Editorial: Betsy DeVos’s campus sex-assault rules need a tweak, not an overhaul – Los Angeles Times
You might have missed it, but Betsy DeVos had a brief shining moment as President Trump’s Education secretary. On her initiative, the department rewrote the rules for how colleges and universities handle allegations of sexual assault on campus, reining in a system that was stacked against the accused person. And for the most part, she did that without returning colleges to the bad old days when complaints of assault were routinely ignored and victims made to feel ashamed, afraid and abandoned.
The changes engineered by DeVos need minor adjustment but not an overhaul and certainly not a swing back to the rules adopted by the Obama administration, which applied to any institution of higher learning that received federal dollars. While those rules were in effect, courts threw out dozens of expulsions and other disciplinary actions taken against men — the accused were mostly men — because their colleges hadn’t given them due process.
The Obama administration had good reason for radically changing the rules. Colleges were routinely sweeping allegations of assault and harassment under the rug, failing to report them as required and giving perpetrators a free pass or a slap on the wrist. More than the rules were needed; a transformation was in order for a campus culture that effectively said women were responsible for these assaults, and in any case, they weren’t a big deal, and the victims should stay silent.