During a trip to Georgia Tech on Wednesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos dodged questions by news media about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.
Reporters asked whether DeVos found Ford, who goes by Dr. Blasey professionally, appeared credible to DeVos. They also asked whether the times were, as the president characterized them, “scary” for young men in America, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
She wouldn’t answer the questions on Ford’s credibility or whether she agreed with the president’s statement. DeVos instead said, “I am the mother of daughters and sons. What we need to have is a framework for students that is fair and just for all parties. Students should be able to count on a process that considers those who have been victims and those who have been accused.”
This response is in line with how DeVos has always discussed sexual assault on college campus — as an issue where there are two parties facing an equal amount of harm who are just as likely to be disbelieved.
“All their stories are important,” DeVos said after meeting with men’s rights activists last year to talk about campus sexual assault rules, including groups who have defended men who abused women and compared false accusations to being on the same level of harm as sexual violence.
Researchers estimate that somewhere between only 2 to 10 percent of rape allegations are false . The likelihood of a student facing serious school discipline — not criminal charges or incarceration — after being accused of sexual assault are slim. Students found responsible for sexual assault were expelled in only 30 percent of cases, according to one 2014 analysis by HuffPost. Almost half were simply suspended, and 23 percent received other punishments.
As DeVos focuses on making processes more accommodating for alleged perpetrators who may never face expulsion, she shifts attention away from high rates of campus sexual violence and low rates of reporting. A 2015 report from the Association of American Universities found that 11.7 percent of all students across 27 universities said they experienced sexual assault by physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation, and 23.1 percent of female undergrads reported the same. But reporting rates to campus officials or law enforcement were low, and ranged from 5 percent to 28 percent.
Even if someone reports sexual assault to college authorities — a process that often is mishandled and leaves the people who report to go to class with or live in the same dorm as their alleged assailant — and the person is found responsible for sexual assault, it’s unlikely they’ll be expelled. And if they were expelled, expulsion is not in any way comparable to incarceration. The fact that someone was found responsible for assault may not even follow them in their records to another school. Similarly, Kavanaugh is not facing criminal prosecution for an alleged sexual assault. He is only facing the possibility he will not receive a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yet, both DeVos and Kavanaugh have called for “due process.” It is an outsized response to the relatively unlikely possibility that someone will be falsely accused and face non-criminal consequences that may not even seriously mar their professional lives in the long run. The rare chance that this could happen is supposed to be weighed equally with the very likely chance that a woman will be sexually assaulted. In these cases, survivors are only requesting some form of accountability outside the criminal justice system, and in the case of campus sexual assault survivors, they’re looking for protections to ensure they have equal access to education.
It’s notable that at the same time the country is watching a U.S. Supreme Court nominee who has been accused of sexual assault multiple times, both during his high school and college years, retain support from powerful men, DeVos is readying new campus sexual assault rules. Last year, she rescinded Obama-era guidance clarifying protections for sexual assault survivors under Title IX.
The new rules under consideration, according to the Times’ reporting, lets alleged sexual assault survivors and the accused “cross-examine each other” and request evidence from one another. It allows schools to choose between the two evidentiary standards — “preponderance of evidence” or the “clear and convincing evidence” — even though the former has typically been used in issues of discrimination and was approved as the appropriate standard under the Bush administration.
This new flexibility would essentially allow schools to use a tougher standard that would be make it harder for sexual assault survivors to see their assailant found responsible for their sexual assault. The department would also redefine sexual harassment to mean “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity” instead of simply “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.”
In an interview with the Associated Press, Sejal Singh, state and federal organizer with the survivor advocacy group Know Your IX, made the connection of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault allegations with DeVos’ new approach to campus sexual assault rules.
“Betsy DeVos should consider how to interrupt sexual violence when the people who commit it are in school and before they are nominated to the Supreme Court,” Singh said.