Education Department rewards lying by twisting Title IX
[I]n a recent investigation finding Michigan State University in violation of Title IX, OCR [the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights] required college administrators to offer “remedies” to “Student A,” who both OCR and the university found had made a false allegation of unwelcome sexual misconduct against two fellow students. OCR’s reasoning was that the university did not begin proceedings against the accused students fast enough (even though it immediately kicked them out of their dorm and ordered them to stay away from the accuser).
But the lack of an immediate investigation was not because the university was in any way unsympathetic to victims. Rather, it was due to the fact that the complainant decided not to file formal college charges against the accused (the criminal justice system found her complaint so unbelievable that the accused were never charged, and she declined to pursue formal charges at the college level). It is absurd to demand swift college prosecution of innocent people when the accuser herself does not demand it.
The accused students, whose lives were turned upside down by the charges, were innocent.
Whatever you may think of Title IX’s ‘intent,’ it has been perverted beyond recognition by SJW bureaucrats and University administrators whose livelihood depends on extending it reductio ad absurdum: ‘It’s better that all innocent people be convicted than that one guilty person should go free,’ as we’ve seen at Duke, UVA, Columbia, etc..
A concomitant problem is the Newspeak redefinition of the word “victim.” We are “experiencing the emergence of a victimhood culture that is distinct from the honor cultures and dignity cultures of the past.” At one time we would have seen the falsely accused as the victims, based on the facts. Now, we see liars as victims, based on their genitalia. Training in this thinking starts early:
It doesn’t make violence go away when we always tell boys, “Put that stick down.” Instead, it’s making a world where people, boys and girls alike, have no idea what to do about unjust violence…
When your daughter is the one who’s lying barely conscious on the front yard of some frat house, my sons will be the ones who will know enough to charge in, swinging sticks to chase the brutes away. They’ll know because we let them have sticks, we let them find out what sticks can do, and we told them what sticks are for.
Violence doesn’t take over when boys are allowed to have sticks. Violence takes over when no one tells boys what sticks are for.
This speaks to what Christina Hoff Sommers has called “the war against boys,” and it suggests why we might well expect some change, for the worse, in the behavior of some males. They have not been taught the bases of respect for others. In fact, some boys have been actively prevented from learning it. I’m sure this guy is an example.
Grafting an external conscience onto PajamaBoy is easy, and it comes pre-loaded with unearned guilt. He certainly believes the lie that 1 in 5 college women are raped. He recognizes the State definition of moral behavior as superior to his own. He has secret sympathy, because of his original sin of being male, for radical feminists who propose putting all men in concentration camps.
Among other things boys will learn from playing with sticks, under the guidance of caring adults, are the concepts of fair play, honor and mercy. To wit, chivalry. Chivalry is not a one-sided contract, there used to be very different expectations of both male and female behavior. The contract may have needed modification, and that was in progress, but what happened is that the concept of chivalry has been summarily purged from public discourse. The government, piecemeal and arbitrarily, filled the resulting cultural vacuum.
Just as charitable giving is much smaller among Progressives – it’s the government’s job – we’ve farmed out our consciences to federal regulators.
When you remove the caring adults and enforceable contracts you get Lord of the Flies. When you substitute Big Brother for the guidance of caring adults and make the contract up as you go along you get 1984. We’ve done both.