Posts Tagged ‘colleges and universities’

“86 fraternity members sued over Yale-Harvard game death”

Sue ’em all: “Eighty-six current and former members of a Yale University fraternity are being sued over a deadly tailgating crash at the 2011 Yale-Harvard football game. … [Lawyers] say insurance for the national Sigma Phi Epsilon organization doesn’t cover the local chapter, so they have to sue the local fraternity and its members.” That’s “have to” in the sense of “can obtain more money if they.” [Associated Press]

Schools roundup

  • Following outcry, Ohio lawmaker drops proposal to license homeschool parents [Jason Bedrick/Cato, sequel]
  • In Colorado U. crackdown on professor’s deviance course, university retracts claim that professor needed to clear controversial teaching with institutional review board [Inside Higher Ed, Zachary Schrag and sequel, background on IRBs]
  • The purely fictional, entirely bloodless “assassin” game — which I remember was played in my own high school years ago without anyone worrying — now seems to be controversial in suburban D.C. because School Violence and Think of the Children. [Washington Post; Bedrick, Cato on pretend “arrow” zero-tolerance case]
  • After son’s death, Ontario mom urges schools to let asthmatic kids carry inhalers [CBC, Bedrick]
  • Cathy Young on how the forces of unanimity police discussions of “rape culture” [Minding the Campus]
  • Kansas regents forbid faculty/staff to post social media content contrary to best interest of university [WaPo]
  • Don’t forget to stop home some time: more public schools serving dinner as well as breakfast and lunch [Future of Capitalism]

Schools roundup

  • Organizers of college conference on “intersection of health, humanities and disabilities” forget to make it accessible [Inside Higher Ed]
  • Law forbade disclosure re: sex offender classmate, now Seattle schools are paying assault victim $700,000 [KIRO]
  • Update: Lehigh U. student who sued over C+ grade won’t get a new trial, judge rules [Allentown Morning Call, earlier]
  • U.K.: “Refusal to allow your child to attend this trip will result in a Racial Discrimination note being attached to your child’s education record…” [Althouse]
  • Truly awful idea SCOTUS has helped us dodge so far: constitutional right to education [Andrew Sullivan]
  • Washington Monthly interviews Zach Schrag on institutional review boards (IRBs) [earlier here and here];
  • Oldie but goodie: dissent from Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs on College of Staten Island student politics complaint [Husain v. Springer, alternate]

Update: “Feds Back Away from New Campus Speech Restrictions”

From FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), on a controversy we’ve followed closely over the course of the year:

The federal government is backing away from the nationwide “blueprint” for campus speech restrictions issued this May by the Departments of Education and Justice. The agencies’ settlement with the University of Montana sought to impose new, unconstitutional speech restrictions, due process abuses, and an overbroad definition of sexual harassment and proclaimed the agreement to be “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country.”

But in a letter sent last week to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the new head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Catherine Lhamon, said that “the agreement in the Montana case represents the resolution of that particular case and not OCR or DOJ policy.”

FIRE adds that the Department’s recent actions in cases involving public colleges no longer insist on “the worst features of the Montana settlement.”

Schools roundup

  • Opponents, including U.S. Department of Justice, go after school choice programs in court [Jason Bedrick, more]
  • Study finds bullying programs may have opposite from intended effect. Why, next they’ll tell us D.A.R.E. is a flop at curbing drug use. Oh wait [CBS Dallas]
  • National Association of the Deaf files lawsuit against Maryland, seeking captioning at sporting events [WaPo]
  • “NYC will spend $29 million on salaries, benefits of educators it can’t fire” [NY Daily News] [NY Times]
  • Gotta-cover-yourself incident and accident reports clog the classroom day with paper [Ted Frank, Point of Law]
  • “IRBs and mission creep” [Dave Hoffman, Prawfs, earlier]
  • Boy who drew cartoonish bomb at home suspended, reinstated [Fox Carolina, Free-Range Kids]

Colleges and universities roundup

  • New Obama “pay-for-performance” scheme for higher ed would drastically increase federal power over university sector [D.C. Examiner editorial] Don’t expect new moves to curb the escalating cost of college [Neal McCluskey, Cato]
  • Funniest IRB (institutional review board) anecdote in a while [via Tyler Cowen, earlier]
  • Will colleges start awarding admissions preferences to applicants who say they’re gay? [John Rosenberg, Discriminations]
  • “8 Cringeworthy Allegations From The New Lawsuit Against Donald Trump” [Business Insider]
  • Judge rules student can proceed with suit against Morgan State over attack by brain-eating cannibal, because what could be more reasonably foreseeable than that? [Baltimore Sun, Daily Caller]
  • Dartmouth, USC: Office of Civil Rights, following “blueprint,” suggests colleges’ procedures not extreme enough in campus sex cases [KC Johnson/Minding the Campus, earlier]
  • NCAA concussion suit seeks class action status [ESPN]

Ramesh Ponnuru on feds’ new college-harassment rules

His new column for Bloomberg concludes:

One danger is that speech that should be allowed will effectively be banned by the federal government. Another is that even when allegations concern things that should be banned, the process will be unfair to accused students and professors who are innocent of them.

No one doubts that some victims of genuine harassment — and worse — get treated badly by university administrators. And sometimes “he said, she said” conflicts just don’t generate enough evidence to determine who’s in the right, and real misconduct can therefore go unpunished. But there are also false accusations, misinterpretations, ambiguities. Whatever the solution to the problem is, the system that President Barack Obama’s administration is creating isn’t it.

Recommended. (Earlier here, etc.)

Now available: “Sentence First, Verdict Afterward”

Commentary has un-paywalled my July article on the feds’ “blueprint” for how colleges and universities must deal with charges of sexual misconduct. I explain why despite a retreat to a seemingly less extreme interpretation of the law, the dangers remain that the Department of Education and Department of Justice will arm-twist academic institutions into stacked disciplinary methods and new curbs on speech. Read it here (and also consider subscribing to Commentary, gates aside). Earlier here, here, etc.

Two points worth noting: first, while the Obama administration has pushed the new plan hard, the wider trend of gradually stepped-up federal supervision over university life has been going on for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. There is not much resistance: university officials and organized professors themselves are relatively half-hearted about sticking up for their own institutional autonomy. Indeed, the federal prescriptions represent in some ways a consolidation of power by already-powerful elements within the academy, as opposed to a perceived hostile takeover from the outside. In the same July issue of Commentary, Philip Hamburger has an excellent article outlining how university researchers have for decades now tamely submitted to federally prescribed controls — overseen by so-called IRBs, or institutional review boards — over such relatively innocuous forms of “human-subjects research” as interviewing politicians and observing passersby in public places. In 2007, David Hyman wrote for Cato’s Regulation magazine on “The Pathologies of Institutional Review Boards.”

P.S. Much more on IRBs from George Mason’s Zachary Schrag (book, another interview, more, blog).

From FIRE, more on that Office of Civil Rights “blueprint”

At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Greg Lukianoff offers “Four Key Points About Free Speech and the Feds’ ‘Blueprint’“. He notes that overbroad notions of harassment have been the key driver of university speech codes and disciplinary action against dissenting and unpopular speakers, that DoJ and ED lack credibility in their new claim that the rules are only meant to encourage reporting as distinct from discipline, and that the implications go far beyond sexually oriented speech or flirtation to include wide swaths of controversial speech having nothing to do with sex. More: “OCR Descends into Self-Parody in Front of Incredulous College Lawyers” [Robert Shibley, FIRE; Chronicle of Higher Education] and Sen. John McCain demands answers.

Separately, FIRE has kind words for my new Commentary article on this controversy:

In the July/August issue of Commentary, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson puts the Departments of Education (ED) and Justice’s (DOJ’s) May 9 Title IX compliance “blueprint” in its historical context and emphasizes several of its alarming repercussions….

Olson continues, explaining that the purported distinction between reporting speech and punishing speech under OCR’s definition of harassment is negated by other troubling side effects of the blueprint:

This is a distinction without a difference. To begin with, the process itself amounts to punishment: Once people realize that a certain type of joke or gossip can get them summoned involuntarily into a grievance process of indefinite length and destination, many will get the message and shut up. Second, in defining such speech as harassment while claiming the intent is merely to record and document but not to suppress it, OCR is departing from the commonly shared meaning of the word harassment as something objectionable that should be stopped.

It’s also covered in Italian-language ThinkNews (“il magazine ‘Commentary’, uno dei più prestigiosi mensili di analisi della vita americana.”) Earlier here, etc.