The Patriot Post® · 'Ladies First:' Men Are Suffering Campus Injustice
The “Dear Colleague” letter, the brainchild of the ACLU and other far-left activist groups, states that, under Title IX, it is the responsibility of institutions of higher education “to take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence” on campuses. The letter makes clear that, should an institution fail to fulfill its newly contrived responsibilities under Title IX, the Department of Education can impose a fine and potentially deny its access to federal funds.
However, this defense against sexual harassment seems to apply only to female students. Recently, a male student at Cornell who claimed he was sexually harassed and raped by a woman was himself expelled and charged with raping the very woman he claimed assaulted him. The male student claims he was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression after Cornell subsequently suspended him. Last spring, the day he was notified of his second suspension, he tried to commit suicide.
Sadly, another male student was successful in taking his own life after enduring a kangaroo court at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he was accused of writing anti-gay slurs against a self-identified homosexual male student. After the accused student’s tragic death, campus investigators admitted that there was no evidence to support the accuser’s claims. The father of the deceased student is now suing the accuser on the grounds that the accuser himself was the one making inappropriate sexual advances and pressed charges to protect himself.
The war against men on modern college campuses has spun out of control. Not only are a man’s claims of sexual assault brushed aside while a woman’s same claims receive unquestionable celebrity status, but many male students are afraid to even approach female students for fear of making said females feel uncomfortable and thus pressing charges. After all, according to many modern feminists, a man can sexually assault a woman without laying a finger on her. Those men who entered college hoping for some merry mingling with the opposite sex may find themselves expelled and publicly disgraced with a permanent record.
That said, promiscuity on college campuses — and in culture in general — doesn’t come without consequences.
It’s unrealistic to expect colleges to be successful at catching and punishing sexual predators. That’s simply not their core mission. Colleges are supposed to be sanctuaries where young people learn to be responsible, but instead they have shouldered the unnecessary burden of policing their students’ sex lives.
The federally funded, Barack Obama-initiated, anti-campus-rape program “It’s On Us” touts a snazzy website and slick avatars to upload to your social media accounts, but it fails to offer common sense advice on stopping rape in its tracks: personal responsibility. Don’t drink yourself unconscious? Don’t put yourself in compromising situations? You won’t find such sound advice here — only a carefully edited video of professors and students reading from a script about how they are ready to “stand up for victims.” It’s almost enough to make one wonder if their goal is preventing victimhood versus celebrating it.
The Campus Sexual Assault Study of 2007, undertaken for the Department of Justice, found that the popular belief that many female rape victims have been slipped “date rape” drugs is false. “Most sexual assaults occur after voluntary consumption of alcohol by the victim and assailant,” the report states. An astonishing number of rape cases brought up by female students against male students fall apart in court, but still make headlines for years afterwards and often bring the accused men to disgrace and utter ruin.
Unfortunately, giving any advice to women about their behavior or attire is the unforgivable sin of our culture and the harbinger to becoming eviscerated by hordes of furious feminists. But the feckless accusations of these unscrupulous people have caused not only destruction but even death. Like conservative Christians, straight white males are becoming a minority group on modern campuses that the Left is eagerly attempting to extinguish. And that’s not the way to go about helping those young males become the men our society really needs them to be.