The tyranny of Title IX Who do we believe, and when?

Story by Bunky Raines Student Reporter


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 Lawsuits are springing up across the nation from male students alleging gender-based discrimination by their universities. These John Does claim they were denied due process in their schools’ investigations of sexual assault claims. 

This prompts the question: Should every woman accusing rape be believed? 

That’s what Allison Vetter, Associate Professor of Sociology, alleged last year in a mandatory Title IX meeting. “Rape is the only crime where the police don’t just automatically believe you when you report it,” Vetter said. “They call it ‘alleged’ rape”. 

I find it disconcerting that we are all made a captive audience to this kind of disinformation. 

They do call it alleged rape, that much is true, and for good reason. The first part of her statement, however, is false. 

The police don’t “automatically believe” any crime. That’s a deliberate misconstruing of the truth with the apparent purpose of making women seem more victimized than they really are. 

Rape is already bad enough. It doesn’t need any help to appear that way. 

If I tell the police that someone has murdered my mother, they won’t go get that person and throw them into the electric chair without first checking to see if my mother is dead. An investigation must be undertaken. 

Evidence must be collected to ascertain whether or not the crime was actually committed. 

The same is true with rape. If we advocate automatic condemnation for any male student accused of rape, we’re saying goodbye to due process. Obviously, I don’t want anyone to get away with rape. 

Anyone found guilty should be punished. The problem is that there are people who do bad things from both genders. It’s becoming increasingly clear, as more and more claims are debunked, that sometimes women lie about rape. 

Say a woman has sex with a man who then loses interest and hooks up with someone else. She feels hurt and used. 

She wants to hurt him back, so she says the sex wasn’t consensual. Suddenly, he’s kicked out of school and has a permanent stain on his record. 

Those who refuse to see that this is power waiting to be abused are purposely blinding themselves to one side of the issue. With administration forcing propaganda meetings upon us, some students may have only been exposed to one side of the issue. 

That’s what’s called indoctrination, the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.That’s not what colleges are supposed to do. Their purpose is to teach students a wide variety of ideas and opinions. 

Let me be absolutely clear about this: I’m not defending rapists or condemning women who have been raped. Quite the opposite on both counts. 

It simply can’t go without saying that the “believe them all” system is flawed and can be abused, leading to the oppression of male students who have been or will be falsely accused. 

Shouldn’t we protect them? No one should have the power to be automatically believed.

 “If we advocate automatic condemnation for any male student accused of rape, we’re saying goodbye to due process.”