Out of Sacred Heart University comes fresh proof of the injustice inherent in the drive for campus Star Chambers to handle sexual-assault charges.
Bridgeport, Conn., police now say a coed lied about being raped by two football players at an off-campus party last October.
The accused men said the encounter was consensual, and multiple witnesses backed up their account. But before the cops could finish their investigation, both men had reportedly lost their football scholarships, forcing them to quit school. (Sacred Heart categorically denies that it rescinded the scholarships.)
Even if they could’ve found the money, they no doubt feared the “disciplinary process” would be rigged against them — since colleges across the nation have adopted policies that massively favor the accusers in campus sexual-assault cases.
Yes, private universities have a legal right to set up their own rules, even “guilty until proven innocent.” But it’s still wrong.
Driving the trend — at both public and private colleges — is advocacy about the nation’s supposed “campus rape culture.” Yet the “statistics” cited by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and others turn out to be as scientific as those 1950s ads in which doctors recommended one brand of cigarette.
The advocates also moved the Obama Education Department to bully schools into setting up procedures that give the accused no right to face the accuser, to counsel or to other basics of due process.
These kangaroo courts are profoundly un-American. The answer, or part of it, is contained in the Sacred Heart story: When it comes to criminal accusations, leave justice to the criminal justice system.
Team Trump rescinding those Obama orders won’t fix everything: Too many colleges won’t dare cross the left-liberal moralizers. But it’ll be a good start.
None of this is remotely to condone rape or other sexual assaults. Every college can and should consider what campus policies and mores might promote such horrors, and look to change them. But Gillibrand & Co. should also face facts about how their prescriptions wind up ruining innocent lives.