I found this topic to be near and dear to my heart. You see, William Munny was once on the verge of being expelled from college. Hard to believe, right? I know. But it happened. I’ll get to the details of that in a minute but a recent study has revealed what I knew all along. I wasn’t alone in this. It seems the vast majority of what are regarded as the best colleges in the U.S. don’t give their students due process when accused of wrongdoing.
REPORT: Innocent until proven guilty not a sure thing at majority of top schools
A new study found that students’ due process rights are in jeopardy at more than two-thirds of America’s top colleges and universities.
Over 70 percent of the top 53 institutions in the United States, as rated by U.S. News and World Report, do not guarantee that students have the presumption of innocence when it comes to disciplinary hearings, according to a report published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
The study, which gathered data throughout 2018, graded each of these top universities in the U.S based on the policies instituted by the school. FIRE awarded each college a grade on a scale from zero to 20 points, where an “A” ranges from 17 to 20 points and an “F” is zero to four points.
In its findings, FIRE claims that “[o]f the 53 institutions and 104 policies rated for this report, none received an ‘A’ grade.”
Additionally, less than one percent of the schools obtained a “B” grade overall. The majority of the top institutions received either a “D” or an “F.”
Since the policies varied from school to school, FIRE graded each college in 10 different areas, ranging from a statement declaring the presumption of innocence to students having the right to a hearing with a panel to adjudicate the claim.
Some of the top universities, including Boston College, Harvard University, and the University of Notre Dame, received no higher than a “D” and none of them had a “meaningful presumption of innocence” when it came to accusations of sexual assault.
As for sexual assault stats, CNN would try to debunk any false accusations. “We’ve seen some high-profile cases in which men were wrongfully accused of sexual assault: for example, the Duke lacrosse players and the former football player whose alleged victim later admitted she wasn’t raped. But those appear to be anomalies. Studies suggest the prevalence of false reporting on sexual assault is between 2% and 10%, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.”
Regardless if CNN’s statistical claims are correct or not, and one has to assume that given their not-so-stellar reputation as being tellers of truths, they probably are not, does that make it OK to deny someone due process? What if you’re one of those 2 and 10 per centers who actually didn’t do anything? I was one of those statistics and I wrote about it here. So is it cool to have innocent people’s lives ruined without the benefit of due process?
Additionally, the vast majority of the colleges do not require “timely and adequate written notice” before the holding of a disciplinary hearing and many have one standard for adjudicating sexual assault charges, but another set of standards for non-sexual misconduct charges.
But then again, some don’t have any such standards. Some will apply the same set of “guilty until proven innocent” bullshit in non-sexual charges as well. Here’s where I get to put my two cents in from personal experience. I had a roommate in college who had an enormous knife called, “The Undertaker” that he kept in our room. In fact, I was able to find a picture of the weapon in question:
Anyway, he and I weren’t getting along very well for a period of time, and one day this knife went missing. Apparently he reported that I was the one who took it to school “authorities” because I was called into an office to be accused by the lib-bitch dean of students. She was hell bent on expelling me for the alleged crime. But I was not your typical student. I waited until about six years after graduating high school to attend a “higher learning” institution.
During that time I had a learning experience that proved invaluable to me in the situation I know found myself presented with. When I was about 18, I carelessly left $20 laying on the seat of my unlocked car at work. Not more than 10 minutes later I came back and it was gone. I had seen an transient lurking about the parking lot right before I left my car. I knew he took it. I called the cops and they said, “Did you SEE him take it?”
I had not.
“Then we can’t do anything about it. Yes, it was probably him but even if there’s a $20 bill in his wallet, if he denies it we can’t prove it was yours and have to let him go.”
Lessons learned, don’t leave stuff in your car that thieves might want and lock the damn thing no matter how brief a period of time you leave it unattended.
So back to the school accusation. The libtard dean of students announced that since my roommate said I had taken his knife (despite the fact that she didn’t seem bothered that it was against school policy to be in possession of such a knife in the first place, and that in the state of California such a weapon is illegal since it incorporated “Metal or brass knuckles [PC Section 21810]” in it’s design), she was going to expel me.
Guilty until proven innocent.
Reflecting on the incident I mentioned above, I asked, “So did anyone see me take it?”
“No,” she replied.
“And do you have any idea of how many people come in and out of our room?”
“No,” she said, becoming visibly agitated.
“It’s a lot. Why aren’t all of them in here with me as well?”
She had no answer.
I concluded with, “No one saw me take this knife, so why are we even here? This would not stand up in a court of law. You expel me for this and expect to see a huge law suit filed against you and your school. I think we’re done here.”
She was speechless as I walked out of the room. Nothing came of it and mysteriously, eventually my roommate found his knife.
Now back to the article . . .
The report also found that, in order to expel a student, less than six percent of the top schools required either a panel’s unanimous agreement based on fact-driven findings or clear and convincing evidence to support claims made against them.
“As a number of courts have recognized, the ability to cross-examine witnesses in real time is particularly crucial in campus sexual assault cases, which often lack witnesses and physical evidence and therefore may rely heavily on the relative credibility of the accuser and the accused,” the report stated.
FIRE also found that a substantive hearing, which is fundamental to due process, was required by less than one-third of the schools.
While the Department of Education proposed new regulations in November to put more constitutional safeguards in place, many colleges have yet to implement any type of new policy.
Campus Reform reached out to multiple schools for comment, but none responded in time for press.
In a nutshell, due process doesn’t exist in colleges, this study proves it, and the colleges ain’t sayin’ shit about it or doing anything to change it. It’s nice to have what I’ve known all along to have a study to support my personal experience. But since when do liberals respect Constitutional Rights anyway? Only when it suits their own purposes.
