Articles Posted in College Student Offenses

I’ve written before about how the Obama-era regulations that defined and governed sex offenses under the federal law known as Title IX, were far too weighted against the accused.  “Title IX” prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender at colleges, universities and any educational institutions receiving federal funds.  The law is enforced by the U.S. Department of Education.

After an exhaustive review process overseen by US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that spanned more than 2 ½ years and received more than 120,000 public comments, revisions and clarifications were made to the regulations  governing how colleges and universities respond to allegations of campus sexual assault and rape.  Colleges and universities across the U.S. must comply with the provisions of the new law by August 14.  If they don’t, they could lose tens of millions each in federal funds.

Some of the more important changes to the Title IX sex assault regulations include:

I’ve written previously in this blog about how unfair the federal Department of Education’s “guidelines” to colleges & universities has been over the past few years, regarding how colleges should conduct investigations and hearings on matters involving accusations of student sexual misconduct.  This system, known as “Title IX Investigations”  is tremendously unfair, and weighted in favor of the accuser.  Title IX is a federal law that was originally intended to be an anti-discrimination law, but it has expanded over the years to include not only claims of  sexual discrimination, but also sexual “harassment” as well as sexual “assault” – both of which are currently defined under extremely broad, all-inclusive terms.  Colleges and universities that receive federal funds  – which include the vast majority of universities in the U.S. risk losing enormous sums of money in federal funding – tens of millions per year at many schools – if they do not adhere to Title IX regulations.

These guideline notices were sent out to all colleges & universities across the country under the Obama administration. Known in the university community as “The Dear Colleague Letter” when it was sent to colleges across the country, it was effectively a threat, however veiled it tried to be.   The main thrust of this letter:  Colleges & universities were reminded that if they did not adhere to U.S. Department of Education guidelines on sexual misconduct investigations, they could potentially lose federal funds.  That’s massive amounts of federal funds given to individual schools, annually, all across the U.S.  The letter’s translation:  “Do what we at the U.S. Department of Education say regarding these campus sexual assault hearings guidelines, or we’ll yank all the millions in federal funds that you so love.”  In response, schools across the country complied with the “suggested guidelines”, and constructed archaic investigative and disciplinary procedures that overwhelmingly favored accusers over the accused.  These new protocols were given added life in the wake of the #MeToo ‘movement’, and the net result is that many college students accused of “sexual misconduct” have been railroaded off campus, with a school disciplinary record that will effectively haunt that student at whatever school they might attempt to transfer to. Continue reading

My previous post on this subject discussed new regulations proposed by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos, for use by colleges and universities that investigate allegations of sexual abuse, sexual assault or sexual harassment by students. Under the proposal, fewer allegations would be considered “sexual harassment”, and colleges and universities would be responsible for investigating only incidents that are related to campus programs and activities, that were reported to school authorities. Importantly, schools would be allowed to apply a higher legal standard when weighing evidence, than the lower standard of “preponderance of the evidence” that was encouraged by the Obama administration. I thoroughly endorse this change, as the correct evidentiary standard to apply when considering such serious criminal allegations, is, as anyone who has ever watched a crime show on TV or read a legal thriller is aware, “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.”  Keeping that higher standard of evidence is critical when such serious accusations of sex crimes are leveled at a student.

Another major change in the proposed federal regulations, allows defense attorneys representing accused students, to cross-examine accusers and witnesses. As a Boston sex crimes defense attorney, I was stunned that the Obama administration would ever suggest the elimination of this central procedural safeguard. How anyone could ever claim to argue that any investigative process could ever reflect due process, or be substantively fair in any way without allowing the accuser to be cross-examined, is beyond me. This procedural right is central to any investigative or adjudicative process to ferret out the truth of any given criminal charges, and that this fundamental right was ever abandoned, was an outrage.  Shamefully, but not surprisingly, the association representing university presidents, the American Council on Education, has issued statements actually criticizing the restoration of this fundamental procedural safeguard when investigating or prosecuting accusations of criminal conduct. One excerpt of their comments: “[Restoring the process of cross-examination] goes too far in incorporating legal concepts into a school disciplinary setting. This would permit one student to hire a highly paid legal pit bull to grill another student in a campus disciplinary hearing. We are not courts. I’m not sure we should try to act like courts.” Continue reading

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos earlier today released a long-awaited series of formal proposals for how colleges and universities respond to accusations of “sexual assault” and conduct investigations into such incidents. The proposed revisions would update “guidance recommendations” previously put in place buy the Obama administration, and predictably, Democrats and “#MeToo activists”, howled their opposition, claiming the proposal would allow, perhaps even encourage, sexual assailants to prey on college campuses everywhere as well as allow schools to evade civil liability.

