Ed. Dept. Official Apologizes for '90%' Remark on Campus Rape. What's the Research?

July 13, 2017
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Candice E. Jackson, acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education, made a bombshell comment to The New York Times stating that 90 percent of campus sexual-assault complaints "fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk’" and involve a regretful female student.

Campus investigations have not been fair to students who are accused of sexual misconduct, Ms. Jackson told the Times. She added that, in most cases, there’s "not even an accusation that these accused students overrode the will of a young woman."

"Rather," she continued, "the accusations — 90 percent of them — fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’"

It’s unclear whether her 90-percent figure was supposed to refer to all campus rape cases, or to open federal Title IX investigations against colleges for possibly mishandling sexual-violence cases. (There are 339 of those, by the way.) In any case, Ms. Jackson’s remarks quickly provoked outrage on social media.

Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Ed-Dept-Official-Apologizes/240634