Congress is on the war path to be judge and jury for all sexual assaults. Gillibrand is the one that promoted the ‘Mattress Girl’, Emma Sulkowicz, even after Columbia and the police both found there was no evidence to believe a rape occurred. But who needs evidence?
Via Campus Reform
Colleges should consider using a preponderance of the evidence standard for sexual assault cases, two U.S. senators told students at George Washington University on Monday.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said that both the judicial and university systems should be involved in preventing sexual assault on campus. Different requirements apply for the separate systems, she said, because the severity of the consequences differ.
“The worst that happens to somebody under Title IX is they get expelled. If you’re convicted of a forcible rape or sodomy, you are going to go to prison for a long time and be a sex offender for the rest of your life,” said McCaskill. She said that preponderance of the evidence standard, a lower standard of evidence than the one used by the criminal justice system, is a “fair standard” for investigations by universities.
The event screened Campus Cover-up, a VICE documentary premiering this Friday on HBO which delves into the issue of campus sexual assault and cover-ups. Immediately afterwards, VICE correspondent Gianna Tobini interviewed McCaskill and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), both of whom participated in the documentary.
Gillibrand said that the processes conducted by college administrators “can get a serial rapist off campus sooner than a trial could” and “if you do not have enough evidence, you might be able to do accommodations” for alleged sexual assault survivors.
“If I were a college president, I would certainly want tools to get a rapist off my campus. If I were to wait for the full legal process to run its course that could be two years, it could be three years,” said Gillibrand, adding that “rape is not a date gone badly, it is not a ‘he said/she said’ confusion, too much drinking” but is typically committed by a predator.