President Obama, in his 2016 budget proposal, called for a 31 percent increase in funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the agency responsible for enforcing Title IX and investigating colleges that don’t comply.
In recent years, OCR has been tasked with investigating student’s claims that their colleges and universities mishandled their sexual assault accusations. The agency is currently investigating nearly 100 schools.
Obama’s budget increase would allow the office to hire an additional 210 full-time employees, bringing the office’s total up to 754, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The increase in funding would help alleviate some of the burden on the agency as the list of investigations grows, but advocates of due process may see the move as another blow. Recent conclusions reached by OCR show the agency is more concerned with politics than due process.
At the end of 2014, OCR determined that Harvard Law School was providing its students with too much due process by not using the lower “preponderance of the evidence” standard for determining guilt. The school was also scolded for taking too long to adjudicate an accusation and reversing a guilty decision on appeal. As punishment, Harvard Law had to adopt new policies that removed elements of due process and reopen all sexual harassment accusations filed during the previous two school years.
In November 2014, OCR found similar problems with Princeton University’s handling of sexual assault claims. Again, Princeton was found in violation of Title IX because it used a higher standard of proof than “preponderance of the evidence,” which maintains that college administrators only need to be 50.01 percent sure the accuser is telling the truth. Princeton was also in trouble for not finding three men guilty and for providing accused students many of the same benefits of accusers but not making those benefits as obvious to accusers.
Ohio State University found out the hard way that the real way to get off OCR’s investigation list is to hold someone — really anyone — accountable. Last summer OSU fired its longtime marching band director after a dozen students (out of the hundreds in the band) complained of a “sexualized” culture among band members. The band director was fired because he apparently didn’t try hard enough to stop the behavior.
And Obama wants to give this agency more money to impose its rules on colleges and universities — which will lead to fewer due process rights for students.
