Author: saveadmin

This is collateral damage that Democrats — who have spent the last few years championing the #MeToo movement — should be loath to incur. Democrats who subject Ms. Reade’s allegations to a level of scrutiny not widely applied to accusers in similar circumstances — such as Christine Blasey-Ford, who famously came forward during the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court to allege that he had sexually accosted her in high school — also open up past and future cases to reproachful disregard. Conservatives, like my colleague Bret Stephens, can see the plain gulf between how Democrats have approached sexual assault in politically advantageous cases versus Ms. Reade’s, and the evident hypocrisy threatens to discredit the entire enterprise.

Whether Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade or not, a fact that will never be determined because Reade chose not to avail herself of the mechanism America uses to make such determinations, the Democrats, the pseudo-feminists and most importantly, Joseph Biden know a far harder truth: They are hypocrites. They are and were wrong. There must be due process for the accused.

KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor did the math.

If this long overdue change is sincere, the Democrats can show it by supporting the pending new Title IX regulations. The new rules are designed to require campuses to treat students accused of sexual misconduct with fairness and impartiality instead of effectively presuming guilt, as too many campuses currently do. Now is the ideal time for the Trump administration to release those regulations, spearheaded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

It’s been a terrible struggle over the past decade for male college students to eke out what little opportunity they could to defend themselves against accusations wrapped in a litany of inane excuses that made everything, no matter what, proof of guilt. When the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter and its progeny were rescinded, activists cried that giving the accused a tenth of a chance to defend themselves was enabling rapists.

Can the same people who gave us whiplash in their pivot from Believe All Women to Take Women Seriously But Vigorously Investigate live with their flagrant hypocrisy by persisting in their disingenuous complaints about the new Title IX regs? As KC and Stuart note, “if this long overdue change is sincere,” they cannot. It’s a huge “if.”

But the head cheerleader, and the presidential nominee who has taken the hard position against giving male college students due process, is none other than the man who asks it for himself now. Is joe Biden “sincere”? Does Joe Biden have the integrity to admit he’s been dangerously wrong up to now, but he’s seen the light?

FACE, families Advocating for Campus Equality, sent Biden a letter putting the question to him.

We are hopeful your recent experience has made you realize that “sexual misconduct” is no longer just about sex. The “rules of engagement” for sexual misconduct are a moving target. Historically-acceptable hugs and genuine forms of non-sexual expressions of affection are no longer acceptable. Worse still, the consequences can be a swift end to education, career, and sometimes can even be life-ending. This affects not only those wrongfully disciplined, but also their mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, and spouses.

Children and young adults are not puppets to manipulate as props for the purpose of advancing political agendas. Yet that is today’s reality. Just like you have been accused of touching women in ways that cause them to “feel uncomfortable,” so too have many men, women, and LGBTQ students and professors been disciplined for the often subjective feelings of their accusers.

As a well-respected public figure, you are fortunate to have the opportunity to survive accusations of impropriety for your well-intended gestures, as well as an audience willing to forgive. Unfortunately, young students and faculty members only experience draconian repercussions for the same types of behaviors.

Joe Biden enjoys the support of his followers, his party and most of the media, who will do their part to seek out faults in Tara Reade’s accusations and history, ignoring the litany of excuses that have protected other accusers, from Christine Blasey-Ford to every woman on campus to every accuser on social media. And still Biden is constrained to defend against the accusations. What of the college sophomore, the 19-year-old male student who has neither the powerful friends and supporters nor the ability to air his denial on Morning Joe? If Biden demands his chance to deny guilt, would he demand the 19-year-old male student be presumed guilty?

Senator Biden, please, take off your political hat for just a moment, and open your eyes to what’s happening to innocent students and faculty who could be your sons, daughters, brothers or sisters – because, as you must now know, “doing the right thing” no longer protects you in this ‘accusation = guilt’ world.

Whether Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade will forever be a mystery, but in a principled world, he would be presumed innocent because the burden is, must be, on the accuser to prove his guilt. The same thing is true of male college students accused of sexual misconduct, and it’s time for Biden to man up to the egregiously wrong position he’s taken for too long and concede that every accused must be afforded due process. Just like him.

Now is the moment, the “perfect storm,” to release the new Title IX regs that will, hopefully, give male college students a fighting chance to defend themselves from accusations. It may still be that neither Biden, nor his supporters, are sincere in their epiphany that due process matters, and their hypocrisy will then be as flagrant as possible. It will be out there for all to see.

But there will never be a better moment than now. Secretary DeVos, please release the new regs now.

Callisto reverses decision to delete account data following user concerns

By Esha Dhawan on April 17, 2020

Callisto Campus, a tool available for Stanford students to document and report sexual and relationship violence, will be discontinued on June 30 and replaced with another version of the program.

