Title IX, enabling rape

No, I am not making this up, but I wish I were.  A recent article about the troubles at MSU gave this link to their Title IX compliance policy, and the long and short of it is that as currently implemented, it gives authority to "investigate" sexual crimes to people with no capability for collecting circumstantial evidence, with no subpoena power, and few protections for the accused. 


The only offense that is not specifically a crime, as far as I can tell, is harassment, and the end result is a very ugly reality that we've seen in the papers a lot lately; those who would have been indicted by a police investigation go free, and those who would have been exonerated by a police investigation all too often get punished.  If this is representative of what is mandated under federal Title IX law and code, Congress has some work to do.  As things stand, MSU is in the same position that BJU and ABWE were in before GRACE and PII did their investigations, and I suspect most other major schools are in the exact same place as well. 


A good start to reform Title IX would be to make clear that the school's role in cases of criminal misconduct (sexual assault, domestic violence) is to make a report and encourage the complainant to go to the police--and then to follow up with appropriate suspensions when the accused is indicted, and expulsions if the accused is convicted.  Some leeway for harassment--if a student is constantly bothering peers, yes, some discipline can be appropriate outside of the criminal justice system--but bad things happen when you try to do criminal justice without circumstantial evidence, subpoenas, and protections for the accused.