DeVos ends Obama campus ‘rape’ rule

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday scrapped Obama-era rules on how colleges should deal with sexual assaults and issued new guidelines that would give more protection to the accused.

Under new rules, colleges can raise their evidence requirement to a “clear and convincing standard” of proof that an assault took place.

The Obama administration had directed the schools to use a lower standard, requiring only a “preponderance of evidence” to act.

Team Obama at the time said that it was clarifying the obligations schools had under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex dis- crimination at federally funded schools.

Women’s groups painted a terrifying picture of what could happen under the new rules.

“It will discourage students from reporting assaults, create uncertainty for schools on how to follow the law and make campuses less safe,” National Women’s Law Center CEO Fatima Goss Graves told Politico.

And sexual-assault victims were angered.

“Honestly, I’m just so hurt,” Shelby Rogers, 22, who graduated in May from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, told Glamour. “As a sexual-assault survivor it is so disheartening.”

But Michelle Owens, a Nashville attorney who has represented students accused of sexual misconduct, applauded the new policy,

“I’m really excited that they rescinded the 2011 letter,” Owens told USA Today. “And I do like that they are going to take each [incident] case by case.”

Robert Shibley, head of the libertarian Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, also backed DeVos, saying: “Fair outcomes are impossible without fair procedures.”