ASHE SCHOW ON THE (LATEST) YALE DEBACLE: Jack Montague, free speech and the rush to judgment.

It wasn’t until Montague’s father told the New Haven Register that his son was expelled that the team and school learned the reason for his recent missed practices. It wasn’t until the Yale Women’s Center posted a statement that “speculate[d]” that the expulsion was for sexual misconduct that the school learned what happened for sure.

And that’s where the free speech issues come in. Montague’s teammates held a kind of protest of his expulsion by wearing T-shirts with his nickname on them and “Yale” printed backwards. Activists on campus went ballistic, claiming the team was “supporting a rapist.” The team eventually apologized in a statement that might as well have been written by the activists themselves.

The team had every right to stand by its captain and insist that he’s innocent. They have as much evidence of that as the activists have that he’s guilty.

Also, the activists’ labeling of Montague as a “rapist” shows the extreme circumstances accused students face in campus conduct hearings. The reason schools need this separate judicial system, activists say, is that the actual judicial system is failing accusers. The reason the school doesn’t need to provide due process, we’re told by activists, is that the students aren’t facing jail.

But they are facing the criminal label “rapist” without any due process. The sex may very well have been consensual, but activists, without knowing any of the facts, have labeled him a criminal. It should be noted that as of now, neither the New Haven nor the Yale police departments are investigating Montague. Neither were even informed of an alleged rape. . . .

That means that Yale students want to use free speech to call someone a “rapist” who has not been investigated or charged with a crime, but want to deny free speech to anyone who would suggest he is innocent. The activists say they want free speech but with “sensitivity.” Fine, then they need to apply that same “sensitivity” when calling someone a “rapist” when they are not a criminal.

No male should go to Yale at this point. No male athlete should even consider going to Yale.