ACLU Sells Out

Ziggurat said:
First, that doesn't prohibit schools from taking action, so they likely will.

Second, and more importantly, why should the school be responsible for handling cases that don't occur on school property or at school events? Non-students don't get this extra justice system to handle assaults. What makes students so special?

This complaint stinks of classism.
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I would say your POV stinks of partisanship on your side given the Reason white-male-privilege POV.

And just which class am I biased for or against? The DeVos class?

But let's move past that.

There are many reasons a school should be concerned about these specific matters involving students and staff. DeVos wants to absolve anything related to the schools, that's quite convenient.

But the school taking formal action doesn't mean the school need take responsibility for legal actions but they certainly should be involved.
 
The Big Dog said:
The Education Department has officially released new rules on how to enforce Title IX, the federal statute that forbids sex and gender-based discrimination in public schools. here is a primer on the new Regs from Washington Post to get you up to speed.

Shockingly, the ACLU raised an objection to the regs that is absolutely stunning:

"It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused and letting schools ignore their responsibility under Title IX to respond promptly and fairly to complaints of sexual violence."

-ACLU Tweet

"inappropriately favoring the accused" is not something I think anyone would ever have conceived the ACLU as arguing, but there it is.

Here is an article collecting objections to the ACLU's outrageous position



Really mind boggling....
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What's really mind-boggling is your inability to actually understand what DeVos' proposal is meant to achieve (absolving the big money players - the universities from any responsibility, and making it harder to file harassment complaints) and your feeble attempt to divert it to a question of fifth amendment protections to cover for the usual big-money-focused policies of DeVos and Trump. That you choose a libertarian blog is strange for a Bernie-supporting socialist, but any port in a storm, eh? That you choose/chose to not actually find the readily available full explanation for their objections, though, is not in the least surprising.

Do we take it that your brief romance with the ACLU is over? We knew that wouldn't end well and you were heading for a broken heart the next time they supported a cause you didn't like (or didn't support a cause you liked).
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I would say your POV stinks of partisanship on your side given the Reason white-male-privilege POV.
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Bwahahahaha! You’re like a character straight out of central casting. Can you get any more cliched?

But seriously, how delusional is this? The primary victims of unfair title IX proceedings are not white males, but black males.

And just which class am I biased for or against? The DeVos class?
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The college educated class. Why do they deserve protections that the general public doesn’t have?

There are many reasons a school should be concerned about these specific matters involving students and staff. DeVos wants to absolve anything related to the schools, that's quite convenient.
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First, this doesn’t, second, given that universities are an overwhelmingly Democrat constituency, no, actually, shielding them wouldn’t be quite convenient.

But the school taking formal action doesn't mean the school need take responsibility for legal actions but they certainly should be involved.
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I asked why. You haven’t provided any reason.
 
Apathia said:
Somehow not included in discussion ACLU:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-ri...MOXU9d9YjKzLy8ePTMvn5fjUbVcn3fo65HbQVl-SmGQs0
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Their argument about standards of proof is crap. First, in a sexual harassment claim, both sides do NOT have equivalent risks in the proceedings, and that provides very good reason to not use the preponderance standard. Second, schools generally do NOT use the preponderance of evidence standard for accusations against employees. Nobody seems to be upset about that, I wonder why. Why should they hold students to a laxer standard of proof than employees?
 
Apathia said:
Somehow not included in discussion ACLU:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-ri...MOXU9d9YjKzLy8ePTMvn5fjUbVcn3fo65HbQVl-SmGQs0
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Maybe because they posted it several hours after the thread was posted, and interesting focuses on “women’s rights” rather than on civil liberties of the accused? Schools would favor a standard of proof that favors the respondent? That means the defendant, that means the accused.

How dare we suggest that the standard of proof fall on the government?

ACLU wants to roll back civil rights protections on targets of governmental prosecutions.

ACLU has sold out.
 
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“Under the new rules, schools would be required to hold live hearings and would no longer rely on a so-called single investigator model that has become common at colleges. Accusers and students accused of sexual assault must be allowed to cross-examine each other through an adviser or lawyer. The rules require that the live hearings be conducted by a neutral decision maker and conducted with a presumption of innocence.”

Due process and presumption of innocence.

Sounds pretty reasonable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/betsy-devos-title-ix.html
 
The Big Dog said:
“Under the new rules, schools would be required to hold live hearings and would no longer rely on a so-called single investigator model that has become common at colleges. Accusers and students accused of sexual assault must be allowed to cross-examine each other through an adviser or lawyer. The rules require that the live hearings be conducted by a neutral decision maker and conducted with a presumption of innocence.”

Due process and presumption of innocence.

Sounds pretty reasonable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/betsy-devos-title-ix.html
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You keep missing the point that under the new rules schools would not even be required to investigate a large percentage of complaints that they must investigate now, and the college's liability would be reduced.

