Kangaroo Courts on Campus?

By Thomas Sowell

There seems to be a full-court press on to get colleges to "do something" about rape on campus.

But there seems to be remarkably little attention paid to two crucial facts: (1) rape is a crime and (2) colleges are not qualified to be law-enforcement institutions.

Why are rapists not reported to the police and prosecuted in a court of law?

Apparently this is because of some college women who say that they were raped and are dissatisfied with a legal system that does not automatically take their word for it against the word of someone who has been accused and denies the charge.

There seem to be a dangerously large number of people who think that the law exists to give them whatever they want -- even when that means denying other people the same rights that they claim for themselves.

Nowhere is this self-centered attitude more common than on college campuses. And nowhere are such attitudes more encouraged than by the Obama administration's Justice Department, which is threatening colleges that don't handle rape issues the politically correct way -- that is, by presuming the accused to be guilty and not letting Constitutional safeguards get in the way.

Anything that fits the "war on women" theme is seen as smart politics in an election year. The last thing Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department is interested in is justice.

The track record of academics in other kinds of cases is not the least bit encouraging as regards the likelihood of impartial justice. Even on many of our most prestigious college campuses, who gets punished for saying the wrong thing and who gets away with mob actions depends on which groups are in vogue and which are not.

This is carried to the point where some colleges have established what they call "free speech zones" -- as if they are granting a special favor by not imposing their vague and arbitrary "speech codes" everywhere on campus.

The irony in this is that the Constitution already established a free speech zone. It covers the entire United States.

Have we already forgotten the lynch mob atmosphere on the Duke University campus a few years ago, when three young men were accused of raping a stripper?

Thank heaven that case was handled by the criminal justice system, where all the evidence showed that the charge was bogus, leading to the district attorney's being removed and disbarred.

If all the current crusades to institutionalize lynch law on campuses across the country were motivated by a zeal to protect young women, that might at least be understandable, however unjustified.

But those who are whipping up the lynch mob mentality have shown far less interest in stopping rape than in politicizing it. Many of the politically correct crusaders are the same people who have pushed for unisex living arrangements on campus, including unisex bathrooms, and who have put condom machines in dormitories and turned freshman orientation programs into a venue for sexual "liberation" propaganda.

They laughed at old-fashioned restrictions designed to reduce sexual dangers among young people on campus. Now that real life experience has shown that these are not laughing matters, the politically correct still want their sexual Utopia, and want scapegoats when they don't get it.

There is a price to pay for allowing unsubstantiated accusations to prevail, and that price extends beyond particular young men whose lives can be ruined by false charges. The whole atmosphere of learning is compromised when male faculty have to protect themselves from accusations by female students.

People today are amazed when I tell them about a young African woman who had just arrived in America back in 1963, and who was so overwhelmed by everything that she fell far behind in my economics class. I met with her each evening for an hour of tutoring until she caught up with the rest of the class.

There is no way that I would do that today, and there is no way that she would have passed that class otherwise. Instead, she would have returned to Africa a failure. There are many unintended consequences of lynch law policies that poison the atmosphere on campus and diminish American life in general.

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Diversity-Hating Liberals On College Campuses Wage War On Tacos, Spanish Language

This month, a tiny minority of Latino students has effectively banned everybody else on college campuses from having a good time celebrating Cinco de Mayo, a once-obscure Mexican holiday that was popularized by the makers of Corona beer.

For example, the all-you-can-eat “Pi Phiesta” taco bar fundraisers that some chapters of Pi Beta Phi sorority throw each year around Cinco de Mayo to raise money for local charities are likely going extinct thanks to the forces of political correctness.

Pi Beta Phi’s May 5 fundraiser was dramatically altered by the sorority’s chapter at Stanford University, reports The College Fix.

The sorority felt compelled to change its “Pi Phiesta” into an ocean-themed party where tacos happened to be served.

In the future, “Pi Phiesta” fundraisers are probably not long for this world because, as The Stanford Daily notes, critics call Cinco de Mayo celebrations involving tacos “cultural appropriation” — “actions that trivialize aspects of a culture by not respecting a custom’s symbolic significance or the history of a style of dress or other artifact.”

Pi Beta Phi’s national office has advised its local chapters to avoid all taco-eating around Cinco de Mayo.

“While a couple of Pi Beta Phi chapters have held Pi Phiesta fundraisers, that theme is not recommended and only a few of our 136 chapters host one,” a Pi Beta Phi spokeswoman told The Fix.

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Fencing Team Banned from North Dakota State University Because of "Weapons Policy"

Fencing, an Olympic sport sponsored by more than 30 NCAA schools, involves two athletes engaging in what is effectively a sword fight with a foil, saber, or épée. The equipment is blunted and does not have any actual blades or sharp tips. Unfortunately, for the newly-formed club fencing team at North Dakota State University, fencing equipment counts as a weapon, and the club has been barred from practicing on campus.

Naturally, the club members and their coach are not thrilled about this decision:

"The current interpretation of the non-weapon policy in NDSU...understands our fencing equipment as weapons," says the club's coach Enrique Alvarez.

Alvarez has been fencing since his early teens. He says despite their appearance, the foils, epees and sabers they use don't have sharp edges or points.

"This is a spring and a flat tip that if you press the spring against the body of the other person, will be awarded a point," he demonstrates.

Nonetheless, NDSU's Police and Safety Office Director Ray Boyer cited the school's policy manual and Code of Student Behavior, saying sabers and swords are prohibited on campus:

"They are deemed weapons, and as such, possession or use on University owned or controlled property is prohibited," he says.

The team has been forced to practice off-campus, a move they say has reduced the number of members in the club.

This policy is ridiculous, especially considering that NDSU has baseball, softball, and golf teams that presumably are permitted to practice on campus. Fencing equipment is not lethal, whereas baseball bats and golf clubs have actually been used to kill people. The school is certainly overreacting in this situation.

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