It's College Rape Season Again!

I love this time of year. The days are getting shorter, baseball pennant races heat up, football season begins, and we witness the spectacle of college campuses suspending due process for alleged rapists yet again. It's interesting to note that there have been more lawsuits filed against San Diego colleges for improper expulsions, than there have been any actual arrests for sexual assault against any students.

The 2015 college rape season got an early start with the red-shirt carryover story of USC's Bryce Dixon. Dixon was accused by trainer Diana McAndrews of sexual misconduct that occurred on October 9, and of sexual assault two weeks later.

I cannot find any documents which indicate whether the alleged victim ever contacted police. The wheels of college jurisprudence turn independently of the actual criminal justice system. McAndrews notified the university, and USC's Title IX coordinator Kegan Allee handed down the punishment. Expelled.

Judge Robert H. O’Brien has stayed the expulsion, so Dixon can still attend USC on his football scholarship. But they won't let him back on the team. I found a lot of news articles wondering how USC will manage its offense without its star tight end. Haven't seen too many of them wondering how Dixon will manage his life after being branded a rapist. The fact that Dixon hasn't been fully reinstated indicates that the university wants the punishment to stand, and Dixon is probably carrying the penalty on his transcript.

Why didn't McAndrews go to the police? Maybe McAndrews felt regretful after consensual sex, and wanted some way to punish Dixon. We may never know, because McAndrews will never have to justify her allegation. We don't even know if McAndrews contacted campus police. All we do know is that she contacted the university, who handed the case over to its Title IX coordinator.

Kegan Allee, the school's Title IX coordinator, may have violated the law. On September 29, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1433 into law. The law requires colleges to immediately alert local law enforcement when a student or employee reports a violent crime.

The text of the law requires the school to compile "records of specified crimes...reported to campus police, campus security personnel, campus safety authorities, or designated campus authorities." Is a Title IX coordinator a "safety authority?" Perhaps not, but they would certainly be considered the "designated campus authority."

The text of the law also requires "any report made by a victim ... of a Part 1 violent crime, sexual assault, or hate crime, received by a campus security authority and made by the victim for purposes of notifying the institution or law enforcement, to be immediately disclosed to the local law enforcement agency."

Clearly, McAndrews notified the institution. The institution was required to notify local law enforcement, and that didn't happen. Perhaps Allee was unaware of the new law, which would call into question her competence to be a Title IX coordinator. Or perhaps she was hoping that the July 1, 2015 deadline to "adopt and implement written policies and procedures" that comply with AB 1433 was some kind of grace period. It wasn't. The reporting mandate went into effect immediately.

I hope that all these Title IX parasites get their shit together, but I won't hold my breath. There has been a lot of mis-reporting of AB 1433. California Newswire reported that colleges are required to report crimes to local law enforcement "with the permission of the victim." No, they are required to report, period. They can use the name of the victim with permission. I can see how that would trip up the reporter.

Reporter Christopher Simmons' article has an interesting assumption. AB 1433 author Mike Gatto is said to have written the bill because of concerns that colleges aren't reporting because they fear that "higher crime statistics would lead prospective students to choose elsewhere." If that were true, then the oft-quoted statistic about one-in-five college women being sexually assaulted would have really depressed enrollment. If colleges aren't keeping statistics and reporting them, then they have been in violation of the Clery Act.