Poll: Overwhelming majority say campus sexual assaults are matter for police, not administrators

Poll: Overwhelming majority say campus sexual assaults are matter for police, not administrators

Whether campus sexual assault is a problem of epidemic proportions, as liberals argue, or merely a product of their imagination, as conservatives contend, the majority are in agreement at how such matters should be dealt with.

Over 90% of American voters say that police should take the lead in handling campus sexual assault, rather than relying on school administrators, according to a poll released this week. The poll suggests the public strongly disagrees with the approach taken by President Barack Obama and other lawmakers on the issue of campus assaults.

The poll was commissioned by the Fraternity and Sorority Action Fun, a pro-Greek life PAC, and it was carried out by the market research firm Penn Schoen Berland. It surveyed 1,021 likely voters in the United States, and sought to gauge public response toward the Safe Campus Act, a bill currently under consideration in the House of Representatives.

The Safe Campus Act, introduced by Republican Rep. Matt Salmon, would significantly alter how sexual assaults are handled at colleges. Currently, students can choose to report an alleged assault solely to campus officials without going to the police, and schools can investigate and even expel students for assault with zero police involvement. Under the act, colleges would now be unable to investigate alleged assaults unless a student also makes a police report. Colleges would also have to give police an exclusive window of opportunity to investigate before taking action themselves, and before punishing students they would be required to hold hearings where accused students have several due process rights (such as the right to cross-examination).

Many anti-assault activists oppose the bill, claiming it would have a “chilling effect” on reporting assaults because many people feel uncomfortable going to the police rather than campus authorities.

But apparently, they are in the minority. In addition to the 90% who support involving law enforcement, another 90% favors letting students in a campus hearing have an attorney advise them. Over 80% also support requiring colleges to choose a higher standard of evidence than “preponderance of the evidence,” going against the Obama administration’s policy.

Overall, 77% of respondents said they’d support passing the Safe Campus Act.

The Obama administration has sought to deal with assault by ratcheting up pressure on college administrators. The Department of Education has compelled universities to use the lower “preponderance of evidence” standard to adjudicate assault complaints, and it’s initiated investigations at dozens of schools that have allegedly been lax on the matter.

Efforts to fight assault through university hearings have also been seen in legislation. Several states have required colleges to adopt “affirmative consent” standards where a student commits sexual assault if they don’t receive explicit prior consent for every individual sexual act, while at the federal level a group of senators led by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand are pushing a bill that would compel colleges to take a variety of actions to counter assault while threatening them with substantial fines if they are too lax on the matter. Gillibrand’s bill has been criticized for containing no due process protections, and Gillibrand herself has even stated that she sees no problem with giving accused college students relatively few protections.

This report, by Blake Neff, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

 

LU Staff

LU Staff

Promoting and defending liberty, as defined by the nation’s founders, requires both facts and philosophical thought, transcending all elements of our culture, from partisan politics to social issues, the workings of government, and entertainment and off-duty interests. Liberty Unyielding is committed to bringing together voices that will fuel the flame of liberty, with a dialogue that is lively and informative.

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