Campus Hook-Up Culture and Title IX Sex Police Meet Due Process

The sexual misconduct case of John Doe v. Grinnell College just settled, joining over 200 other such cases vindicating male students falsely accused of nonconsensual sexual relations on campus.  It appears the college hook-up culture is moving from Title IX sex police to courtroom due process.

Title IX is the federal law which bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds. Since 2011, when President Obama’s Education Department declared in a Dear Colleague Letter that sexual violence was a form of sex discrimination, it has required campuses to expand Title IX offices with coordinators, investigators, and adjudicators to handle sexual misconduct complaints. Acting as law enforcement, judge, and jury, these officials are sometimes referred to as the campus sex police.

John Doe was a sophomore in November 2015 when he learned that a female student had complained that two of their prior sexual liaisons one year earlier had been non-consensual. The female student did not want Doe formally investigated, but she also did not want him to attend her upcoming study abroad trip. The matter was resolved informally.

A few months later, however, a second female student expressed the same concern about Doe regarding relations she had with him the previous summer. Grinnell’s Title IX Office then, on its own initiative, opened a formal investigation into both claims. Doe insisted his relations with both females were consensual.

To adjudicate, Grinnell hired Marsha Ternus, former Iowa Supreme Court Judge known principally as one of three judges kicked off the Court in a 2010 recall election after it mandated same-sex marriage under the state Constitution. Ternus met with neither the investigation team, nor the second female student, as required by Grinnell policy, but still found Doe at fault on both counts. She then recommended his expulsion, “based upon a predatory pattern of behavior.” Doe’s internal appeal failed. He later learned that Ternus had provided additional documents and commentary to Grinnell’s reviewing official in off-the-record communications, to which he had not been given the opportunity to respond.

Sensing that both the process and the personnel favored complainants from the start, Doe sued the College in March of 2017, claiming the school itself had violated Title IX by discriminating against him on the basis of sex. He also stated that Ternus’s off-the-record communications violated Grinnell’s own policies and his due process rights­—specifically, his right to a neutral judge.

In July, an Iowa federal trial court gave Doe almost complete vindication. In a ruling by Obama appointee, Rebecca Ebinger, the Court noted that the Grinnell policy required an impartial decision-maker and that the off-the-record communications here not only called that objectivity into question but also cast doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome. Even more seriously, the Court decided that Ternus herself seemed biased against Doe, in particular because she ignored exculpatory evidence of consent, including statements by the second female student that, “I turned back towards him, and was like I—I responded—I like kissed him … I guess I just felt like fine, it’s just sex.”

Doe’s case is one of 480 such lawsuits filed in both state and federal courts, of which almost half have found in favor of males wrongly accused. These statistics alone indict the campus sex police and the current Title IX regime.

What went wrong?

First of all, campus personnel are not law enforcement and campus adjudications are not courts. Sexual violence is criminal activity and belongs in the criminal justice system—where both accusers and the accused have due process and other protections. These due process protections are lacking in the campus Title IX Office. Fortunately, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has withdrawn the 2011 Obama guidance. The Trump Administration is expected to issue replacement regulations soon, which, judging by the draft DeVos released last November, will respect this distinction.

Second, it should be noted that the hyper-sexualization of campus culture combined with the politicization of higher education creates a perfect storm that injures everyone. As the hook-up culture name implies, sex is now almost the default activity, undercutting female resistance so that women find themselves later regretting sexual encounters.

At the same time, regretted sex is not coerced sex. In hindsight, women may claim these relations were non-consensual and, in fact, are often encouraged to do by an anti-male political bias on campus, as exemplified by the actions of Marsha Ternus in the Grinnell case. That a former judge, deemed too radical for the courts, found a comfortable home as a Title IX adjudicator speaks volumes about both campus politicization and the current state of Title IX.

The Grinnelloutcome may bring some justice to one aggrieved male student, but policy makers and schools would do well to re-think their entire approach to discrimination, dating, and sex to help prevent cases like Doe’s in the first place. We need a better understanding of healthy relationships and more consensus on how to promote them, along with neutral decision-makers and basic due process protections when things go wrong

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Why Oxford and Cambridge are still the best universities in Britain

My eldest son is a design engineer, a profession he settled on when he was five. When he was applying to university, he dithered between going to Loughborough, a world-leader in his field, and Oxford, which didn’t teach the subject at all.

In the end, he opted for human sciences at Oxford and has never regretted his decision. Now in his 20s, he understands – even more clearly than at 18 – that an Oxbridge education opens professional doors that might have been slower to admit him with a degree from elsewhere.

