It starts with an homage to Gertrude, but it’s understandable given that the air has been fouled by a pervasive, presidentially-repeated, fairy tale that plays to the saddest of tears and most fragile of sensibilities. But after that, it kicks butt.
But let’s also be very clear that, especially on American college campuses, there are few crimes where the deck is more stacked against the accused. Good intentions, political capital, and the lure of presumed expertise have combined to create a system that inflates the incident rate, perpetuates misinformation, and ignores due process. In what has been aptly described as an over-correction, higher education has turned the very premise of judicial logic on its head.
Linda LeFauve goes right at it. While there is a question whether there was a need for a correction, such that the current state of affairs is an over-correction, the post at RealClear Politics tries to thread the needle between what we have come to believe versus what’s real. It’s not easy to do.
The post isn’t legally perfect, as there are some omissions, but in the scheme of things, and without an additional thousand words, it’s understandable. Perhaps the only thing that really needed to be included was the untethering of the words “rape” and “sexual assault” from definitions.
Whereas once we understood these words to have meaning, and quite significant meaning, they’ve since morphed into whatever the purported “survivor” feels they are, reducing the words to conclusory gibberish that appeals only to Humpty Dumpty sycophants. It’s difficult to have a discussion, particularly a critical one, if the words at the center are devoid of meaning. This further exacerbates many of the other problems raised by LaFauve, such as empiricalish studies, that rely on such vagaries.
Yet, this is one of the best short pieces on the subject around. For a longer, more in-depth piece, there is the exceptional book by K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, The Campus Rape Frenzy, The Attack On Due Process At America’s Universities.
Sure, this may seem like trying to stop a tidal wave at this point, but there are real people being harmed by this, so we just keep fighting the false narrative of tears with facts.
When somebody sets up a system that railroads people based on gender politics, it’s an over-something, but “correction” doesn’t really see to fit (except, perhaps, for the Nuance Masters).
Morphing the law, or other pursuits of reason, to fit what is believed is the only growth industry left for some people. Similarly with the Clery reporting mentioned, we can count things that don’t happen. Empiricalish? That’s tap dancing at the line, but it works.