Deadline For "Unfair" Sex Policies Under Title IX - But There's an Alternative

WASHINGTON - Aug. 14, 2020 - PRLog -- Today is the deadline for all institutions of higher education to adopt new policies for investigating and adjudicating complaints of date rape and other sexual assaults in accordance with new Title IX regulations issued by the Department of Education [DoEd] which many consider unfair to complainants, but the new rules also permit and indeed encourage colleges and universities to stop investigating the complains entirely, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

The new legally binding rules were heavily criticized by various competing interests, but few seemed to notice that the new regulations permit and even "encourage" colleges to avoid all of the problems, and even law suits, involved with conducting their own investigation and campus trials, suggests professor Banzhaf.

DoEd has now formally encouraged the use of entirely new methods for dealing with such complaints which it says "represent the potential for innovation" to "impartially reach accurate determinations while treating both parties fairly."

In its own words, "the Department believes these [regional center] models represent the potential for innovation with respect to how recipients might best fulfill the obligation to impartially reach accurate factual determinations while treating both parties fairly. The Department encourages recipients to consider innovative solutions to the challenges presented by the legal obligation for recipients to fairly and impartially investigate and adjudicate these difficult cases, and the Department will provide technical assistance for recipients with questions about pursuing regional center models."

In a nutshell, the plan which DoEd has now formally endorsed permits and even now encourages individual colleges to get out of the business of investigating and adjudicating claims of rape on their own campus.  Instead, many colleges in a city or region would establish and fund - on a pre-determined pro-rata basis - an independent regional center which would hire its own staff to conduct investigations of rape allegation from all of it members, and then conduct hearings to determine guilt or responsibility.

This, Banzhaf successfully argued to DoEd, would eliminate the three major problems which exist today: inherent and inescapable conflicts of interest, inadequate investigatory resources, and inexperience and inability to conduct fair hearings.

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf