Yet Another Victim Of The War On Men

Despite increasing scrutiny from the public and the ballooning number of lawsuits being filed, it appears our institutions of higher learning have been loath to review their decisions to impose kangaroo courts upon their male students, throwing out even appearance of impartiality and treating even vague allegations of sexual misconduct as all the proof that's needed to 'convict' a defendant (and I use that term loosely).

Call it institutionalization of the War on Men.

What these institutions have yet to realize is that the coming backlash is likely to hit them where they live, meaning their bank accounts. Between declining enrollments due to the already over-priced costs of getting a college education, increased disincentives for men to enroll, reluctance of patrons to endow their alma maters due to their increasing intolerance and unpopular political correctness, and millions in damages they are likely going to have to pay out because of their actions in supporting these kangaroo courts, more money will be flowing out of their coffers than in. Every bit of their financial problems will be laid at the feet of the administrators, faculty, and the overreach by government bureaucrats bypassing due process in order to fight a problem that is a fraction of what they've been claiming.

One evening in February 2012, Vassar College students Xialou "Peter" Yu and Mary Claire Walker, both members of the school's rowing team, had a few drinks at a team gathering and left together as the party wound down. After a make-out session at a campus nightspot, they went to Yu's dorm room, where, by his account, they had sex that was not only consensual but mainly initiated by Walker, who reassured her inexperienced partner that she knew what to do.

The next day, according to documents in an unusual complaint that Yu filed against Vassar last June, Yu's resident adviser told him some students had seen him and the young woman on their way to the dorm. They had been so concerned by Walker's apparently inebriated state that they called campus security. Alarmed, Yu contacted Walker on Facebook to make sure everything was all right. She replied that she had had a "wonderful time" and that he had done "nothing wrong"-indeed, that she was sorry for having "led [him] on" when she wasn't ready for a relationship. A month later Walker messaged Yu herself, again apologizing for the incident and expressing hope that it would not affect their friendship. There were more exchanges during the next months, with Walker at one point inviting Yu to dinner at her place.

What happened next is something right out of the McMartin preschool scandal that rocked the nation decades ago.

Last February, one year after the encounter, the other shoe dropped: Yu was informed that Walker had filed charges of "nonconsensual sexual contact" against him through the college disciplinary system. Two and a half weeks later, a hearing was held before a panel of three faculty members. Yu was not allowed an attorney; his request to call his roommate and Walker's roommate as witnesses was denied after the campus "gender equity compliance investigator" said that the roommates had emailed him but had "nothing useful" to offer. While the records from the hearing are sealed, Yu claims his attempts to cross-examine his accuser were repeatedly stymied. Many of his questions (including ones about Walker's friendly messages, which she had earlier told the investigator she sent out of "fear") were barred as "irrelevant"; he says that when he was allowed to question Walker, she would start crying and give evasive or nonresponsive answers. Yu was found guilty and summarily expelled from Vassar.

It sounds to me like Walker was convinced by someone on campus that she wasn't the initiator, that Yu somehow forced her to write the messages on Facebook be causing her to fear him, aqnd that he was a rapist.

Remember my mention of the McMartin case? That scandal, one of the most notorious trials about child abuse perpetrated by day care personnel, caused a heck of a sensation and fostered a witch hunt. What made it even more notorious is that all of the parties accused of committing the abuse were innocent. The children were badgered by police, 'facilitators', and their own parents to tell them that they had been abused. Eventually the children gave in and started telling stories about being abused, guided by child abuse 'experts'. But the tales they told were so outrageous and bizarre and not backed by physical evidence of any kind that eventually the defendants were acquitted on most charges and remaining charges were dropped . (A number of kids talked about being abused in car washes, airports, and in secret tunnels and rooms underneath the day care center, just to list a few of the stories told by the children prior to the indictments and during the trial.)

Is the Vassar case an updated version of the McMartin preschool scandal? Was Walker convinced by 'facilitators' well after the fact that she didn't know what she was doing (even though numerous messages she sent proved otherwise), that she had been assaulted, and that Yu was guilty and she should file charges? Or was she pressured – directly or indirectly - by others within Vassar in order to get her to change her story and to play the victim? From reading the piece in Reason I'd have to say the possibility is high that one of these two scenarios is the case.