| Blog and Media Roundup - Monday, August 19, 2013; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 19 2013, 03:55 AM (167 Views) | |
| abb | Aug 19 2013, 03:55 AM Post #1 |
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http://dukecheck.com/?p=15394 ✓ Monday Meat Loaf Posted on August 18, 2013 by DukeCheck BRODHEAD RE-ASSURES US ON DKU FREEDOMS China arrested another leading dissident this weekend, claiming he “assembled a crowd to disrupt order in a public place” by leading a small, peaceful demonstration against censorship of a newspaper’s editorials. Despite this attack on what we would regard as First Amendment rights, and in the university context as academic freedom, President Brodhead promptly issued a statement affirming the Chinese regime will let debate and dissent go on at Duke Kunshan University without restriction. The advocate, Yang Maodong, who is better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, was detained August 8th, but it took police ten days to notify his family. He recently completed a five year prison term for “illegal publishing activity,” criticizing official corruption and land seizures. THE MELLENCAMP STOMPING The Indiana football player who was arrested along with the Mellencamp brothers for the feral attack directed to the face of a teenager in their hometown seems to be in more trouble with his team than Hud Mellencamp is with his. Mellencamp case - this is wilsonThe Indiana player is freshman walk-on wide receiver Ty Smith (pictured at left, courtesy Bloomington Police Department). His coach Kevin Wilson has indicated he will face team discipline. At Duke, we were disappointed in the statement from Coach Cutcliffe about his sophomore walk-on Hud Mellencamp; without mentioning any discipline, Cutcliffe let him take voluntary leave from the team. We’ll be watching to see if he returns for classes. Make no mistake. We are dealing with a conspiracy to attack someone in a viscous way. This was not a fight; we are not talking about someone who blew up at the moment, but rather, a deliberate, planned, pre-meditated return to the site of a party to attack the host. The victim was punched in the face, stomped on, thrown off a porch, and then the trio of attackers went to the ground to continue to pummel. The charges are felonies, not misdemeanors. There are very serious injuries, facial bones fractured. We can only be thankful the victim was not brain damaged or blinded. mellencamp speckEven if Hud is accurate in that his brother (pictured on the right) did all the pumeling, he was an enabler of a felony and just as guilty. (Hud’s defense might be summed up this way: I confess. My brother did it.) Coach Cutcliffe and Duke University should address this forthwith. At least until Hud Mellencamp is through with the judicial process in Indiana, has had time to think about what he did, has had analysis of whatever demons cause someone to act this way, and has had treatment, there is no place on this campus for him. Need we remind our Readers that the Honor Code extends to all academic and non-academic endeavors at all times, not just during the semester, and states “I will conduct myself honorably in all my endeavors.” WHHOOPPPPS Bubba Cunningham — who should remember he got his job as athletic director at UNC because the former occupant got caught up in a scandal — has predicted that P J Hairston will play this coming season. Not all the games, said Bubba, but some. The comments came at a retreat with faculty members and were sent to the breathless outside world by the tweet of a journalism professor. Hmmmmm hours later, lots of weasel words appeared, with UNC PR claiming Bubba was only talking, or musing, or theorizing, or speculating about what he personally thought might conceivably perhaps happen. The school, after all, is still fact-finding. What will be interesting to see…. if UNC starts the season without its pot smoking, car addicted, speeding freak, if it can make an adjustment to his return. Recall please that when Ryan Kelly of Duke returned after his injury, the team had a lot to relearn and probably never did reach its full potential. |
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| abb | Aug 19 2013, 03:28 PM Post #2 |
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http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2013/08/st_joes_to_court_make_dear_col.html August 19, 2013 St. Joe's to Court: Make "Dear Colleague" Letter Unassailable Posted by KC Johnson There's a new and troubling development in the Brian Harris case. Harris, as you'll recall, was a St. Joseph's student accused of sexual assault but denied basic due process rights throughout a judicial procedure that resulted in his expulsion. Harris is now suing St. Joe's for violating his Title IX rights, alleging that St. Joe's created a judicial procedure that was stacked against him from the start. On Friday, St. Joseph's University filed its official response. The university makes two broad arguments: first, it has no obligation to give due process in on-campus sexual assault proceedings, even though a culpable finding has significant, negative, and lasting effects on an accused students' educational and professional opportunities; and second, even if St. Joe's were so inclined (which it is not), the "Dear Colleague" letter means that federal law precludes meaningful due process in sexual assault