In 2011, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) proclaimed sexual violence as a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX, and tasked college Title IX offices with finding and punishing sexual violence or risk losing federal funds. College administrators with no experience handling serious or even criminal accusations of misconduct began acting as police, judge, and jury.
Just as concerning, neither the OCR nor campus officials provided procedural protections to students accused of sexual misconduct. Gone were the presumption of innocence, the right to know and respond to complaints, the right to confront witnesses and accusers, and the right to impartial decision-makers to resolve allegations.
Protections such as these are basic rights in the American justice system, but under campus Title IX administration such due process rights were largely cast aside.
Title IX offices at universities today focus on marches and political activism, while ignoring real issues such as the role of alcohol abuse or the encouragement of hook up culture on campus.
The prevailing Title IX ideology purports to protect students, but in reality it puts them at greater and greater risk. College administrators fail women by refusing to engage in discussions surrounding the root causes of sexual misconduct. And they fail men by disregarding their rights of due process in order to score political points.
The hundreds of successful lawsuits against campus Title IX offices show that the current Title IX regime is broken. What can you and I do about it?
The National Association of Scholars hosted this webinar on October 29th at 2PM ET. At this event, we released our report Dear Colleague: The Weaponization of Title IX, which analyzes the consequences of the current Title IX regime on campus and offers a path for reform.
This report was over a year in the making, and tells the never-before-heard story behind the failure of the Title IX regime on campus.
The webinar featured Reason Magazine's Cathy Young, Joseph Roberts, a J.D. candidate at Golden Gate University School of Law and a former falsely accused student, and report author Teresa Manning.
