Quote of the Day:

College rape tribunals not only run the risk of wrongly stigmatizing innocent students as sex offenders, but they also betray victims of sexual assault by not locking up dangerous predators.

  –Robert D. Carle, college professor

As you might know, the Independent Women’s Forum recently held a panel on the issue of sexual assault on campus and the Obama administration’s hyped numbers regarding sexual assault. We take seriously any accusation of sexual misconduct, but we have been concerned with both the inflated statistics and policies regarding campus assaults that are coming from the Obama administration.

Specifically, the Obama administration, relying on Title IX, is attempting to force colleges to deal with these accusations through campus tribunals that do not allow due process for the accussed. 

People who question these supposedly pro-woman, pro-victim policies advocated by the Obama administration are accused of being anti-woman. To the contrary.

Many of us would agree with Robert D. Carle, theology professor at The King’s College, a small evangelical school in New York, that campus rape is such a serious criminal matter that it belongs in criminal court, not a campus tribunal.  

In a piece in the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse, Carle explores “The Trouble with Campus Rape Tribunals:”

The Obama administration should abandon its plans to construct a shadow justice system on college campuses. Instead, the administration should insist that victims seek justice through courts and law enforcement agencies. These institutions have the skills to make determinations of guilt and innocence in a way that respects the civil liberties of both the accused and the accuser, and they alone have the power to incarcerate dangerous criminals.

We realize that taking a rape case to trial is difficult for women victims. But the civil liberties of the accuser and accused must be protected if there is to be a just outcome. A kangaroo court is not the right venue for a procedure that will be life-changing for two young people.