Free Republic

Conservatives have long accused academics of shredding the Constitution, figuratively speaking, but a Project Veritas sting operation recently caught them doing it literally. Undercover video released last week showed administrators at Yale, Cornell, Syracuse, Vassar and Oberlin agreeing to rip up copies of the Constitution handed out off campus after an investigator posing as a student described the document as “triggering” and “oppressive.” “Well, I think that the Constitution means things to different people; like you said it is a flawed document and the people who wrote it are certainly flawed individuals in my mind,” Cornell lead Title IX investigator...

We are still, for the most part, a nation of laws, except on college campuses. At the Heritage Foundation recently, Samantha Harris, director of policy research at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), said that “students have complained about the lack of due process” at colleges. “In the last five years, thanks to unprecedented intrusion by the federal government…due process has gotten a lot worse,” she said. Too often, accused students are left “without a hearing or [cannot] confront their accuser” in court, Harris averred. By her estimate, “more than 60 students have filed lawsuits” of unfair treatment...

When federal politicians passed the Higher Education Act, they thought they were only going to help good students who couldn’t otherwise afford college to attend. They did not think about possible unintended consequences — like making college far more expensive, undermining academic standards, or giving federal bureaucrats leverage to dictate to colleges and universities. But all of that has happened. I’m going to focus on that last consequence—the way federal intervention in higher education has empowered bureaucrats to whittle away at free speech on (and even off) campus. A strange case involving a student at the University of Kansas illustrates...

It doesn't seem to matter what a college does when responding to a sexual assault accusation — they are always wrong. That's according to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which investigates colleges and universities for alleged Title IX violations. In a recent ruling against Michigan State University, OCR determined the school had violated Title IX because it took too long — four days — to remove accused students from their dorms. The fact that the students weren't immediately evicted from campus, even though an investigation hadn't even started, was also evidence of a violation. OCR looked at...

<snip> Judge Norman K. Moon denied W&L's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing John Doe — as he is referred to in the claim — to continue to seek damages resulting from his expulsion from the university. John believes he was wrongly accused of sexual misconduct, and Moon appears to agree. On Feb. 8, 2014, John and his eventual accuser, Jane Doe, met at an off-campus party. The two danced, talked and kissed. The two eventually went back to John's residence and talked for awhile. Jane then walked over to John and allegedly told him, "I usually don't have sex...

Pay equality activists are at it again. This time they’re using the success of the U.S. women’s soccer team in the World Cup final to push their agenda. According to Politico, what we really need to be talking about is the players’ paychecks. “Pay for professional women’s soccer players is at best paltry and at worst outright shameful compared to those of their male counterparts. (The U.S. men’s team is currently ranked 27, compared with the world-champion women),” Mary Pilon writes. “Yet the total payout for the Women’s World Cup this year will be $15 million, compared with the total...

RALEIGH The UNC-Chapel Hill wrestling coach who has been a critic of how universities handle sexual assault allegations that do not go through the courts is out of a job. After 12 seasons as head coach of the UNC wrestling program, C.D. Mock was “relieved of his duties” by UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham. “I made the decision that a coaching change was in the best interest of our wrestling program moving forward,” Cunningham said in a prepared statement. “I believe a new head coach will re-energize the program and return it to the level of success I expect from...

CIRCULAR TYRANNY Can someone be penalized under a law merely for publicly criticizing it? Northwestern University adjudicated a sexual harassment case against Professor Laura Kipnis after activists filed two complaints over a Kipnis column in the Chronicle Review that criticized activists for exploiting Title IX to create “sexual paranoia” on campuses. They decided that criticism doesn’t constitute a Title IX violation … for now: In the Review essay, published in February, Ms. Kipnis decried a prevailing “sexual paranoia” on college campuses. She alluded to Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern who has been accused of sexual misconduct by...

You’d best get out your hip waders, folks – we’re about to wade through a steaming pile of government balderdash. The controversy surrounds a storage shed built by the baseball booster club at Arbor View High School in Las Vegas. The youngsters needed a place to store their bats and balls and bases. The boosters had wanted to build a clubhouse for the teenage ball players, but after months of delay they came up with an alternative plan. One of the parents knew the owner of a company that made precast one-story buildings. The company offered to donate the manpower...

VINTON – In between speaking to students and signing books for whoever wanted one, Olympic gold medalist and Iowa wrestling legend Dan Gable was gracious enough to sit down with me and answer a few of my questions. To me, Dan Gable is not only a sports and human inspiration, but he’s also the subject of one of my all-time favorite pieces of journalism.  I used this interview opportunity to ask him a couple of questions that have been on my mind for two years. This is what transpired:Blake Baxter: What exactly motivated you to write the book (A Wrestling Life:...