This is no surprise, as these “women’s rights activists” will never cease at their un-reasoned exercises in hyperbole and extremism, when ever anyone has the audacity to disagree with their imbalanced ideas of legal due process and, even, basic fair play. The proposed regulations originate from a 1972 federal law called Title IX, which was initially passed to prevent sex discrimination at colleges and universities that receive federal funding. Most of the law’s focus is on universities, but it also applies to and any other schools that receive federal monies.   The Obama administration had previously issued “guidance” to schools, which wildly favored accusers and nearly stripped accused students of almost any meaningful legal protections provided by the U.S. constitution.  Obama’s Education Department was able to accomplish this end-run around procedure, because their recommendations to schools were made outside the normally-required formal rule-making process.  The result?  Those “guidance recommendations” threw out almost any meaningful substantive and procedural legal rights for anyone accused of sexual assault — and furthermore, under the Obama “guidelines” – the definition of “sexual assault” was broadened so wide as to subject almost anyone to such an accusation.  Predictably, before reading any further, left-leaning feminist activists will interpret this post to be “anti-women” – or, to employ the prevailing lexicon they so favor, “misogynist”.  Not, neither this post, not any of my opinions, are “anti-women”:  They are pro-due process; they are pro-fairness; they are in favor of determining the truth in any given circumstance – not conducting a kangaroo court to satisfy the loudest protect group of the moment.

Employing the Obama administration’s “guidelines” (vs. formal rules), allowed Obama’s Education Department to essentially manufacture new proceedings that had no basis in any relevant statute or Supreme Court opinion.  Again, these “guidelines” – which despite being called “guidelines”, almost every campus in America adopted given the fact that over 95% of them are bastions of liberal thought, were the ultimate in an end-run around appropriate federal protocol. They were the product of militant feminist “activists”, who never cease in their proclamations of victim-hood and “oppression” – even in an era when women occupy, justifiably and with good reason, some of the most powerful positions in the country – in law, in government, in commerce & business, in medicine, in academia, and more.  These activists simply never cease their drumbeat of trying to convince people that every woman, everywhere, is oppressed, abused economically, and sexually pursued and harassed, wherever they go.  Odd – I don’t see that in any of the women I know, of a variety of ages, professions and backgrounds – and I’ve asked many women I know for their opinions on this subject.  Yet we’re told by militant feminists that this conduct is ubiquitous; omnipresent; everywhere, universal; constant.  Really?  As a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney who is in the courts every day, this sounds more to me like the dying breaths of once-active organizations like the National Organization for Women, which given all the advancements made in women’s interests, are now largely irrelevant, but to avoid a natural death, continue to declare otherwise through such dramatic claims of “oppression, everywhere”

Police Department records are public documents. Though not everyone knows that, many people do. That’s a good thing, because, for obvious reasons, we wouldn’t want Police Departments to operate in secrecy. Not only do police departments keep their daily logs public – which are abbreviated, digested descriptions of police activity, they must also make the full records of those incidents, which are much lengthier than a simple log entry, public upon request.

So you’d think that the same laws would apply to Massachusetts college & university campus police departments, right? If you said “yes,” you’d be wrong. Continue reading

I grew up just down the street from Boston University, on Crowninshield Road in Brookline, Mass. Every late August and early September, I would watch as thousands of “grown ups,” as I thought of them in those much younger years of my life, swarmed Commonwealth Avenue and North Brookline, in the annual ritual of a new academic year. (Those “grown ups,” of course, were students aged 18-22 years old, an index of just how much time has passed in my life.) At any rate, I never thought much more of what their lives consisted of, than studying. How near-sighted of me – but then again, I was maybe 10-15 years old.

Practicing law as a Boston criminal defense attorney over the past 25 years, I’ve seen a very different side of a typical university student’s life. It doesn’t just include classes, student clubs, and exams. It also includes several activities that can often lead to unexpected outcomes – and that can land a student before university disciplinary authorities, or even worse – arrested and charged with a variety of criminal offenses. Many of these are offenses that can jeopardize a young person’s college financial aid package, enrollment at school, and even their entire future. These offenses can include allegations of student rape and sexual assault, various Massachusetts drug offenses, property crimes such as larceny, as well as serious Massachusetts motor vehicle violations.

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