Cornell branded student a sexual harasser for underwear theft with no evidence

Cornell branded student a sexual harasser for underwear theft with no evidence - The College Fix
What happens when you have no evidence to evaluate an allegation?

Under Cornell policy, you judge the credibility of the accuser versus the accused, and hope you don’t get sued later.
The Cornell Daily Sun has a feature on the school’s sexual-misconduct policy, and whether Cornell is abiding by a recent revision of its text following a damning internal review of its “inequities” toward accused students the previous school year.
It opens with a doozy:

When a Cornellian noticed that 10 undergarments were missing from her room, she claimed that she had been sexually harassed under Policy 6.4 — Cornell’s policies and guidelines for handling issues of discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual assault and violence.

Based solely on her intuition, the student blamed one of her male classmates for the theft, according to a report drafted by Amanda Minikus J.D. ’15, the University’s Judicial Codes Counselor at the time.

The University’s investigator had “no evidence whatsoever to place the [male student] (or anyone else for that matter) at the scene of the theft,” according to the Minikus report. But somehow, the investigator determined that the female complainant was more credible than the male respondent. Then, using an evidentiary standard that places a low burden on the complainant, the University’s investigator — who was also the case’s adjudicator — deemed the male respondent guilty of sexual harassment. …

Had the male student not appealed the decision and had the appellate panel not overturned the initial decision due to a lack of evidence, his Cornell transcript would have identified him as a sexual harasser for the rest of his life..."

Read on!