The standards in this case would be funny if people’s lives weren’t being ruined.

KC Johnson of Minding the Campus reported.

Amherst’s Version of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’

Kafka was born too early to write about Amherst College. At campus hearings on claims of sexual assault, procedures are relentlessly stacked again males and evidence of innocence doesn’t count. Amherst expelled a student for committing rape—despite text messages from the accuser, sent immediately after the alleged assault, (1) telling one student that she had initiated the sexual contact with the student she later accused (her roommate’s boyfriend); (2) inviting another student to her room for a sexual liaison minutes after she was allegedly raped.

Amherst, on grounds that the accused student (who, per college policy, had no attorney) didn’t discover the text messages until it was too late, has allowed the rape finding to stand, even though the college’s decision relied on the accuser’s credibility (which is now non-existent). Amherst faces a due-process lawsuit in the case. You can read the complaint here.

A Goal of Empowering Victims

The expelled student’s complaint begins by noting the hostile campus attitude toward due process—both from pressure from the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, and because of a highly-publicized 2012 article from a student and self-described “survivor” who claimed that the college mistreated her. (Wendy Kaminer summarized the case in The Atlantic.) The outcry prompted Amherst to cancel classes for a day to discuss the issue, led to the forced resignation of the college’s sexual assault coordinator, and caused Amherst to change its sexual assault adjudication procedures to focus on “empowering victims,” rather than on, say, pursuing fairness and justice in its hearings.

Read it all at the link below.