<p>@austinareadad As I’ve said repeatedly on this thread, very, very few men are rapists. I love men, my daughters love men, my husband is a great partner and terrific father to his daughters. I have many male friends. Growing up I had more male friends than female friends. I do not think men are the enemy. Rapists are the enemy. Actually, they are the enemy of good men and women everywhere. But, again, most men are not rapists.</p>
<p>I’m incredibly encouraged by the attitude of this younger generation. They really do seem to “get” that it’s not men vs. women. They really are starting to understand that it is men and women together against those who would violate any of us: man, woman or child.</p>
<p>I was in England this week, and read an article that I thought shed some interesting light on this topic. Apparently, the conviction rate for rape cases has been declining recently in England. The Attorney General (or some equivalent title) said that he was concerned that if they brought more difficult cases to trial, the rate might decline even more. This brought a lot of criticism, with some arguing that even with a lower rate, there could be more convictions in total. But I think he makes a key point: if you bring a lot of cases with weak evidence to the tribunal, you are going to get one of two things: a substantial number of acquittals, or a substantial number of convictions of innocent people–actually, you could get both. </p>
<p>This is part of what concerns me about using the “preponderance of the evidence” standard for college tribunals. That standard allows you to bring pretty weak cases to the tribunal, including cases in which there really is no evidence other than the testimony of the accuser and the accused. You can get a conviction if the members of the tribunal (perhaps just a majority of the members of the tribunal) believe one of them a bit more than the other.</p>
<p>So what’s going to happen? Are colleges really going to bring a lot of these low-evidence cases to tribunals? And if they do, how much confidence can we have in the outcomes? As we know, plenty of innocent people have been convicted of serious crimes in criminal courts with a much more stringent standard of proof and other protections. Often they have been people from disfavored social classes. (This was what I was referring to way upthread–in the south, it was not uncommon for black men to be convicted of raping white women on extremely flimsy evidence, especially if the defense was based on consent.)</p>