In the scheme of socially engineered trade-offs, like eliminating the vestiges of perceived sexism in exchange for the collateral consequences of destroying some poor kid’s life, the war is largely waged at the rhetorical level.

On the one side, you have social justice warriors ‘splaining their feelings when a guy tries to convince them to have sex, or their friends explain days later that they didn’t actually consent when they completely consented because of the laundry list of excuses for post-hoc regret.

And it stops being rhetorical when there’s a dead body.

A male student who was accused of sexual harassment committed suicide just days after the University of Texas at Arlington ignored its own policies in order to punish him.

It can never be entirely clear why a person commits suicide. Whether this was the cause, or the straw that broke the camel’s back is unknown. After all, Thomas Klocke is dead, so no one can ask him.

College administrators, as well as members of the media and legislators, would do well to remember the name Thomas Klocke. Klocke, a straight male, was accused by a gay male student of writing anti-gay slurs on his computer during a class. Klocke vehemently denied the accusation, and administrators who investigated the incident acknowledged there was no evidence to support the accuser’s claims, yet Klocke was still punished.

Ashe Schow goes on to explain how the Title IX “process,” how the administrators, how the faux abuse of law in the name of social justice, failed Thomas Klocke. For anyone following such matters, it’s not a new story.

The accusing student, who is being sued by Klocke’s father for defamation, claims that in May 2016, Klocke made a comment during a class about “privilege,” and then proceeded to open his laptop and type “gays should die” into his web browser’s search bar. The accuser (who is not being named because Watchdog was unable to contact him for comment) claims he typed into his own browser search bar, “I’m gay.”

The accuser next claimed that Klocke feigned a yawn and said under his breath: “Well, then you’re a faggot.” The accuser says he told Klocke he should leave the class, to which Klocke allegedly responded: “You should consider killing yourself.”

The accuser claims he was made so uncomfortable by the exchange that he waited until the end of class and spoke to the professor, who allegedly told him to contact student support services. There is no documentation to suggest the professor was interviewed in the course of the investigation in order to corroborate the accuser’s claims. The attorney for Klocke’s father, Kenneth Chaiken, told Watchdog the professor never provided a witness statement, suggesting he was never asked what he saw that day.

Which is it, believe the accuser or require proof? This is where a split occurs that defines the relative seriousness of the two sides. For those who are dedicated to the cause of ending all hurt feelings, there is no choice but to believe the accuser. They may try to hide behind the old prosecutor’s claim of “why would a cop lie,” varied slightly to cover the purported “survivor” despite the status being elevated in the eyes of peers to martyrdom, but then, it similarly serves to preclude questioning the truth of the claims. Then again, to question a victim is to blame them, to be an apologist for the terrible wrongs that must be stopped.

On the other side, the harm done the accused is inconsequential.  What’s the worst that can happen, a guy gets expelled? How can you compare getting expelled with rape? Except that’s a false comparison. Framing the issue in this way is disingenuous, as it begs the question. By assuming that the wrong, the rape or in this case the “hate speech” against gays, in fact occurred before, or despite, proof, the trivialization of punishment appears justifiable. It’s no different than the cops justifying testilying because they know the defendant is guilty.

If the proposition was posed that male students should be suspended, expelled, at random just to make a general point that men shouldn’t sexually assault women, would that be acceptable? What if it was to remind people not to engage in “hate speech”? Sufficient? Hardly. Only by combining the two prongs, the presumption that accusers are telling the truth with the trivialization of harm caused by punishment of the unproven guilty does this seem acceptable.

But for Thomas Klocke, it may have been too much to take. Guys are people too. They have hopes and dreams of happy, productive futures, and spend the same years in school, studying, working, trying, to achieve those dreams. They feel the same thrill at being admitted to college, and the same disappointment at getting a lousy grade on an exam. They imagine what their life will be like when they graduate, get that job they’ve worked toward, and have families to love and love them in return.

And then it is destroyed, ended, when an accusation is made that brings all they’ve worked for to a crashing halt under some absurd system crafted to vindicate the vague social justice tears of passionate warriors who, despite neither knowing of, nor caring about, Thomas Klocke, fought to destroy his life.

It was never that rape or sexual assault was acceptable. Whether hurting a gay guy’s feelings are the same thing is a separate question. But in no event should lives be destroyed in the absence of proof and a fair opportunity to challenge it. Yet, that’s the system so many believe is not only acceptable, but absolutely necessary to vindicate their vague notions of social justice, their efforts to re-engineer society to promote one side of a cause at the expense of others.

What about Thomas Klocke? He can’t say, because he’s dead. And you don’t really care anyway, because you’ve bought into the fallacies that allow this to happen. And when it’s all in the name of social justice, a dead body is just the price we have to pay.