Reporting of sex crimes on college campuses has nearly doubled in the last five years. Not because the crimes have necessarily occurred, as last year’s Rolling Stone/UVA debacle illustrated quite clearly. Oh, and not because there are standardized procedures for collecting and reporting sexual offenses, either. And, as a recent National Review article indicates, numbers can be played with or outright omitted in order to create fantastic headlines, like the absurd 1 in 5 stat cited by President Obama’s It’s On Us campaign to stop sexual assault on college campuses. Yet these drummed-up numbers continue to be used to drag the dead horse of campus rape out of the contemporary feminist barn and into the mainstream media’s spotlight. Why?
The number of Title IX sexual violence complaints received by the department jumped from just 20 in fiscal year 2009 to 123 in fiscal 2014. As of April 8, 2015 — a little over halfway through the current fiscal year — the department had received 68 such complaints.
However, the number of staff has been falling at the Office for Civil Rights, which is tasked with enforcing Title IX.
…President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2016 budget would increase the Office for Civil Rights’ funding by 31 percent to $131 million, which the Education Department has said it would use to hire 210 full-time employees.
That’s 210 more employees who will be used to threaten colleges with too many complaints on file:
The Office for Civil Rights staff have said in the past that their priority is taking corrective action, rather than punishing a school. In the Boxer letter, they note they have “experienced positive results” on that score using their ability to threaten federal funding if an institution doesn’t fall in line.
Building bureaucracy on your tax dollars, one questionable accusation at a time.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member