The lengthy complaint is here. Part of plaintiff's theory, if I understand it correctly, is that Yale was effectively deputized by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department of Education to enforce the criminal law, and thus acquired constitutional obligations, despite being a private entity. I am skeptical this argument will fly, but that's a separate matter.
The two bits that may be of interest to philosophy readers are paragraphs #91 to 102 regarding how his work in a philosophy class (involving Plato!) got implicated in his Title IX troubles. And paragraph #43 in the complaint also makes a useful point: the difficulty with university Title IX proceedings is not really the use of a preponderance standard, it is the use of a lower standard of proof in conjunction with the absence of other procedural protections for both parties. When I served as a support person for a complainant in a Title IX matter, for example, I was astonished to discover that I was supposed to keep largely quiet during the interviews with the complainant. This means a complainant has to be her own advocate--and as the familiar legal saying goes, a lawyer who represents herself in a litigation has a fool for a client. Yet typical Title IX protocols preclude complainants and respondents from having advocates, whether actual lawyers or not. That really is a recipe for disaster.
Recent Comments