Well, duh... why is this even a question, I wonder. Of course they should. And, indeed, it is int he criminal justice system that these cases belong.
Just last Friday, I stirred up some controversy during a supervisory training program I presented at a client college. I made two assertions, both of which I stand by here:
1. The extent of sexual assaults on campus is inflated. Obama's 1 woman in 5 is a case of lying with statistics. That's because even a peck on the cheek, if unwelcome, is scored as a sexual assault.
2. Colleges are ill-equipped to adjudicate these highly sensitive cases. That's why a recent report, published in the Chronicle --- and which I shared with attendees at the workshop --- revealed that among 104 United Educator clients with sexual assault cases, 28% wound up in court anyway.
I also argued, against some resistance, that the Rolling STone incident was an inexcusable lapse in journalistic ethics in that the magazine agreed not to seek comment from the accused. I added that this is emblematic of the approach we end up taking on our campuses, viz., the standard of proof is "more likely than not" and I am betting that in most cases of he-said-she-said, the credibility question is resolved in the victims favor, followed by termination of the accused.
This semester I am teaching "Religion in America." This afternoon we'll discuss the Protestant Ethic. The current panic over sexual assault is to me yet another example of the persistence of the religious fanaticism that has characterized so much of American History... an unbroken thread from the anti-Catholicism of the early days of Irish immigration, through the Abolitionist Movement (a rare good example), to Prohibition and the Monkey Trial, down to the present.
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