Yes, treat it as a criminal matter

I realize I'm being a bit repetitive here, but I've just seen some more evidence that the recommendation I'm giving to children's workers at my church--take it to the police because they have huge resources, subpoena power, the capability of collecting physical evidence, and finally because if it's in their hands, they take the blame when something is dropped--really ought to be applied fairly uniformly at colleges, high schools, and universities.


How so?  Well, Title IX actually reads this way:  No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.


The argument for including discipline for sexual assault and harassment under this law is simply that, since colleges do have student codes of conduct, that they ought to take action regarding sexual assaults and such committed/alleged by students.  So far, so good.


Now the question is, then, absent subpoena power, collection of physical evidence, and quite frankly experience, whether the schools have the expertise to do this well.  Well, my alma mater and her archrival, the University of Michigan, have shown that their best and brightest seem to have slightly less expertise in this area than a small town police department.


How so?  Well, Michigan first; they've responded to a court decision requiring cross examination of accusers to be permitted by requiring that the accused do the cross examination himself, a violation of best practice in the area that goes back at least to my childhood, not to mention the proverb "A man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client."  Take a bow, Ann Arbor.


Not to be outdone, Michigan State has decided that their response to the Title IX changes is going to be to deny the need for cross examination at all, as if the (Constitutionally required) right of confronting evidence does not matter.  They've also upped the ante by claiming that "preponderance of evidence" is an adequate protection of the rights of the accused, as if activists in the Title IX office wouldn't tend to tip that one way or the other. 


The upshot of all this?  If schools are going to ignore legal best practices and Circuit court rulings, some court in the future is extremely likely to decide "given this abysmal level of competence, maybe we'd better get rid of the regulation in toto."  There would be great humor value in this if healing for the abused wasn't at stake.  But it is.


Again, let's treat this as the criminal matter that it is.