The White House recently announced detailed guidance for colleges on how to deal with sexual assaults. This won praise from advocates who are hell-bent on making their own rues with regard to justice in criminal matters, but renewed concerns from others about protections for the rights of the accused.
Why should these institutions have any role in investigating or adjudicating sexual assault cases? It’s a matter for police.
The real problem is that now you have the federal government (under Title IX), in conjunction with universities, conducting parallel investigations of matters that fall under local criminal jurisdictions. I feel this is just piling on for political mileage.
Is this is the way we want to handle all criminal matters? Why is it different for sexual crime?
By having an internal judge, jury and executioner only for colleges, it would appear that we should have it for every business and institution in America. Why not have the same thing happen at Google, Apple, Boeing, churches, schools etc? If here is any accusation of a crime at any of these places, it will be handled internally, not through our criminal court system.
Is that the kind of society we want to have?