It’s simply astounding how many of the most high-profile campus sexual assault cases fall apart under independent scrutiny. In Tennessee, a state court judge has just ruled in favor of a college wrestler whose case was featured in Vice:
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga erred in finding a student guilty of sexual misconduct based on his inability to prove he had obtained verbal consent from a woman who described her own memory of their encounter as clouded by intoxication, a state judge has ruled.
The state-court judge held that Steven R. Angle, the campus’s chancellor, had rendered an “arbitrary and capricious” decision last December in ordering the expulsion of Corey Mock, a senior.
In demanding that Mr. Mock prove he had obtained verbal consent in advance of sexual intercourse, Mr. Angle held the student to an untenable standard, partly because the campus’s code of conduct defines as consent not just verbal messages but “acts that are unmistakable in their meaning,” according to the judge, Carol L. McCoy of the chancery court in Nashville.
In addition, the judge held, Mr. Angle violated Mr. Mock’s due-process rights by interpreting the university’s code of conduct, which requires initiators of sexual activity to obtain consent, as establishing a judicial requirement that students accused of sexual misconduct prove that they had obtained consent in order to clear themselves.
The case — like so many campus sexual assault adjudications — centered around a drunken encounter, with the alleged victim — Molly Morris — unable to remember whether she gave verbal consent. Mock claimed she gave nonverbal consent. Initially, the campus hearing officer dismissed the case, but Morris then persuaded the Angle to petition the hearing officer to reconsider, using the so-called “yes means yes” consent standard. The hearing officer then found Mock responsible, and Angle expelled him.
This is the second case in recent weeks where state court judges struck down university sexual assault findings on due process grounds. In California, a judge found that the University of California at San Diego violated a student’s rights when it denied him the right to confront and cross-examine his accuser.
Criminal allegations should be adjudicated in criminal courts, not campus tribunals. Yet these campus tribunals, with their absurd evidentiary rules, shifting burdens of proof, and barely-trained judges are indispensable to maintaining the sense of panic exploited by ideologues on and off campus to strip men of their constitutional rights and suppress free speech. Yes, there are rapists on campus — and there are men who ruthlessly exploit intoxicated women – but the bottom line is that life on campus is safer than life off campus. But since an atmosphere of crisis is much more useful for pushing dramatic social change, the crisis must and will continue.