The Other McCain

Last night I linked A.J. Delgado’s item about the suspicious nature of the rape “epidemic” on college campuses. This phenomenon contradicts common sense: Overall, rates of violent crime (including rape) in the United States are on a downward trajectory, and universities have undertaken extraordinary programs to raise awareness (for both men and women) to prevent rape. However, the reported incidence of rape has actually increased on campuses, and Delgado asks: “Did all the bad guys suddenly decide to enroll in universities?”

This trend makes no sense, you see, and this strange trend calls for scrutiny of the individual cases that comprise the trend. Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection notes a case at Columbia University, where a male student-athlete has filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that his due-process rights were violated when the university punished him for alleged “sexual misconduct” that was never reported as a crime. The lawsuit describes a one-night hook-up between the student-athlete and a female student in her Columbia dorm room on May 12, 2013, and alleges:

Several weeks into the Fall 2013 semester and nearly five (5) months after the one night of sexual activity, Jane Doe decided to report the Evening of May 12 as “non-consensual” sexual activity. No contemporaneous report was ever made nor was any police report was ever filed by Jane Doe in connection with her sexual activity with Plaintiff John Doe; no visit to a medical care facility was ever made by Jane Doe in connection with such sexual activity either; and indeed, no allegation of improper sexual behavior was made by Jane Doe for nearly five (5) months after the one night of sexual activity with John Doe. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and further notwithstanding a paucity of direct evidence, including an unforgiveable lack of administrative continuity and simple, practical good sense during the investigatory process, Defendant Columbia found John Doe guilty of sexual misconduct in having non-consensual sex with Jane Doe and has issued Plaintiff John Doe an order of suspension from Columbia University until Fall 2015.

Here’s the important thing: We don’t know, and in fact cannot know, what actually happened on May 12, 2013, because the only witnesses to the sexual activity were the two people involved.

As usual in such cases, it’s “he-said/she-said,” with no evidence or testimony beyond the competing claims of a woman who says it was rape and a man who says it was consensual. We can, perhaps, deduce a belief one way or the other based on circumstances, but we can never really know — and yet the student-athlete was suspended on the basis of this university disciplinary procedure, where the rights of the accused and standards of evidence are not the same as in a criminal court. He was, in effect, found guilty without trial.

This is simply wrong. If the guy committed rape, he should be prosecuted as a criminal, and if the accuser was unwilling to pursue criminal prosecution, then the university cannot let its disciplinary process function as a pseudo-court where students are judged “guilty” of heinous crimes for which they never actually stood trial.

If incidents like this Columbia University case are typical of what is driving the campus rape “epidemic” trend — and I don’t claim to have done enough analysis to say that it is so — then we have a very serious problem: Colleges have become Darkness at Noon, like the Moscow “show trials” of the 1930s, where a political agenda incites a prosecutorial zeal that tramples the innocent under foot.

There is an old (and extremely cynical) phrase that was used by Soviet apologists to defend the inhumanities perpetrated by the Communists: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.” That is to say, the murderous nature of the Bolshevik regime was excusable to admirers of the Soviets, because the victims (eggs) were killed (broken) to create a socialist order (the omelette).

Knowing what we know about feminists and their agenda — which demonizes men and stigmatizes heterosexuality — what political purpose is served by the proliferation of “sexual misconduct” accusations on campus, especially when the statistics are inflated by the inclusion of cases where no criminal charge was ever made?

The accused are just “eggs,” broken in the process of making this feminist “omelette,” which has a suspiciously totalitarian flavor.