. It will be interesting to see if the burning desire to pusch these standards down on the schools will fade now that the "War on Women" card proved to be a bust in the last election.

The question in my mind, is why, given this mindset, any male would ever vote Democrat.