INNOCENCE IS NO DEFENSE: Student cleared of rape still not welcome at his college.

A 19-year-old Roanoke College student was accused of rape in March 2015 by a college freshman. He was charged by the district attorney, but it took a jury just 25 minutes to find him not guilty at the end of a trial that lasted one day. A campus sexual misconduct hearing also found him not responsible.

Case closed, right? Wrong, of course.

When the student, who is from Zimbabwe, re-enrolled in Roanoke, campus activists started an online petition in an effort to bar him from campus, citing safety concerns. This just goes to show that students who are accused of sexual assault on college campuses are often considered guilty-until-proven-innocent, and even then are still considered guilty.

The goal, of course, is to make accusation equivalent to conviction.