The University of Michigan is embroiled in a sex scandal involving a prominent tenured opera professor who was accused by multiple men of sexual assault and harassment.
UM President Mark Schlissel was asked by reporters at student newspaper The Michigan Daily about the scandal. He claimed during the interview that he was “a huge believer in due process and allowing the accused to defend themselves, to see the evidence against themselves and allowing an investigation to be thorough and complete, and then going through each of the specified faculty policies and procedures when it comes to a disciplinary action that threatens the removal of tenure.”
His remarks on this run counter to how his school’s policies work for students accused of sexual misconduct.
In 2018, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Doe v. Baum that universities must allow some form of cross-examination during allegations of sexual misconduct when the case comes down to the credibility of one person or the other. This ruling pertained to nearly all campus sexual misconduct cases, which often involve no witnesses and are a he said/she said situation where one party (almost exclusively the man) says the sexual encounter was consensual and the other (almost exclusively the woman) says it was not.
Even with the ruling, schools under the 6th Circuit and across the country continue to deny due process rights to men accused of sexual misconduct out of fear that they will receive bad press and be sued by a female accuser who will have the full backing of the media and feminist movement behind her if she claims the school didn’t take her claims seriously. Taking claims “seriously” has resulted in schools automatically believing accusers and tilting the process against the accused no matter the evidence.
UM has been no different. After the Baum ruling, President Schlissel said the “6th Circuit got it wrong,” and defending the school’s unfair practices.
The case that led to the ruling involved a male and female student who met while drinking, had sex, and then recounted the night differently. The female student accused the male student of sexual assault, and since there were no witnesses to the actual event and no evidence for either side, the school found the male student “not responsible.” The school interviewed 23 witnesses who provided no clarity. Some confirmed the male student’s account that the accuser wasn’t drunk and others said she seemed drunk and that she was upset after the encounter.
Because college campuses allow either side to appeal – effectively allowing double jeopardy – the female student appealed and without any additional evidence provided, the school reversed its earlier decision and found the male student responsible. He sued the school, leading to the Sixth Circuit opinion.
UM did not change its ways after the Baum decision, leading to another ruling in Doe v. University of Michigan, which found the university was up to its anti-fairness ways. Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield wrote on his blog Simple Justice that this isn’t surprising, given that court rulings are often ignored and the only way for a student to remedy that fact is to sue. Many accused students are minority and foreign students who don’t have such resources.
“As more suits are brought, more rulings obtained, holding that campus sex tribunals involve unconstitutional deprivations of due process to accused male students, some colleges will comply, but others will simply resist, firm in their belief that they are on the right side of history and, even if courts don’t agree, are doing what they have to, what they should, do to protect women. They are, in essence, challenging the courts by saying ‘make me,’ and the reality is that the ‘least dangerous branch’ doesn’t have any really good magic to do so,” Greenfield wrote.