SAFER Campus is a group that advocates for rape victims.

Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner reported.

Opponent of new campus due process bill doesn’t hide her contempt for basic rights

An opponent of a new bill aimed at providing due process rights to students accused of sexual assault disparaged the thought of such constitutional rights because schools “must prioritize the needs of survivors first and foremost.”

That’s all well and good, but one does not know whether someone is truly a “survivor” unless his or her story can hold up to scrutiny, something deliberately absent from current campus hearings. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sarah Merriman, a spokeswoman for SAFER Campus, who told the Washington Post why she opposes the “Safe Campus Act.”

“American college culture often paints rape on campus as a youthful indiscretion instead of the deliberate violent act that it is, and it is not the survivor’s job to ‘save’ the assaulter from criminal prosecution,” Merriman said. “Though there are many college faculty and administrators that have the best interests of their students at heart, SAFER cannot agree that leaving judicial proceedings, and especially the standard of evidence, completely up to the school is best written into law.”

The majority of campus sexual assault accusations do not include a “deliberate violent act” of a predator and prey. They are, contrary to Merriman’s claims, cases involving alcohol, misunderstood actions and he said/she said situations. “Deliberate violent acts” would be much easier to prosecute, as there would be evidence of such violence. But college cases are far more complex, which is exactly why students need to be able to exercise their due process rights.