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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

More IX Problems

From the Daily Cal: A UC Davis student filed a petition Thursday in the Alameda County Superior Court to the UC Board of Regents after he was issued a two-year suspension from the UC system for allegedly violating the UC Davis Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment, or SVSH, Policy and the UC Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline.

The student, who is identified by the pseudonym “John Doe,” aims to “redress the improper administrative findings and decisions made by a single investigator,” according to the petition filed by Doe and his legal team.

Doe’s lawyer, Mark Hathaway, declined to comment about the petition.

Doe received a letter Feb. 6, 2018 informing him of reports that he had allegedly violated the UC and UC Davis policies Dec. 2, 2017. The Title IX investigation was completed May 23, 2018, and Doe was found more likely than not to have engaged in nonconsensual oral sex and sexual intercourse with a UC Davis undergraduate student. On June 29, 2018 Doe appealed these findings, and after an Aug. 27, 2018 hearing, Doe was issued a two-year suspension from the UC system...

The petition argues that this decision should not be left to a single person acting as an “investigator, prosecutor, and fact-finder.”

Full story at http://www.dailycal.org/2019/02/26/uc-davis-student-files-petition-to-uc-board-of-regents-regarding-title-ix-case/

Note: Yours truly has noted in past blog posts that the key problem that occurs with Title IX investigations is the lack of an independent, neutral "judge" at the end of the process. External courts, when they look at situations such as the case described above, are likely to be troubled by lack of a neutral decision maker. The court system itself is founded on a separation between prosecution and decision maker. As has also been noted, union grievance systems - such as are found at UC - ultimately bring in a neutral arbitrator.

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