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I disagree. The Title IX kangaroo courts were a disgrace to America. The accused had no right to an attorney, no right to remain silent, no right to face their

I disagree. The Title IX kangaroo courts were a disgrace to America. The accused had no right to an attorney, no right to remain silent, no right to face their accuser. They faced panels, of professors, college administrators, and naive fellow students, that were politically hostile to young men and that accepted allegations as necessarily true. Even in civil cases, where there is a preponderance standard, the burden of persuasion is on the plaintiff. Here, the burden was effectively on the defendant. The consequences of a finding against the accused was ruinous to that person's career, and wasteful of their previous investment in their diploma. The consequences of the process itself, where the accused was subject to treatment that would grossly violate the Bill of Rights if it were the government's doing, was likely to prejudice any criminal prosecutions or real civil cases. And yet it was the government mandating this treatment. This is different than an employment situation, where the at-will relationship is understood to govern and employees aren't generally seen as entitled to their job or any due process for ending it. Besides occupying a special place in American society as a necessary rite of passage, a university is charging students tens of thousands of dollars per year to attend. To expel a student without adequate due process, wasting their previous investment in their diploma, is unconscionable. In many of these cases where students were expelled, the only evidence was the allegation itself. Is that the world you want to live in, where a young person's life can be ruined by a single malicious accusation?

rayiner 9y ago
I agree that the university processes are problematic. But the problem isn't the standard of proof. Universities were treating the Title IX process as something with criminal consequences, e.g. metting out punishments for the sexual assault itself. But if you apply civil standards of proof, you can't mete out punishments. You can only adjudicate rights: "which one of us gets to stay?" Title IX proceedings should be directed at nothing more than adjudicating that issue. There should be no public show, there should be a sealed record, etc. > Is that the world you want to live in, where a young person's life can be ruined by a single malicious accusation? The alternative is the world we live in, where a different kind of malicious act (a sexual assault), can force a young person to leave school, or impair her education because she's forced to continue to attend classes with someone who attacked her. For too long, the reaction to accusations of sexual assault was to shift the cost of reduced educational and career opportunities to the victims. The victims were the ones shuffled to different classes, or to different groups in the company, or encouraged to leave the school/company entirely. That's not the world I want to live in either. You can't ignore the cost of false negatives in order to avoid false positives. In the false positive scenario, a young person is forced to leave school due to a malicious act (a false accusation). In the false negative scenario, a young person is forced to leave school, or continue to go to school with someone who attacked her, due to a malicious act (a sexual assault). Both of those outcomes are bad, and if you're being rational, you're trying to minimize SocialCost(false_positives) + SocialCost(false_negatives). Setting the burden of proof high to minimize false positives does not minimize the total social cost. Indeed, in a world where sexual assault is far less common than false accusations thereof, it's completely irrational to set the standard in a way that minimizes the cost from false positives at the expense of increasing the cost from false negatives.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  I think you need to consider the second order effects. If we create a world where people have the power to destroy others with a mere accusation, that will change how people behave. It will create an atmosphere of vindictiveness, fear, and distrust. Having to deal with people who have wronged you, but who you can't prove have wronged you, is just an unfortunate reality of the world. That's how all people lived before the rise of big cities (if they lived in a society with due process), and it's still how millions of people live today in America. If you live in a small town and you get robbed, or mugged, or raped by someone, but the government can't prove it in court, guess what? You can't do anything about the fact that they frequent the same supermarket and same bar, send their kids to the same school, and so forth. In the social contract, this is the cost we pay for the security of our own rights should we ever be accused of wrongdoing. (And of course, a university is not a government or a town, but for the reasons I lay out in the previous comment, I think they should be treated as almost being such. And the comparison informs our intuition as to which social cost is better; it turns out we've already done such analysis and decided, in one similar sphere.) For obvious reasons, there's no solid numbers on the false accusation rate, but the FBI has found that 8% of forcible rape reports were found to be false by investigation. And remember, those are the cases that the accusers decided to take to police. If you were the type inclined to make false allegations, you would be further encouraged by the lower burden of proof in university tribunals. When they opened the East German archives, they found that ordinary people had turned the Stasi into their vehicle for personal vendettas. Got into an argument with your neighbor? Scorned by a lover? Stick the Stasi on them. And this was very widespread. A system created for one purpose, to punish wrongdoers of a certain kind, ended up being used to settle personal feuds. Such is the nature of man. Give people incentives to do bad things, and they will do them. >But if you apply civil standards of proof, you can't mete out punishments. You can only adjudicate rights: "which one of us gets to stay?" Potayto potahto. Getting expelled from your university for sexual assault is the end of you. Whether you call it a punishment or 'adjudication of rights' is for the law professors. (And small point: the way you're framing it is a false dilemma, since there is a third option, 'both', which I discuss above.)
  - rayiner 9y ago