One of the student survivors I worked with, Jenna*, was gang-raped by five fraternity men early in her freshman year. Despite the severity of the assault and injuries she sustained, Jenna still experienced a feeling of personal responsibility. Looking for affirmation, she sought out peers and told her story. Sadly, each and every one of the friends she reached out to responded with varying denials of her experience; these responses worsened her feelings of self-blame – that she must be confused because that fraternity “is full of great guys”; that she must have made them think she was “down for...

The young woman who introduced Jackie Coakley to journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely used Jackie’s story to push a federal law eroding due process for men on college campuses. Emily Renda, a 2011 sociology major who wrote on Title IX and the campus rape myth for her college thesis, testified before a U.S. senate panel earlier this year. Here’s what she said in June.

Due process advocates have been up in arms over the past few months as California passed the first statewide “affirmative consent” law in the nation. According to the freshly signed SB 967, all college campuses accepting financial aid in the Golden State must enforce a high standard of establishing sexual consent in student disciplinary hearings, requiring both parties in question to vocalize their approval before engaging in sexual acts.While an array of concerns have been raised about the legal ramifications of this law, one important question has been left out of the discussion almost entirely — why are rape cases...

Justine Siegal was a pioneer long before she pitched batting practice to six major league teams in spring training this year. Two years ago she became the first woman to coach first base for a men's professional team, the Brockton (Mass.) Rox in the independent Canadian American Association. And she spent three seasons as an assistant baseball coach at Springfield (Mass.) College until resigning last year to pursue a doctorate.

For those of us who believe in traditional values, the rule-of-law, secure borders, smaller government, and lower taxes, it’s become slim pickings when it comes to the entertainment, news, education, and information spaces. As a conservative who believes in the free exchange of ideas and who is anxious to hear reasoned and well articulated arguments from the left, I have watched in sadness and dismay as liberal group-think has systematically forced out conservative thought in movies, television, commercials, CDs, book publishing, the work place, colleges, universities, high schools, and even pre-school. Facing this informational and educational tidal wave of bias,...

Appeals Court: Women Wrestlers Can Sue UC Davis The Associated Press Feb. 8, 2010 SAN FRANCISCO -- An appeals court says it appears that the University of California, Davis violated federal law meant to promote gender equity in college athletics when it eliminated its women's wrestling program. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit Monday filed by three female wrestlers. The women were told in 2000 that they'd have to compete against men, then were cut from the varsity team. The plaintiffs accuse the university of violating Title IX, the federal law that requires schools to offer...

A weary wrestling coach once lamented that his sport had survived the Fall of Rome, only to be vanquished by Title IX. How did an honorable equity law turn into a scorched-earth campaign against men’s sports? This week is the 42nd anniversary of this famous piece of federal legislation so it’s an ideal time to consider what went wrong and how to set it right. MORE Historically Black Colleges Are Becoming More White Report: California Colleges Must Do More to Combat Sexual Violence Friday's Top 6 News Stories NBC News What Happened When One Woman Had Her Picture Photoshopped In...

Two new documents out from the White House--the Vice President's task force recommendations and a question and answer document from the OCR--continue the assault on due process at the expense of males accused of rape or sexual assault on campus. The administration tips its hand quickly with a telltale verbal switch--referring to complainants as "survivors," rather than as accusers. This language, which assumes guilt and the fact of a sexual offense before any hearing, is the terminology of hardline feminists who have the ear of this administration and have made it clear that they want more guilty findings. Yet what...

The George Fox campus only has single-sex dorms. Officials at the Christian school previously turned down Jayce’s request to live in an all-male dormitory. Last week, they chose not to hear an appeal. The complaint, filed by attorney and transgender activist Paul Southwick, leaves Jayce’s current genitalia situation very ambiguous but takes pains to indicate that “Jayce presents as a male and only goes by male pronouns such as he, his, him etc.”

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban elaborated on his controversial opinion that the NFL "is 10 years away from an implosion" in a 1,585-word Facebook post published Monday night, upping the ante to include player safety and behavioral issues as additional threats to pro football's future. Cuban's comments about the NFL on Sunday night focused on what he perceives as "greed" by the country's most popular sports league. He contended that the oversaturation of the NFL's expanding television package would eventually turn off fans. That subject was the third of five points in Cuban's Facebook post to explain his prediction for...