DELIBERATELY CREATING A HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR MEN: Ashe Schow: A double-standard on campus sexual assault hearings.

Across the country, young college men are being accused of sexually assaulting young college women based either solely on an accusation or occasionally on flimsy witness statements.

No one is arguing that sexual assaults never happen. But the degree to which the definition has been broadened in order to “fix” the “epidemic” has ensnared many young students who are not the monsters the media would have you believe.

And the narrative being pushed by activists has been one of black and white, good and evil. According to them, accusers, mostly women, always tell the absolute truth, and the accused, almost universally men, are awful even if proven innocent. That double-standard has led to policies that treat accused students as guilty-until-proven-innocent. These policies also have to carve out special provisions that ensure accusers are innocent of sexual assault even when both parties would have a reasonable claim.

This double-standard has produced policies that state that an accuser who has been drinking alcohol (any amount) is absolved of anything they willingly consented to that night on the grounds that they wouldn’t have done so sober. Conversely, accused students who were also drunk are not absolved of their decisions.

Notice the double-standard? If being drunk means you can’t consent, presumably a drunk accused student would also be unable to consent, meaning that the two students essentially sexually assaulted each other. But of course findings such as this won’t help schools prove to the Department of Education that they take accusations seriously, thus the one-sided policies.

We saw this play out recently at Amherst College, when a student who was in an alcohol-induced, black-out state received oral sex, only to be accused of sexual assault nearly two years later.

Bring on the lawsuits.