Callisto is a third-party online platform that allows students to document and time stamp experiences with unwanted sexual conduct. If a student is not ready to submit a report to the University, their report is saved in the system, with the option for it to be submitted later.

“One of the unique features about Callisto was the ability to have your report be submitted to the Title IX office in the event that the perpetrator that you had listed also matched the perpetrator another survivor listed,” wrote former ASSU President Shanta Katipamula ’19 M.S. ’20 in an email to The Daily. While chair of the Undergraduate Senate, Katipamula also authored the bill proposing the three-year pilot of Callisto in 2016.

While Callisto Campus will be discontinued, this year Callisto will launch a new product that connects victims of sexual misconduct to attorneys who help them understand actions they can take, according to the Callisto website. Stanford students will have free access to this platform, but the University is still deciding whether to initiate a new partnership with Callisto, according to ASSU Co-Director of Sexual Violence Prevention Krithika Iyer ’21.

“We are investigating what a potential partnership would entail, and whether a new Stanford-Callisto partnership would be beneficial for survivors,” Iyer wrote. “We will be seeking input from the student community.”
“Callisto is transitioning some of its services over the summer and it will no longer be based on a partnership model with individual schools,” wrote Senior Associate Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Access Lauren Schoenthaler in a statement to The Daily.

An update on the Callisto Campus website initially read that the service would be replaced with a new version of Callisto and that all account data would be deleted, quickly leading some to raise concerns.

“This would undermine the ability of the platform to identify repeat perpetrators on campus,” Iyer wrote.
Stanford Law professor Michele Dauber was one of the individuals who reached out to Callisto to share her concerns. One of her concerns was Callisto’s inability to inform users that their data would be deleted.

“Because there are no records kept of who the users are, Callisto doesn’t stay in contact with their end-users,” Dauber said. “In other words, if you were someone who had made such a report, you wouldn’t get an email from Callisto saying, ‘we’re changing our business model.’”

She spoke to the trauma that this could create for survivors who had placed their trust in the platform.

“They had trusted this entity because it was created by survivors and then found that all of their information had been deleted when they didn’t know it,” she said.

Callisto has since reversed its decision to delete the data.

“With respect to the feedback we have received from our partners and the extraordinary challenges posed by COVID-19, we are not deleting this data,” wrote interim Callisto CEO Tina Robilotto in an email to The Daily. “We will maintain the record data even after Callisto Campus is decommissioned and the new product is launched to our partner campuses.”

“While I understand that they’ve now understood the error of this decision and are no longer going to be deleting records, the initial decision to do so was poorly communicated and breached the trust survivors had placed in their system,” wrote Katipamula.

Dauber complimented Callisto’s “willingness to admit a mistake and reverse it.”

Schoenthaler said that Callisto had informed the University on Thursday morning that it no longer had plans to delete the records, calling it “great news.”

Dauber urged students to download reports they had made to Callisto to ensure they are preserved, and Iyer made a similar recommendation.

“While Callisto has committed to not deleting any records, the ASSU recommends that students download their report if they want to be absolutely sure that they retain a permanent copy,” Iyer said.

Despite Callisto Campus’s unique function, Iyer told The Daily that the platform has not been sufficiently advertised to students and that she hopes to increase awareness about it in following years.

“Data from the AAU survey indicate that only 9% of Stanford students are aware that Callisto Campus is an available resource,” she said. Iyer also reported efforts to ensure that Callisto is included in New Student Orientation information sessions next fall.

Dauber called the episode a “cautionary tale” about Silicon Valley’s tendency to rely on technology to solve problems.

“I think Callisto came from the best of intentions but also was riding that wave of easy assumptions about technical fixes for a very hard social problem,” she said. “There is no shortcut, in my opinion, to fixing the problem of campus sexual assault.”

This article has been updated to include a clarification from Iyer on the tool to be included in New Student Orientation information sessions.

Contact Esha Dhawan at edhawan ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

Under Title IX, colleges have an obligation to address sexual assault on campus.

Colleges have a corresponding obligation to treat all students fairly. Unfortunately, many colleges have created secret sex tribunals that stack the deck against accused students in order to increase discipline rates.

The tribunals often dispense with the presumption of innocence; deny students the right to see the specific charges or evidence against them; and deny accused students the opportunity to present evidence that might demonstrate consent, such as text messages.

Such procedures violate basic standards of fairness and have led to many miscarriages of justice.

Hundreds of students have successfully sued their colleges for unfair treatment.

But few colleges have altered their policies in response to such rulings.

It’s time for the Department of Education to issue regulations requiring schools to adopt fair and unbiased procedures.

Because without due process, there can be no justice.