Apparently the demon Pazuzu and the Congressman from Boulder agree!
My rule: if you say something clearly and unequivocally with all the available evidence and defend it later in another forum, all your subsequent apology means is “Gee, I didn’t expect to get in so much trouble for that. I guess I better apologize and pretend I didn’t realize what I was doing.”
Rep. Polis of Colorado, a Democrat and clearly no student of American justice, inherited the wind with his statements in a Congressional hearing suggesting that the already manifestly unjust “predominance of the evidence standard” that the Obama administration forced on universities (you know, so women could get as many male students punished as sexual predators as possible) was too fair. First he said…
“I mean, if I was running [a college] I might say ‘well, you know, even if there’s a 20 or 30 percent chance that it happened I wouldn’t want … I would want to remove this individual. Why shouldn’t a private institution, in the interest in promoting a safe environment, use an even lower standard than a preponderance of evidence, like even a reasonable likeliness standard?”
Then he said…
“I mean, if there’s 10 people that have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, seems better to get rid of all 10 people. We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about their transfer to another university.”
Later, interviewed over the phone by Reason well after the hearing, Polis was unambiguous, and extensively defended his statements in the hearing, with no equivocation or doubt. Ah, but he did not expect so many publications, pundits, bloggers and ethicists to have such an adverse reaction to, you know, discarding due process, fairness, and basic principles of justice just to make the Democratic Party’s man-hating feminist base happy. So he apologized.
Absurdly.
He began with the Full Pazuzu:
I misspoke. During a subcommittee hearing last week about sexual assault on college campuses, I committed a major gaffe during the back-and-forth exchange with a witness who was advocating for removing the authority of colleges to adjudicate sexual assault cases that happen on their campuses. My words did not convey my beliefs nor the policies I now or have ever supported.
That’s really odd, since the Congressmen reiterated his words and their obvious meaning in the hearing, at length, and to Reason, at greater length. Yet his words did not convey his beliefs! How terrifying for him, to have his speech center and frontal lobe, as well as his central nervous system, in control of the same ancient demon that made poor Linda Blair spit pea soup all over Father Merrin. I’m kind of surprised that a demon from Hell even has a policy of campus rape investigations and punishment.
(This part of the apology is an outright, insulting lie.)
It is followed by this:
During that exchange I went too far by implying that I support expelling innocent students from college campuses, which is something neither I nor other advocates of justice for survivors of sexual assault support. That is not what I meant to say and I apologize for my poor choice of words.
What? Polis made it quite clear he did support expelling innocent students, as that would be the inevitable result of his 20% rule that he articulated. “What does “[I]f I was running [a college] I might say ‘well, you know, even if there’s a 20 or 30 percent chance that it happened I wouldn’t want … I would want to remove this individual” mean, if it doesn’t mean that he thinks expelling students based on a 2o% chance is just fine with him? He didn’t “imply” it. He said it outright. If that wasn’t what he meant to say, what did he mean to say? And what words were poorly chosen? Between the hearing and Reason, I count 427 words in all that, and they are clear and consistent. They were all poorly chosen? Wow. That a mess o’ poor choosin’!
(This part of the apology is also a lie.)
What follows is a filibuster on matters unrelated to what Polis is purportedly apologizing for. This is an unethical apology tactic, designed to distract, and to change the subject.
Then he begins arguing why due process for the accused is too much trouble. He’s apologizing, but essentially justifying the statement he just said has no relationship to what he believes:
This is precisely why the Department of Education four years ago stepped in and required schools to use a “preponderance of evidence” standard to remove alleged assailants from campus, meaning the evidence shows it is more likely than not that the student is guilty of the assault. This requirement doesn’t discourage survivors from also pursuing criminal complaints if they wish, but it allows schools to take more timely action against individuals who the evidence shows are guilty, so that assailants are not allowed to remain on campus and reoffend while their cases slowly make their way through criminal courts (if they ever do — only half of all sexual assault cases that are investigated by police are prosecuted).
