There have been a lot of looong threads on CC about this, with a lot of heartfelt and anguished, but generally civil and intelligent discussion. I don’t mean to turn this thread into another one. But I want to note that just about every statement in the two sentences above has something significantly wrong, no matter where you stand in the spectrum of debate about this issue:
– There is no evidence that “most universities” will endorse some type of punishment whenever there is an accusation. As far as I can tell, lots of cases wind up with no discipline, except perhaps ordering the accused to stay away from the accuser.
– Notwithstanding that many university policies permit expulsion or suspension on grounds and with a low evidentiary standard that I believe is inadequate, there is no evidence that expulsion or suspension is the usual punishment applied, if any is applied. I think there is a lot of probation and sensitivity training out there. Expulsions produce court cases and headlines; modest penalties or no penalties generally don’t.
– While it is true that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights makes an implied threat to challenge universities’ funding under Title IX if they do not comply with the suggested standards for sexual assault disciplinary procedures, and although it has opened dozens, maybe hundreds of cases, as far as I know it has never made a serious attempt to withdraw federal funding on this basis, and I would be shocked to find anyone who expects it to do that. The practical fear universities’ counsel may have is harassment by OCR, not actual loss of funding.
– It depends a lot what you mean by “falsely accused.” There have been a few cases, maybe, where someone who has been accused and punished seems to have a decent argument that the accusation is patently false. There are more cases – probably not so “many” given the number of college students out there, and their propensity to have sex with each other under sketchy conditions, but certainly enough to make news – where there is little or no dispute about what happened, but fierce disagreement about whether what happened was worthy of discipline. That’s not a false accusation; that’s a policy question.