So youre saying the actual cops would have responded to Jane does gang rape instead of the “cops, but like we work for Cornell first and ignore a gang rape victim telling us she was gang raped when we write up the summation doc for the DA” cops? Ithaca cops that would have arrested the rapists, and then told the school, who could have then done their own academic action regardless of the frat or not?
That is by no means certain. Cops employed by government rather than a private or unelected employer (the legality of which is completely bizarre in a liberal democracy) have a horrible record of abuse despite their theoretical accountability to the public. The DA wasn’t employed by the university, and they went only by Jane Doe’s signed statement to conclude her allegations contradicted elements necessary to charge for rape as defined in state law. The statement she said she was very confident about was produced in an interview led by a campus police investigator alongside a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate, and Jane Doe’s adviser. Government police would have produced a similar statement, except the interview would have lacked university employees, especially the Title IX investigator.
Title IX is an anti-discrimination law that protects students’ equal access to educational opportunities regardless of sex. As long as the institution’s programs & activities don’t sexually discriminate or deny equal access, and a claim doesn’t allege the contrary, such claims lack Title IX interests. School conduct code violations unrelated to Title IX lack legal obligations beyond terms of contract.
Private conduct (of mostly adults) outside the school environment that doesn’t affect it lacks Title IX interests, and it would make total sense for schools to focus more narrowly on legal obligations instead of assuming responsibility beyond that of independent individuals and organizations responsible for their own conduct.
Ironically, the school so far has imposed more adverse action on the accused than have our public institutions, which have imposed none. If the DA’s initial determination is correct, the state may end up imposing nothing for an accusation negated by alleged facts.
Though the results in practice may be worse, I still think public police are preferable to non-public, because they lack conflict of interest to an unelected employer, and they could be held accountable to the public with sufficient public will and reform.
That’s a really strange disclaimer over a fundamental right akin to
Absolutism here isn’t mentioned to disclaim protection of illegal speech, because that’s already unprotected, and no one here would dispute that. In this context, absolutism disclaims protection of unpopular speech people here would denounce, so it disclaims freedom of speech entirely.
This denies the presumption of a fundamental right as protected, which is entirely backward. Fundamental rights are presumed protected, whereas attempts to restrict or challenge them need strict scrutiny. The less common disclaimer
is an asymmetry revealing a copout.
As for regulation, it’s a private device people are free to denounce, customize, or reject for a competitor. People have the liberty to produce & choose censored junk. An open society doesn’t restrict such choices when it can leverage fundamental rights[1] to denounce, criticize, and challenge.
this community seems to cower from defending ↩︎