In other words, Polis believes a student should be labelled a rapist based on evidence that “shows it is more likely than not that the student is guilty of the assault.” This is a frighteningly irresponsible and ignorant paragraph, and very much that of the same man who said that colleges should expel students whether they are guilty of sexual assault or not:
- Being kicked out of school for rape is a serious life blow, and is a taking of value–a young man’s reputation, good name, employability. Polis airily contrasts that with criminal penalties that require conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. The difference is minor. Rape is a crime, and the loss of an educational opportunity combined with social stigma is punishment for this crime. Citizens should not be punished for crimes they did not commit, and the only way to maximize the chances that this won’t happen is to use the standard of proof that symbolizes the commitment of the United States of America to justice, fairness and liberty.
- “…but it allows schools to take more timely action against individuals who the evidence shows are guilty”-–what? That’s the whole point: a mere predominance of the evidence doesn’t show anyone is guilty. You only use such a weak standard in your objective is to find people guilty.
- “…so that assailants are not allowed to remain on campus and reoffend while their cases slowly make their way through criminal courts…” And suddenly, those maybe-rapists are dangerous assailants preparing to rape and rape and rape! What was Polis apologizing for again?
- “(if they ever do — only half of all sexual assault cases that are investigated by police are prosecuted)”. Yes, Congressman, that’s why there are investigations: because just because there is a case, doesn’t mean the accused is guilty. One more time, Polis is making it clear, as he did in the original statements he is disclaiming, that he doesn’t believe that students accused of sexual assault deserve due process of fairness.
The Ethics Alarms Apology Scale rating of this dog’s breakfast of an apology is a plain 10:
“An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.”
I would have more respect for Rep. Polis if he had the courage, honesty and integrity to stick by his original controversial statement, since that’s obviously what he still believes. Not a lot more respect, since it is a disgusting, unjust, anti-heterosexual male, biased and totalitarian position, but more.
Teeny, really.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m to the point of wishing a co-ed would accuse him of rape on campus just to see how he would handle it. Does he have a son? Too bad he isn’t subject to the same low standard college men are. He had the good fortune to graduate from a university in the days when the laws of the criminal justice applied on campuses as well as the real world.
I will make my own replies.
Whose fault is that? This is clearly a self-inflicted injury.
Text of Title IX is here . Note that the words “assault” and “rape” are missing.
An outright refusal to punish rape does not constitute sex discrimination, for it treats male and female equally.
the word “hostile” does not appear in the text either. Should he not at least read the statutes he is interpreting?
I agree that colleges have wide discretion in doing this.
In other words, the Department pretended to be the Supreme Court.
I wonder if other government agencies can pretend to be the Supreme Court, especially on issues with which they disagree with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law.
Well, if someone is imprisoned by order of a criminal court, they can no more be in the same classroom with your kids or mine any more than they can stand at the same line for a taco cart with your kids or mine.
So how about anonymity for both?
Or publication of names, addresses, and phone numbers for both?
Or we could simply let the schools decide for themselves. That is a brilliant idea!
Students are customers of the schools they attend. I fail to see why a university has some sort of greater ethical obligation to punish rapes committed by its customers than the owner of a taco cart on an urban street corner has a duty to punish rapes committed by his customers. Schools can decide- and employers are free to judge the value of a degree from that university based upon a school’s policy on sexual assault.
Excellent job, ME.
>I wonder if other government agencies can pretend to be the Supreme Court
Well, there’s the IRS, and the NSA, TSA too, and the CIA… I almost forgot about Homeland Security, and the State Department, and…
Oh, that picture of that poor, poor woman with the acid thrown in her face! That makes me cry. So very sad.
What a disgusting human being! Under what circumstances would preponderance of evidence suffice for a rape accusation? I suppose there’d be some pretty loose interpretations of what sufficed as evidence, too. One in 5 female students are NOT sexually assaulted, but I’ll bet that 1 in 5 male students would end up being accused of rape in Colorado, if this jerk had his way.
A civil court, if a rapist is sued by the victim.
William Kennedy Smith can personally attest to that.
