Via NY Post:
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week floated completely sensible reforms to Obama-era Title IX policies on how colleges should handle sexual-assault charges. The left’s response? Immediate and predictable: “Stop Betsy” went the outcry on Twitter. Outraged protesters accused her of moving to protect rapists.
“What could DeVos and Trump possibly have to gain by taking away Title IX protections for college women?” tweeted Amy Siskind, of the liberal group The New Agenda — as if DeVos was trying to win over the rapist vote, rather than stop the careless and cruel destruction of the lives of so many young men.
Gov. Cuomo couldn’t resist either: “Betsy DeVos’ proposal is about to make campuses less safe. New York stands with survivors.” Why he thinks false accusations, which DeVos wants to protect against, make campuses safer is a mystery.
Alanna Vagianos, Women’s Editor at Huffpost, retweeted several times the thoroughly debunked statistic that only between 2 percent and 10 percent of rape accusations are actually false. But shouldn’t even a small number of falsely accused men be protected?
The Obama-era system pushes colleges to set up extra-judicial star chambers, which punish accused students via utterly unfair procedures. There’s an assumed guilt, rather than innocence. “Defendants” don’t get lawyers. Due process, of the sort we’re used to in real courts, is tossed by the wayside. And the consequences for the accused — shattered lives and reputations — are often horrific.
“One rape is one too many, one assault is one too many, one aggressive act of harassment is one too many,” says DeVos. But also, “one person denied due process is one too many.”
She’s right. Yet on campuses across the country, more and more young men are losing their due-process rights and suffering tragic consequences — oft-times even when the accuser herself refuses to back the charges.