Nick Wolfinger writes for the Martin Center about the application of federal Title IX rules in campus sexual assault cases.
Rape is an appalling crime. Its perpetrators deserve criminal prosecution and lengthy imprisonment upon conviction. Yet the discourse on sexual assault at American colleges and universities in the past few years has fueled a backlash. Until the recent revelations of #MeToo, colleges have dominated the discussion of sexual misconduct in America. (This focus is misplaced, as young women who don’t attend college have rates of sexual assault more than twice as high as their matriculated peers.)
Much of the emerging backlash concerns false accusations of sexual misconduct. Consider some of the campus rape cases to have received the most media attention over the past decade: the Duke lacrosse players (2006), the University of Virginia assault reported in Rolling Stone (2014), Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University “mattress girl” (2012), and the Baylor athletic department sexual assault cover-up scandal (2015-2016).
The Duke lacrosse and Rolling Stone accusations have been incontrovertibly debunked; the Sulkowicz accusation is almost certainly unfounded. Only the Baylor case, in which the football coach, athletic director, and university president were all fired for systematically suppressing rape allegations, actually reflected sexual misconduct. Colleges and universities are themselves contributing to the proliferation of false accusations. Ironically, these false accusations have ensued from a misguided policy intended to protect the interests of rape survivors: the 2011 Department of Education directive known as the “Dear Colleague” letter.
