That’s the relevant word, as college judicial tribunals eagerly apply the federal government’s new sexual misconduct procedures to individual cases.
In this piece over at Minding the Campus, K.C. Johnson describes yet another kangaroo court episode, this time at Vassar College.
By now the drill is getting familiar: the investigating panel denies the accused the opportunity to have counsel or any other type of advisor present, suppresses significant exculpatory evidence, disallows any cross examination of the accuser or testimony in support of the accused. Five minutes later, they reach their verdict, similar to the NKVD tribunals of the late 1930s in Stalinist Russia or, as K.C. notes, its English predecessor, the Star Chamber.
Unfortunately, those analogies aren't terribly funny.