rayiner 9y ago

I agree that the university processes are problematic. But the problem isn't the standard of proof. Universities were treating the Title IX process as something with criminal consequences, e.g. metting out punishments for the sexual assault itself. But if you apply civil standards of proof, you can't mete out punishments. You can only adjudicate rights: "which one of us gets to stay?" Title IX proceedings should be directed at nothing more than adjudicating that issue. There should be no public show, there should be a sealed record, etc. > Is that the world you want to live in, where a young person's life can be ruined by a single malicious accusation? The alternative is the world we live in, where a different kind of malicious act (a sexual assault), can force a young person to leave school, or impair her education because she's forced to continue to attend classes with someone who attacked her. For too long, the reaction to accusations of sexual assault was to shift the cost of reduced educational and career opportunities to the victims. The victims were the ones shuffled to different classes, or to different groups in the company, or encouraged to leave the school/company entirely. That's not the world I want to live in either. You can't ignore the cost of false negatives in order to avoid false positives. In the false positive scenario, a young person is forced to leave school due to a malicious act (a false accusation). In the false negative scenario, a young person is forced to leave school, or continue to go to school with someone who attacked her, due to a malicious act (a sexual assault). Both of those outcomes are bad, and if you're being rational, you're trying to minimize SocialCost(false_positives) + SocialCost(false_negatives). Setting the burden of proof high to minimize false positives does not minimize the total social cost. Indeed, in a world where sexual assault is far less common than false accusations thereof, it's completely irrational to set the standard in a way that minimizes the cost from false positives at the expense of increasing the cost from false negatives.

marcoperaza 9y ago
I think you need to consider the second order effects. If we create a world where people have the power to destroy others with a mere accusation, that will change how people behave. It will create an atmosphere of vindictiveness, fear, and distrust. Having to deal with people who have wronged you, but who you can't prove have wronged you, is just an unfortunate reality of the world. That's how all people lived before the rise of big cities (if they lived in a society with due process), and it's still how millions of people live today in America. If you live in a small town and you get robbed, or mugged, or raped by someone, but the government can't prove it in court, guess what? You can't do anything about the fact that they frequent the same supermarket and same bar, send their kids to the same school, and so forth. In the social contract, this is the cost we pay for the security of our own rights should we ever be accused of wrongdoing. (And of course, a university is not a government or a town, but for the reasons I lay out in the previous comment, I think they should be treated as almost being such. And the comparison informs our intuition as to which social cost is better; it turns out we've already done such analysis and decided, in one similar sphere.) For obvious reasons, there's no solid numbers on the false accusation rate, but the FBI has found that 8% of forcible rape reports were found to be false by investigation. And remember, those are the cases that the accusers decided to take to police. If you were the type inclined to make false allegations, you would be further encouraged by the lower burden of proof in university tribunals. When they opened the East German archives, they found that ordinary people had turned the Stasi into their vehicle for personal vendettas. Got into an argument with your neighbor? Scorned by a lover? Stick the Stasi on them. And this was very widespread. A system created for one purpose, to punish wrongdoers of a certain kind, ended up being used to settle personal feuds. Such is the nature of man. Give people incentives to do bad things, and they will do them. >But if you apply civil standards of proof, you can't mete out punishments. You can only adjudicate rights: "which one of us gets to stay?" Potayto potahto. Getting expelled from your university for sexual assault is the end of you. Whether you call it a punishment or 'adjudication of rights' is for the law professors. (And small point: the way you're framing it is a false dilemma, since there is a third option, 'both', which I discuss above.)
- rayiner 9y ago