News organization falsely said new regulation imposed ‘criminal justice standards’ The Department of Education imposed new rules on campus sexual misconduct proceedings in August, concluding a regulatory process going back three years. Santa Clara County – home to Stanford University, the University of California-Santa Cruz and more than dozen other colleges – wants to know how its K-12 and postsecondary schools responded to the new regulation, which is legally binding. Not because the Board of Supervisors wants colleges to comply. No, the elected officials want to shame colleges for complying. The Daily Post in Palo Alto reports that the board approved up to $1 million to “audit” all colleges and schools in the county for how they changed their Title IX policies in response to the regulation. Colleges can lose their federal funding if they don’t comply with the regulation, which requires more due process for accused students among many other changes. Supervisor Dave Cortese proposed $500,000 for the audit, but Supervisor Joe Simitian proposed doubling it, which their colleagues unanimously approved: “The Trump administration gutted protections in Title IX and increased the likelihood that sexual assaults and harassment will occur, and watered down the responses that administrators at schools and universities should take,” said Cortese, who is running in the November election for the state Senate against former Santa Clara County Counsel Ann Ravel. “This review is needed now more than ever.” … Attorney Marybeth Sydor, who represents students in Title IX proceedings, denounced the false characterization of the regulation as applying “criminal justice standards” to campus sexual assault proceedings. The regulation in fact gives colleges a choice of evidence standards, as long as they apply them to both students and employees: preponderance, which was required under the Obama administration’s guidance, and “clear and convincing,” which is common in faculty disciplinary proceedings. The former is casually known as “more likely than not,” while the latter approximates 75 percent certainty of guilt.