IT’S LIKE THEY’RE TRYING TO MAKE COLLEGE A HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR MALE STUDENTS. Education Department rewards lying by twisting Title IX.

Contrary to OCR’s weird, unjust, and illogical interpretation of Title IX, no court has ever found an institution in violation of Title IX, or any federal law against sexual harassment, for failure to remove an accused person from proximity to the complainant when the accused was not actually guilty of severe sexual harassment. Indeed, courts often rule for institutions sued for harassment even when the accused individual was guilty, and the institution either never removed the accused from proximity to the complainant (even after disciplining him), or only removed him after he was found guilty, and declined to do so while an investigation was pending.

OCR has discouraged colleges from allowing cross-examination by the accused, even though the Supreme Court described cross-examination as the “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth” in Lilly v. Virginia (1999), and even though a judge required a college to allow cross-examination in Donohue v. Baker (1997).

It has also sought to gut the presumption of innocence. The Yale Law Journal noted in 1987 that “courts, universities, and student defendants all seem to agree that the appropriate standard of proof in student disciplinary cases is one of ‘clear and convincing’ evidence.” But in an April 4, 2011 letter to the nation’s colleges, the Office for Civil Rights declared this standard illegal in sexual harassment and assault cases.

Smacking of double jeopardy, it has also forced colleges like Southern Methodist University to review past dismissals of complaints (even when those dismissals were not challenged by any complainant), and resolve them to OCR’s liking — potentially resulting in discipline of a student previously found not guilty a year or two earlier.

And it has sought to redefine constitutionally-protected speech as verbal “sexual harassment,” such as by telling colleges like Harvard and MSU to regulate off-campus conduct (apparently including speech on the “internet“), and by pressuring Tufts to regulate academic speech not even “directed at” the complainant (generally protected under the 2010 Rodriguez decision).

You’d almost think that the Education Department’s “Office Of Civil Rights” was run by a bunch of man-hating harpies.