For the left due process is an impediment to their vision of the world.

Mothers for Due Process

By Caroline Kitchens

In January 2010, University of North Dakota student Caleb Warner was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student. Using a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, a UND tribunal found Warner guilty of sexual misconduct and swiftly expelled him. Yet the police, presented with the same evidence, never arrested or charged Mr. Warner. After a three-month investigation, they charged Warner’s accuser with filing a false report and issued a warrant for her arrest.

Despite these developments, UND repeatedly refused to rescind Warner’s expulsion. Joined by the civil-liberties group FIRE, Caleb Warner’s mother, Sherry Warner-Seefeld, launched a tenacious campaign against the university. After a year and a half, UND finally reexamined her son’s case, determined that its finding of guilt was “not substantiated,” and lifted all sanctions against Mr. Warner. Though his name has been cleared and he is free to return to campus, Warner has chosen not to continue his studies at UND.

Caleb Warner is just one casualty in the federal government’s assault on campus due process. Last month, his mother announced the launching of a new nonprofit called Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE). Warner-Seefeld’s co-founders, Allison Strange and Judith Grossman, also have sons who experienced the nightmare of false accusations and subsequent railroading by university courts. (For information on their ordeals, see here and here.) FACE will work to “promote and insure fairness; and seek justice for all those caught up in the timely and provocative issue of sexual misconduct on college campuses.”

Below is an e-mail exchange in which Sherry Warner-Seefeld explains the objectives of FACE and gives her perspective on the current policy debate surrounding campus sexual assault. I originally contacted Ms. Warner-Seefeld for a comment while writing an analysis for NRO of the Senate’s new bipartisan sexual-assault bill, the Campus Accountability and Safety Act. However, her comments are so incisive that they deserve to be published in full.

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