ASHE SCHOW: Congressional staffers briefed on campus due process needs.

Because due process rights aren’t apparently considered when discussing campus sexual assault, congressional staffers on Monday had to be briefed about them by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

FIRE staffers Joseph Cohn, Shelby Emmett and Samantha Harris met with congressional staffers to discuss the lack of due process rights afforded to college students accused of sexual assault, and provided analysis of current legislation on the subject.

FIRE discussed the need for accused students to have access to the evidence against them (because such an obvious right is currently not afforded to college students) and the elimination of conflicts of interest among campus investigators. Currently, the person investigating a sexual assault claim can also be an advocate for the accuser, producing a clear bias for an allegedly impartial investigator.

FIRE also asked the staffers to reconsider the “preponderance of evidence” standard, which requires campus adjudicators to be only slightly (50.01 percent) sure that an assault happened to deliver a guilty verdict. This means that they can find a student responsible when they’re 49.99 percent sure the assault didn’t happen.

And then people wonder why male students are scarce, to the point that colleges are becoming finishing schools for girls.