We live in an age when a university education has become a commodity. Oxford and Cambridge are undoubtedly among the world’s leading brands, alone among British universities regularly ranked in the top 10 of international league tables.

In 2019, Oxford was placed fourth in the QS rankings and seventh in the Shanghai rankings, with Cambridge seventh and fourth respectively. This tends to mean that those with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge are immediately prioritised by employers.

While international league tables are concerned primarily with research rather than teaching quality, there’s some justification in believing employers have got the right end of the stick.

Though it’s fashionable to decry these two universities as unfairly favouring polished public school products over state school educated students with genuine potential, what Oxford and Cambridge actually favour is a demonstrable background of relentless industry – evidenced in top grades in public examinations. It’s a quality these universities continue to demand in nerve‑jangling application once a candidate has made it past their taxing admissions process. 

Despite ongoing traditions of white-tie balls and candlelit dining, Oxbridge today bears little resemblance to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited or Boris Johnson’s Bullingdon. With ever more competitive admissions, the main focus of students required to cram their studies into three eight-week terms, rather than the leisurely 10 weeks allocated elsewhere, is the persistent, pressing burden of weekly or biweekly essays.

As I explained to one applicant, concerned he’d have insufficient time for sport, those taking natural sciences at Cambridge spend 40 hours a week studying. He knew, of course, he’d be able to sail through a similar degree elsewhere on significantly fewer hours.

The well-organised, effortlessly clever or don’t‑give‑a-damn still manage to juggle the extra-curricular politics, journalism or drama considered desirable for career advancement in these professions – and, here, these universities continue to offer the opportunity to network both with those likely to succeed in the future and the alumni who’ve done so in the past.

For the intellectually curious with a genuine passion for their subject, the educational advantages remain equally clear: the one-to-one teaching system, which distinguishes both universities, allows undergraduates to interact regularly with some of the leading thinkers in the world. Choosing your college wisely can mean your weekly supervision or tutorial will be overseen by someone who has written the definitive text. And that is the real excitement of Oxbridge.

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Australian private schools want 'hire and fire' freedom

The peak body representing more than 500 independent schools in NSW says the government has offered to "provide clarification" in the next iteration of its religious discrimination bill to make it clear they will be able to preference teachers on their faith.

Attorney-General Christian Porter declared, however, that the draft bill already protected the right of faith-based schools to choose staff on religious grounds and any suggestion otherwise was a misunderstanding.

The Association of Indepen-dent Schools of NSW warned in its submission on the draft legislation that the draft put in jeopardy a school's right to employ religious teachers and enrol religious students before others.

Mr Porter staunchly rejected that interpretation of the draft bill. "The reason why we have held nine long and separate face-to-face roundtable consultations with over 90 representatives from religious bodies, anti-discrimination groups, employer organisations and others is to minimise any misunderstanding about how the bill would operate, but clearly this is one of those misunderstandings," Mr Porter said.

"My office has spoken with the Association of Independent Schools of NSW today because, having read their submissions, it appears there is a mistake in their understanding of the operation of section 10, which specifically protects religious schools."

Under section 10, a religious body such as a school does not discriminate against a person by engaging in conduct that may "reasonably be regarded as being in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of the religion in relation to which the religious body is conducted".

Geoff Newcombe, chief executive of AIS NSW, said Mr Porter's office had assured the organis-ation that faith-based schools were appropriately protected in relation to employing staff. "They understand our concerns and have said they will provide clarification in the next draft of the bill," Dr Newcombe said.

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching said while section 10 established a positive right rather than an exemption for religious bodies, some groups she had met had expressed concerns about how well defined that right was. "Labor has stated we consider this to be an issue above partisan politics and we look forward to receiving briefings from the Attorney-General, but we can only work with the government if they want to work with us," she said.

Liberal Eric Abetz said the association's submission raised a "fair concern that needs to be looked at in some detail" while his colleague Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said it was just one of a number of problems religious leaders, experts and stakeholders had canvassed.. "The (religious freedom re-forms) do not create a positive right to freedom of religion which religious leaders, experts and stakeholders have been calling for and which meet our international obligations," she said.

"It is clear from my ongoing consultations and engagement with them that the bills fall far short of properly and fully addressing their requirements for religious freedom protection."

AIS NSW said if there were two equally qualified candidates for the role of an English teacher but one was agnostic and the other shared the religious beliefs of the school, it could be seen as discriminatory to hire the latter under the draft bill. That was because there may be no "inherent requirement" as outlined in the bill to hire a religious teacher for an English teaching job.

From "The Australian" of 4 Oct., 2019