© Rebecca Cook/REUTERS
Students walk at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., September 20, 2018.
Students walk at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., September 20, 2018.
Yesterday, the New York Times published a student activist's op-ed with a rather provocative title: "When College Rapists Graduate."
Now, when you read those words, what do you think? I initially thought the story must be about a prison education program. After all, rape is an extraordinarily serious crime. It was punishable by death until relatively recently in American history, and even now it's punishable by long prison sentences.
Instead, it turns out that the piece, written by a law student and activist named Alyssa Leader, laments the outcome of a campus sexual-assault adjudication and condemns the Trump administration's efforts to introduce a greater degree of due-process protections to the campus tribunals that hear such cases. Leader had claimed that she was sexually assaulted and harassed by another student. She filed a complaint against him with the university (Harvard), which, after applying the most lenient burden of proof and a degree of due process that would never be acceptable in any criminal or civil court, found him not responsible. Later, she sued Harvard - not the man she alleges assaulted her - because, as her lawyer told the New York Times, "The more traumatic of the two is the institutional betrayal and lack of response to her reporting." A judge dismissed the case.
It's against this backdrop that Leader now complains that her alleged assaulter "got a coveted job, where he'll only have more power as time goes on." The message is crystal clear - not only should colleges adjudicate sexual-assault claims under the most lenient possible standards, they should act as a firewall against the future careers of young men in the crosshairs. After all, unless colleges act now, the alleged harassers of today will grow up to be the Harvey Weinsteins of tomorrow.
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