From your link:
The regulations mirror a draft proposal first reported by The New York Times in August, which established a narrower definition of sexual harassment, tightened reporting requirements, relieved colleges of the responsibility to investigate off-campus episodes, and outlined steps schools should take to provide support for accusers. They also give schools the flexibility to choose a higher evidentiary standard, establish an appeals process, and offer the option of cross-examination.
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Bob001 said:
You keep missing the point that under the new rules schools would not even be required to investigate a large percentage of complaints that they must investigate now, and the college's liability would be reduced.

From your link:
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You keep missing the point that the ACLU has come out against changes in the regulations that afford additional protections to the accused.

By the way, reducing the scope of complaints that they must investigate is a feature, not a bug.
 
Notably, the changes to the Regs were driven in part by court opinions holding that the existing procedures were unconstitutional.

See for example this opinion https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca6/16-4693/16-4693-2017-09-25.html

“The Due Process Clause guarantees fundamental fairness to state university students facing long-term exclusion from the educational process. The Committee necessarily made a credibility determination and its failure to provide any form of confrontation of the accuser made the proceeding fundamentally unfair.”

It is a disgrace that the ACLU has totally abandoned promoting Constitutional safeguards designed to protect against governmental overreaching.
 
Here is FIRE’s analysis:

https://www.thefire.org/new-propose...ds-for-free-speech-and-due-process-on-campus/

“Back in August, FIRE’s Robert Shibley highlighted some important provisions contained in a leaked draft of new Title IX regulations that were expected to be released shortly by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Today, the department officially released its proposed regulations and will now solicit public comment. As FIRE hoped, these proposed rules include a number of crucial clarifications and mandates for schools that, if finalized, would help ensure they afford fair hearings to students accused of sexual misconduct while taking seriously all accusations of such misconduct.”

Hear hear!
 
Bob001 said:
You keep missing the point that under the new rules schools would not even be required to investigate a large percentage of complaints that they must investigate now
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Good. Universities are not day care centers. University students are, for the most part, legal adults. They can solve minor problems themselves.
 
Ziggurat said:
Good. Universities are not day care centers. University students are, for the most part, legal adults. They can solve minor problems themselves.
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How, exactly? And who gets to decide what's a "minor" problem? Is everything that the police won't make an arrest for too "minor" for the college to notice? What would you say about an employer who told an abused employee, "You're adults. Work it out." There is no reason why a college shouldn't have standards of conduct for its students on campus and off, and no reason why it shouldn't enforce them.
 
Bob001 said:
How, exactly?
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The same way everyone who isn't a university student does.

And who gets to decide what's a "minor" problem?
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That's already been spelled out in these rules. If you're really curious, go read them, or at least the official summary (not press reports).

Is everything that the police won't make an arrest for too "minor" for the college to notice?
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Not according to these rules.

What would you say about an employer who told an abused employee, "You're adults. Work it out."
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Depends on what you mean by "abused". But for certain behavior that an employee might not like, yes.

And since you mentioned employees, it's worth pointing out that most universities had a double standard: employees accused of sexual misconduct were afforded protections that students were denied. These new rules help remedy that.

There is no reason why a college shouldn't have standards of conduct for its students on campus and off, and no reason why it shouldn't enforce them.
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There's a very good reason colleges shouldn't have standards of conduct for students off campus: they aren't their ******* parents.
 
Bob001 said:
How, exactly? And who gets to decide what's a "minor" problem? Is everything that the police won't make an arrest for too "minor" for the college to notice?
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Well in the case of making an arrest I'd say that'd be the police wouldn't it?

What would you say about an employer who told an abused employee, "You're adults. Work it out."
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Wouldn't that depend on the circumstances of the abuse? If the abuse has absolutely nothing to do with the employer or the workplace then the employer, whose comment would be callous, would be entirely correct in not doing anything. Why? Because it has nothing to do with them.

There is no reason why a college shouldn't have standards of conduct for its students on campus and off, and no reason why it shouldn't enforce them.
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But why? If A meets B at A's best friend's-cousin's-neighbour's-daughter's-boyfriend's party during the semester break, get drunk, have sex and then A regrets it afterwards, why should the university be responsible for this?
 
BobTheCoward said:
It isn't given that what is at stake here is a right of the accused.
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I have examined the issue and concluded it is. Do you have an argument for why it is not, or are you just stating that you haven’t made a determination yourself?
 
I think the ACLU has discovered intersectionality. Civil rights are less important for college-aged males.
 
Ziggurat said:
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There's a very good reason colleges shouldn't have standards of conduct for students off campus: they aren't their ******* parents.
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A university is a voluntary membership organization. Nobody is required to join, and nobody is entitled to join. It's not unreasonable for the university to establish and enforce minimum codes of conduct for membership, and "You can't assault other students anyplace, anytime" doesn't seem like a wildly unreasonable standard.
 
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