By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2026-10-09 09:38:10 | Updated at 2026-10-09 11:29:41
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Hundreds of sexual assault survivors and allies gather in solidarity with the "Cornell 7" Jane Doe outside New York Supreme Court on Oct. 8, 2026.
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If the reopened investigation of the “Cornell 7” results in indictments, the accused will be entitled to a fair trial in a court of law.
But hundreds of college students each year accused of sexual assault don’t get those protections.
Many fall into the clutches of college disciplinary panels — campus proceedings generally rigged in favor of the female accuser.
They’re kangaroo courts dispensing lynch-mob injustice to college males.
On Sept. 26, coincidentally the same day prosecutors reopened the Cornell case, President Donald Trump’s Education Department took a big step toward restoring fairness.
The department announced new rules — in the works long before the Cornell scandal hit the headlines — that colleges must follow in responding to sexual assault charges.
Trump has put all colleges and universities on notice: Provide equal justice for men and women, or risk losing your federal funds.
Not a day too soon.
This anti-male unfairness originated with orders from President Barack Obama in 2011.
At many colleges, the female accuser remains behind a shield of anonymity, like Jane Doe in the Cornell case — but the accused young men are publicly named, ruining their reputations and futures regardless of the truth.
Most campuses refer to the female accuser as a “survivor,” as if there’s no question the assault happened, rather than a complaining witness.
Invariably, she’s backed by a phalanx of campus administrators ready to help.
She’s often allowed to present more evidence than the accused, and sometimes is even spared cross-examination — violating our legal system’s fundamental right to know and confront your accuser.
Victim advocates like Zoey Brewer of RAINN insist that “the live cross-examination” can be “so retraumatizing.”
As if being dragged into a disciplinary proceeding isn’t traumatizing for young men.
Since Obama urged colleges to adopt procedures stacked against men, the injustices have mounted.
The nonprofit “Title IX for All,” a resource for aggrieved students, reports a current caseload of 921 cases — up from 700 in June 2024.
This year lawsuits have been filed against Pratt Institute, the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan and the University of Kentucky, among others; all the plaintiffs are young men.
In one of the earliest such lawsuits Judge Amy Coney Barrett, then a federal appeals court judge, ruled against Purdue University for violating Title IX and the14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
In her 2019 ruling, Barrett described how male students were essentially framed by the university.
Purdue hosted dozens of campus events meant to spur reports of sexual assaults.
During the school’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month in 2015, five male students were accused by females and hauled before Purdue’s disciplinary system.
One of the men Purdue found guilty sued in federal court to overturn his suspension and get his ROTC scholarship back.
His female accuser, Barrett found, hadn’t appeared at the hearing or submitted a sworn statement, yet the college’s panelists claimed she was the more credible party.
Two of the three panelists admitted they didn’t even read the investigation report before deciding in her favor.
It was a farcical version of justice.
But not every unfairly treated student has the means to go to court — so Trump’s Education Department started going after these kangaroo courts during his first White House term.
“It’s a very scary time for young men in America,” Trump complained in 2018.
Under Trump, the department’s Office for Civil Rights found that the University of Notre Dame had violated Title IX by failing to show an accused male the specific allegations and giving him less assistance than his female accuser received.
Trump’s OCR also found that Ithaca College in New York had treated a male student “as though he was presumed guilty,” and ordered it to revise its disciplinary methods or lose federal funding.
In 2020, the department moved to revise its Title IX regulations to ensure equal treatment for accused and accuser.
But after Trump left office President Joe Biden halted those enforcement efforts and attempted to restore the Obama-era anti-male initiatives.
Now Trump has moved ahead full steam to restore fairness on campuses — relying on Title IX, which empowers him to strip colleges of federal funding if they don’t comply.
The rules announced last week codify what Trump’s Education Department has demanded of the individual colleges it’s investigated: Treat male and female students impartially.
Commentator Melinda Henneberger called Trump’s rules “a sneak attack on women.”
Wrong: It’s the American way — equality under the law.
And every woman who has a son or a brother or a grandson in college can breathe a sigh of relief.
Now Congress must act to make these reforms permanent.
Otherwise a future president can revoke them, as Biden tried to do, and push us back to the disgraceful era of lynch-law justice for college boys.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
