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Katy Grimes

Campus Sexual Assault Bill Is Lipstick on a Pig

Instead of addressing the degrading hook-up culture young people have come to accept, the Legislature declared sex “a contractual event,” and redefined consensual sexual relations as “rape” if it occurs on a college campus.

Rather than promoting the education of college students about abstinence and self-respect,  Senate Bill 967, by Sen. Kevin de Leon, will allow California colleges and universities to deal internally with campus sexual violence by requiring each school to adopt Legislature-approved “victim-centered sexual assault response policies and protocols that follow best practices and professional standards.”

The bill passes the Senate Thursday with a unanimous vote, and the Assembly on Monday, 57-20. The bill now goes to the governor.

Reclassifying consensual sex as “rape”

It is still unclear how classifying most consensual sex as rape, will do anything to help real rape victims. And SB 967 grossly violates the due process rights of students accused of rape.

Many university policies already step in before the police are notified, and prevent the the accused from hiring an attorney, violating due process rights. The universities’ policies trample on proper police procedure and on other constitutional protections – for the victim and accused.

University disciplinary panels are not made up of trained judges, police officers or attorneys, and instead are made up of university employees. They have an interest in protecting the university, and not the rights of the accused, and victim.

Real rape is a crime. Acts of rape need to be properly processed as such, and criminal police procedure needs to be strictly adhered to.

Dubious data

What spurred this bill was a program by the White House, which declared sex crimes to be “epidemic” on U.S. college campuses. The White House claims one in five students is a victim of sexual assault while in college.

This dubious figure has become an article of faith and rallying cry among radical feminists pushing government intervention into colleges’ handling of sexual assault claims.

On the campus of U.C. Davis, of the 34,155 total students, 19,468 are women. If the chances of women at U.C. Davis being sexually assaulted really are one-in-five, there should be about 4,000 sexual assaults on that campus each year.

This figure comes from the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study. However, “a close look at the CSA Study’s findings raises some serious questions about its reliability,” wrote Cathy Young, a columnist for Newsday, Real Clear Politics, and Reason. “First of all, the vast majority of the incidents it uncovered involved what the study termed “incapacitation” by alcohol (or, rarely, drugs): 14 percent of female respondents reported such an experience while in college, compared to six percent who reported sexual assault by physical force. Yet the question measuring incapacitation was framed ambiguously enough that it could have netted many ‘gray area’ cases: ‘Has someone had sexual contact with you when you were unable to provide consent or stop what was happening because you were passed out, drugged, drunk, incapacitated, or asleep?’ Does ‘unable to provide consent or stop’ refer to actual incapacitation – given as only one option in the question – or impaired judgment?” Young explained.

“There’s reason to believe that this kind of sloppy question drafting may have had a significant effect on the numbers,”
Samantha Harris recently said in Forbes.

As Young reports, “[t]hree quarters of the female students who were classified as victims of sexual assault by incapacitation did not believe they had been raped; even when only incidents involving penetration were counted, nearly two-thirds did not call it rape.’ Yet this ambiguity is utterly absent from discussions based on that one-in-five number.”

The U.S. Department of Education in May released a list of 55 colleges — including three in California — under investigation to determine whether their handling of sex assaults and harassment violated federal laws put in place to ensure equal treatment in higher education, Reuters reported. The Californian institutions on the list are University of California, Berkeley, Occidental College and the University of Southern California, Reuters said.

It is distressing that even with the questionable data, the California Legislature doubled down and voted to pass SB 967, based on emotion and feeling, and cries of “what if it was your daughter?”

Fortunately, outside of the Capitol, there are plenty of people who recognize this absurdity. Some of the comments left on the Reuters story tell another story:

* “More government regulation of sex. What’s not to love about that?”

* “Maybe they should have the girl sign a contract in the presence of 2 witnesses agreeing to sexual advances. then get it notarized and filed with the school administration office. the next step is to simply outlaw heterosexual sex. this country get’s more insane every day.”

* Absolutely absurd. Rape has been so redefined by feminism and political correctness, that a young man should ask for a consent form to be signed before engaging in any contact with a young woman. Talk about killing all romance. “Can I hold your hand?” “Now may I kiss you…..?” This is simply not how things work in the real world.

More importantly there are already lawsuits in the works for the young men whose due process rights have been violated.

* End ‘rape’ on campus. Tell men to #dateoffcampus

* Can’t wait for the day when California just tumbles into the Pacific.

 

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