Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued new regulations for Title IX, which governs how colleges investigate and punish sexual misconduct. DeVos reversed troubling Obama-era guidance which had stripped the accused of the right to an attorney, the right to have a representative question the accuser, and the right to even be informed of the evidence in question.
As we explained last Thursday, DeVos’s new regulations are a necessary step, restoring due process rights to the accused. But it’s worth asking if future efforts should go further, shifting responsibility for addressing campus sexual misconduct from colleges to law enforcement.
In an infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter, the Obama administration interpreted Title IX to suggest that higher education institutions must maintain a quasi-judicial system to try sexual misconduct allegations, with campus officials serving as investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury. While these officials couldn’t apply penal punishments, they could suspend students, expel them, and permanently smear their reputations — all without due process or even the pretense of a fair trial.
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