Category Archives: rights

A Necessary Start

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Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is on the verge of issuing actual rules (not “guidance” letters) directing the way in which colleges and universities must handle accusations of sexual assault.  These rules will include

  • the right of every survivor to be taken seriously and the right of every person accused to know that guilt is not predetermined
  • both the alleged victim and the accused would be able to inspect and review all evidence
  • All Title IX hearings would include cross-examination, which could occur in-person or by live stream, with campus adjudicators allowed to observe the demeanor of witnesses as they assess credibility
  • statements of anyone who refuses cross-examination could not be considered in the final determination Title IX judges would be required to consider both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence.
  • acknowledges that schools’ “treatment of both complainant and respondent could constitute discrimination on the basis of sex”
  • both the alleged victim and the accused would enjoy the same opportunities for appeal, and, if both parties agreed, administrators could offer informal resolution processes like mediation
  • universities could still use a weaker “preponderance of evidence” as the standard of proof, similar to civil cases, rather than a higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard.

The proposal is a good start toward redressing the inequities of the Obama administration’s infamous Dear Colleague Letter, but there remain a couple of serious weaknesses.

One is the continued use of the preponderance of evidence standard.  The problem with this is that accusations of assault, whether sexual or other, are accusations of felonies.  That demands the clear and convincing evidence standard.  Related to this is the investigation and adjudication itself.  Such accusations demand the police and a criminal court conduct the investigation and trial, not the school and its administrators.  Sexual harassment accusations also need a more serious standard of proof than 50%-plus-one-minim of belief.

And: as long as acquittals—however a college/university wants to style them—are appealable by the accuser, there still is no justice possible in the proceedings or the rules that structure them.

That Progressive-Democrats object even to this nod toward justice, though, is instructive for 2020 and what a Progressive-Democrat Congress and White House will do to individual liberty.

Bullying

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You can’t wear the clothes you can afford to buy, that are good quality, and that look nice without being ostentatious (you can’t wear your ostentatious rags, either, come to that).  That’s bullying, don’t you know.

That’s the attitude of the Church of England’s Woodchurch High School in northwestern England (it’s across the Mersey from Liverpool—yes, that Mersey).  They’re pretending to “poverty proof” their school, so they sent a letter to their students’ significant overseers (the institution actually refered to “parents/carers”:

As you are all aware from an email that was sent out yesterday, pupils will not be permitted to bring in Canadian (sic) Goose and Monclair (sic) coats after the Christmas break.

In the name of anti-bullying, then, this school’s management is going to bully a different group of kids.  Because clothes make the child, not what he’s taught about character.

Their hypocrisy stinks.

Asylum

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Folks from the “caravan” have begun arriving in the Mexican border town of Tijuana preparatory to their effort to enter the US and ask for asylum.

These folks, claiming to flee government persecution and/or criminal assaults (which isn’t an asylum criterion, anyway), in their home countries, succeeded in escaping those things when they succeeded in entering Mexico—especially with Mexico having offered them asylum (and job opportunities) after that entry.

Now they need to say what they fear about their Mexican hosts that drives their need to flee Mexico and get asylum in the US. Since they haven’t experienced any of that in Mexico, and they have rejected Mexican asylum from their home countries, they should be denied entry into the US and those that do make it in need to be denied asylum here—their requests can only be shams.

Schism?

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The US Conference of Catholic Bishops met last week to consider, among other things, two important mutual accountability proposals that would begin to address the Catholic Church’s history of child molestation by members of the Catholic priesthood—some of whom have gone on to rise in the ranks of Church hierarchy.  The proposals also were simple enough: one simply applied a zero-tolerance policy for sex abuse, and the other would have created an independent review board to investigate claims against bishops and refer credible cases directly to the Vatican.  (I’ll elide the latter’s being a matter of having the weasel rule on alleged violations of the hen house.)

Then Pope Francis told them to sit down and shut up.  Which they meekly did, without action on those proposals.

What to make of these bishops’ timidity? One conclusion is that fealty to a Church prince is more important than protecting our children.

Here’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the San Francisco Archdiocese on the matter:

We’ve heard how important it is to listen to our people.

Sure. But what’s the value of “listening” if you won’t act on their concerns?  Or better, knowing these things are happening, act on your own initiative, not needing to have the concerns of the parents surfaced first as though if they don’t speak up, there’s no problem?

How will we discriminate your “listening” from your simply hearing a noisily empty cacophony?

Do we need an American Catholicism separate from the Vatican’s Catholicism, loosely (perhaps very loosely) analogous to the Church of England’s separation from the Vatican? One that keeps (most of) the foundational tenets of Catholicism, but that also holds the safety of children sacred?

After all, the Church of England was born of a concern for children, too, albeit from a different direction.

Bodies

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Matthew Hennessey, of The Wall Street Journal, had some thoughts on this, as it pertains, I suppose, to (groups of?) people.

One of the most vexing recent developments in the world of words is the tendency to refer to human beings as “bodies.”

I’ve picked out a couple for comment.

California Progressive-Democratic Party Senator Kamala Harris, during the Brett Kavanaugh attempted lynching confirmation hearing, asked the good judge,

Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?

Just to pick out one body of examples, we have a variety of criminal laws that lock up the male body and restrict its avenue of motion and its state of being.

And

The country has done a lot of soul searching over the years about what to call members of minority groups.

All along there has been the obvious term for such folks: Americans.