inquiries. St. Joe's first asserts that Harris has no claim, since federal courts shouldn't second guess academic disciplinary tribunals. For precedent, the university cites one federal case (Davis), which involved a 5th grader then attending an elementary school. This says something about how St. Joe's views its students' capabilities. St. Joe's concedes that Harris accurately described the basic procedures under which the university investigates sexual assault claims. But "the process worked" in the Harris case, since the former student got "what the University promises; no more, no less," and the university never promised due process. Harris, just like all male students at St. Joe's, accepted the school's biased disciplinary procedures when he "matriculated at the University." Needless to say, the St. Joe's admissions page contains no mention that accused students will be denied the right to legal representation or to cross-examine their accusers, or that they can be deemed culpable by a 50.01 percent threshold, or that they can be expelled even in cases where accusers do not report incidents to relevant legal or medical authorities. Just how tilted are the procedures that St. Joe's defends? Even if the case investigator compared Harris to Jerry Sandusky, as the former student asserted, the (obviously biased) behavior wouldn't have violated university policies, since St. Joe's believes that an investigator comparing a student to a convicted pedophile doesn't "breach[] the Handbook." Similarly, St. Joe's claims to have conducted a "prompt and thorough" investigation, even though highly relevant text messages between the two students weren't introduced until after an appeal occurred. And what was the timeframe of this "thorough" investigation? The incident took place on November 17, 2012--and the hearing that recommended Harris' dismissal occurred seventeen days later. Thoroughness, indeed. In any event, the supposed rationale for the "Dear Colleague" letter would seem to contradict St. Joe's argument that a college's procedures dealing with sexual assault complaints can't violate federal law. After all, in 2011, the OCR--for the first time--held that too much due process for accused students violated the gender equity principles of Title IX. If true, it would seem that at some point too "little" due process for accused students also would violate the gender equity principles of Title IX. But St. Joe's firmly rejects this viewpoint. Instead, in its filing the university articulates an even more extreme version of the "Dear Colleague" letter than that offered by the OCR itself. Indeed, St. Joe's strongly implies that students accused of sexual assault could never have a Title IX claim, no matter how unfair the procedures used by the university to convict them. The filing's key passage on this point holds that "in light of the Dear Colleague letter, the University's implementation of a preponderance of evidence standard and its policy limiting an accused's right to cross-examine his or her accuser simply cannot form the basis for a Title IX claim. These procedures are not only not violative of the law, they are mandated by it." This is an extraordinary claim, in several ways. First: while the "Dear Colleague" letter "strongly" encourages colleges to deny accused students the right to cross-examine their accuser, the document doesn't require the practice. So St. Joe's assertion that its own cross-examination denial policy is "mandated" by federal law is plainly untrue. Second: St. Joe's claim that the "Dear Colleague" letter deserves deference from courts appears to be a misreading of relevant Supreme Court precedent. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Hans Bader (who formerly worked as an attorney at the OCR) discussed the issue at length in the Washington Examiner. Bader informed me that "although private colleges are not directly bound by the due process clause, when the government forces a private institution to do something that would violate due process if done by a government institution, that does violate the due process clause, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Merritt v. Mackey, 827 F.2d 1368 (9th Cir.1987). Thus, OCR's restriction on cross-examination implicates due process even when it applies to private colleges like Saint Joseph's University. And so the court should follow the canon of constitutional doubts by not interpreting Title IX as suggested by OCR in the Dear Colleague letter. Interpreting Title IX as precluding students like Harris from cross-examining their accusers could violate the Constitution itself, by converting private action into governmental actions subject to the Constitution under the state-action doctrine." Finally: even if a judge bought St. Joe's argument that it should show "substantial deference" to the OCR, deference doesn't mean rubber-stamping. And an agency discovering 39 years after the fact that a gender equality law actually requires schools to minimize due process protections for students accused of sexual assault should not constitute a permissible interpretation of the statute. Will a federal judge do St. Joe's bidding and codify the "Dear Colleague" letter? - See more at: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2013/08/st_joes_to_court_make_dear_col.html#sthash.qkDmR6Wi.dpuf |
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