WAR ON COLLEGE MEN

Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., has suggested that even innocent students should be booted from campus if they were accused of sexual assault: “If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10.”

“We’re talking about their transfer to another university, for crying out loud,” Polis said, laughing off the idea that his suggestion would violate due process rights. He is not alone in taking due process rights lightly; a widely backed Democratic Senate bill is just more circumspect.

But a student with expulsion for sexual assault on his record will have great difficulty gaining admission to another college, with life-altering consequences. If any other minority were being treated this way — and, on college campuses, men are very much a minority — we would not hesitate to call that treatment discrimination. So why has the war on college men gotten a pass?

Glenn Harlan Reynolds Law professor University of Tennessee