Thomas Aquinas College Student Reviews California’s “Affirmative Consent” Sex Bill
“Are we supposed to check for consent every five minutes?”
We recently reported that the California State Senate approved SB -67, a bill that would require colleges receiving state-funded student aid to use an “affirmative consent” standard in their sexual assault policies.
Mairead McArdle, a student at Thomas Aquinas College, worries about the lower legal standard for guilt.
….“We need a cultural shift to take those crimes much more seriously,” [CA State Senator Hannah-Beth] De Leon said at the press conference. “It will make very clear that ‘no’ means ‘no’…and only ‘yes’ means ‘yes’ within an affirmative consent policy.”
Beyond affirmative consent, the bill would put the burden of proof on the accused person instead of the victim. Most current disciplinary systems are “stacked against survivors,” according to statements by proponents of the bill at the same press conference.
The bill would also require schools to give victims the resources they need to recover. This means schools must work with post-trauma centers, victim advocacy and legal services, among other outside supplements.
“Rather than have campus investigators ask questions to figure out if the survivor said no, SB-967 has them look at if the survivor consented, verbally or non-verbally through mutual participation,” Claire Conlon, press and legislative aide for De Leon, told The College Fix.
The bill adopts the “preponderance of evidence” standard, a lower bar than the strict “beyond reasonable doubt” or the middle-ground “clear and convincing evidence” standards.
Preponderance of evidence, which requires disciplinary proceedings against an accused student when most of the evidence points against him, is widely used in civil courts, Conlon told National Review.
….Critics of the bill say that while sexual assault on college campuses is a real problem, the bill’s implications are nonsensical.
“To me, this bill turns most people into sexual assaulters,” Hans Bader, senior attorney for the Washington D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Los Angeles Daily News.
“If someone can be nasty enough to rape, can someone be nasty enough to lie and say [the victim] verbally consented?” Bader said. “Are they going to pass a law saying don’t lie?”
…Henry Mu, a 24-year-old biology major at California State University-Long Beach, also criticized the practical effects in the Daily News.
“I feel like their hearts are in the right place, but the implementation is a little too excessive,” Mu said. “Are there guidelines? Are we supposed to check [for consent] every five minutes?”…
California ‘Affirmative Consent’ Sex Bill Imposes Low Legal Standard For Guilt (The College Fix)
Comments
Here is the comment I left on College Fix for the Author:
Mairead McArdle,
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Revenge against an innocent person is just vile.
I say this with passion, as a man who has gone through this, being falsely accused, and wanted to point out to you several things that are relevant to this discussion.
1) All the agents/actors the University involves in this are first vetted and indoctrinated in PC feminist politics. From the investigators, the RA’s & RD’s, to the hearing board members – no one is allowed anywhere near a “case” that has not had tons of indoctrination in the “proper way” of thinking – and shown it.
2) Be aware – you are not allowed to have an attorney speak for you – and this is VITAL. Why? Because you had BETTER show up, and you had better speak and answer all their quesitons.
The fact that you have been stripped of your right to counsel and COMPELLED to speak is not an accident – now all that testimony can and will be used against you if this goes to an actual criminal court.
3) Long before anyone sits on a hearing board they are vetted. They are not neutral. They have had 10’s of hours of training that is all given from the liberal academic feminist PoV, where women never lie, where all her actions before-during-&after validate her story, and all your actions before-during-&after point to your guilt.
4) The investigator is not there to find the truth, but to validate the accuser. If you tell them “go and talk to this person and that person” they MIGHT, but probably not. Conversely, if the accuser tells them who to talk to – you can bet, out of obligation, duty, or fear, that investigator will speak to those witnesses.
5) YOU cannot investigate. If you do, you will be threatened with sanctions for “interferring with a university investigation”, “tampering with witnesses”, and “attempting to intimidate” witnesses.
6) In my case I asked for the university to have the police who served me with eviction papers from my dorm show up at my hearing. I wanted them to report that I didn’t ask for an attorney, gave a statement freely, and that my statement never changed.
The university told me they could not compell the campus police officers to show up.
But one did – she showed up, and LITERALLY, held the hand of my accuser, while she testified, but refused to testify for me – simply re-tell what I said.
7) I tried to get counselling. This was, as you might guess, a bit stressful. I was told by the university counselling center that they could not give me service – that it was a conflict of interest.
I asked why and they said “the victim might want to come here – and we have to give her priority.” She hadn’t even SOUGHT counselling, but on the off chance she did, they denied me any service.
8) I tried to seek out students who knew us both. But, this being college I didn’t know everyone’s full name. “Bob with the purple hat” or “Katie who likes skateboarding” is not a name. So when I tried to find these people to ask them to simply tell what they’d seen I could not find them, nor refer the university to look for them.
I was barred from the dorms, so I couldn’t go looking for them.
9) I could not ask my accuser any questions. I was told to write down my questions. I did – and when the hearing board asked her, it was not the same questions, and it was open ended and they let her just talk and talk about things to gather and garner sympathy.
The questions they asked me were on-point, they were direct, and they were blistering. Which, in reality, I was fine with – it’s the process.
My accuser on the other hand was asked softball open-ended questions that never pinned down her story. She changed her story multiple times IN FRONT OF THEM and they just let it go.
10) I brought in 1 friend to testify – and the hearing board members asked me “Was he in the room that night?” I responded no. They would not let him testify.
My accuser on the other hand brought in two friends. Remember, I’m listening to this on play back from a machine. I could not tell one voice from the other – they were talking all over each other. They were CORRECTING each other. They were clearly egging each other on.
No hearing board member asked if they were in the room that night – nor prevented them from speaking. No, they were allowed to just talk and talk and talk – while the hearing board members, at best, just prodded them to keep them on track.
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Not satisfied with all THAT – now the campus feminists want to lower the burden of proof, re-define what sexual assault is, and shift the burden to the accused.
THAT is the reality of what happens on college campses today.
And that is what you should be reporting – use real cases to drive it home as to what kind of kangaroo court star chambers they are setting up.
One last thing – how come no one is asking a critical question: If these rules are so good, so just, and so fair, why don’t they apply to faculty and staff – and why not in all cases?
If faculty and staff faced these same rules and they were applied in every case, this wouldn’t be considered “fair.”
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That was my response – hopefully it’ll take the author out of the realm of navel gazing theoretics and put a human face and a reality into his head.
– Steven