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Not a single advocate of due process will testify at Senate hearing on campus sexual assault

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Democrats still controlled the U.S. Senate, because a Wednesday hearing on campus sexual assault does not feature a single person who challenges the widespread but thinly sourced view that college campuses are hotbeds of “rape culture.”

The witness list has been announced, and it includes the four sponsors of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, which originally referred to students accused of assault as “assailants” but whose new version still overwhelmingly favors students making accusations.

(One big change in the update: The hearing will now be webcast, a spokeswoman for Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the higher-education committee, told The College Fix. You can watch it here starting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, though congressional hearings tend to start at least 10 minutes late.)

As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education noted in February, when the revamped CASA bill dropped, the legislation may actually violate federal law and agency guidance by giving “substantial resources” solely to accusing students.

Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner notes that of the two Democrats and two Republicans sponsoring the bill, only one’s office ever responded to her queries and even then ignored her question about due process.

It should also be noted that two of those senators, Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Republican Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, are former prosecutors, while Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand brought Columbia University’s so-called Mattress Girl, the rape-accusing activist and porn star Emma Sulkowicz, to the State of the Union this year.

The second panel of witnesses features University of California President Janet Napolitano, whose new sexual-assault policies “were the result of a one-sided task force,” and the co-founder of Know Your Title IX, which publishes a guide that “essentially advises journalists to write articles in a way that bestows victimhood on accusers and guilt on the accused without any evidence other than an accusation,” Schow writes:

Those are the eight people who will be addressing campus sexual assault on Wednesday. It is highly unlikely that even one of them will suggest that the draconian measures being thrust upon universities are fundamentally unfair and biased. Not one person is there to suggest that maybe colleges shouldn’t be adjudicating felonies. Not one person is there to suggest that if colleges do continue to adjudicate felonies, then they need to provide students the same protections an actual court of law would provide.

Look at the full witness list and Schow’s analysis.

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IMAGE: Senator Claire McCaskill/Flickr

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About the Author
Associate Editor
Greg Piper served as associate editor of The College Fix from 2014 to 2021.