Haven’t read all the comments, but has the subject of the ‘Bureau Of Justice Statistics’ (DoJ) finding that regarding sexual assault, college students are actually safer than the public at large?
http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/11/new-doj-data-on-sexual-assaults-college-students-are-actually-less-likely-to-be-victimized/
Perhaps this ‘Inconvenient Truth’ would not be well received by purveyors of the “Rape Culture” that inundated college campuses?
But those are actual rapes. What this is talking about is a woman who willingly has sex, but is embarrassed or regrets it later. There is no waiver to cover this. Just because she signed consent forms before during, and after doesn’t mean she won’t regret it next month when she sees him talking to that blond in Psych 101. I’m sure she will claim all the signatures are meaningless because she didn’t truly understand what she was doing.
The point of the Title IX edict isn’t to fight rape culture. It is to embrace the lack of accountability culture.
This.
There are so many inconvenient truths to rape culture theory that I have a hard time giving any of it credit. And that’s a shame, because rapes do occur, they are horrible, and perpetrators should be held accountable by the law.
But there is so much noise around the issue that I feel there is a strong argument for a jurist, cognisant of the way that due process is being eroded in rape cases, to ethically nullify any jury for a rape case they’re called to, regardless of what is presented. Our system is predicated on the understanding that it is superior for a hundred guilty parties walk free than a single innocent person be incarcerated, and if a fair trial is impossible, a guilty verdict should be as well.
And that really pisses me off because it puts me in the really sleazy-seeming place of defending the rights of rapists.
It’s also interesting that at no point does he even attempt to explain what he DID mean.
“(if they ever do — only half of all sexual assault cases that are investigated by police are prosecuted)”. – couldn’t that fact just as easily be used to support the statement that half of all sexual assault cases are false? I suppose that would require presuming that police are capable and not inherently sexist, though.
Honestly what he said isn’t all that new, I remember reading statements similar to this in newspaper articles almost 20 years ago, in which university administrators justified having lax rules of evidence and different standards because “the state can take your freedom or even your life, the most we can do is ask you to leave” and “attending here is a privilege, not a right, and can be revoked at any time for any reason or no reason” so the protections of the Bill of Rights didn’t apply (this was spoken by a staffer from a private rather than a public university).
What it all comes down to is that higher education is incredibly lax when it comes to almost anything except this issue. When I was in college it would not be atypical to rise in the morning and find the bathroom freezing cold because every window was either open or broken, with no toilet paper in any stall, and vomit decorating the floors and sinks. You would then proceed to eat your first meal with a strangely contorted fork, and go to the computer lab to type, only to find someone smeared feces on one of the keyboards. At the end of the day you would be returning to your room and hardly be able to hear yourself think because of the blaring stereos. You might complain, but nothing would be done about it.
It follows logically that when day-to-day life is very undisciplined that students will figure that there is no discipline needed in personal relationships or other behavior. Further benign ignorance when it comes to protest behavior, from simple vandalism to disruption of events only reinforces the idea that as long as you feel strongly and act on your feelings, no consequences will attach. This in turn leads to overstepping lines, which are met with more strong feelings. Something gets said that isn’t racially correct, and the next thing you know you have a potential race riot on your hands. A date goes bad, and the next thing you know you have hundreds of angry feminazis getting you bad publicity and baying for the perpetrator’s blood. The easiest way to shut this problem down is to simply expel the perpetrator or perpetrators in the hopes that this will appease the angry ideologues and let you get back to the business of taking families’ hard-earned money and government grants while providing leftist, apathetic claptrap and a very expensive piece of paper in return.
This culture has only gotten deeper and more entrenched during the PC, hypocritical Clinton era, the attempt to repeat the 60s during the Bush II era, and the complete breakdown of standards and dominance of privileged minorities during the Obama era. Higher education has had issues with white males since 1967, but since they were still an important part of the community (often the only section of the community who were paying their own way) they didn’t lean on them too hard. Now it has increasingly become majority female and lurched so far left it’s ready to go over the edge. It should come as no surprise that it’s now become hostile to men and males who continue to attend are viewed as doing so only “for the length of their good behavior.”
And similarly, the value employers assign to the degrees they hand out is a privilege, not a right, and can be revoked at any time.