USC Campus Rape Lawsuit: This Title IX Official’s Vulgar Response Is Unbelievable
2nd August 2016
For those of us who have been paying attention, it is all too believable.
A male University of Southern California student expelled for sexual assault appealed the decision on grounds that the adjudication process was wholly inadequate and stacked against him from the start. USC’s Title IX coordinator responded with shocking hostility—bureaucrats don’t like when their authority is questioned, it seems.
“Does that college motherfucker know who I am?” USC Title IX Director Gretchen Dahlinger Means asked Title IX Investigator Patrick Noonan, after a conference call during which the student, “John Doe,” had explained his intention to appeal. It was a hot mic moment: Dahlinger and Noonan thought the student and his lawyer had already exited the call.
That was not the only outburst. Means also said, “Who do those motherfuckers think they are?” in reference to the student and his lawyer, who had asked for USC to release the identities of the panel members who had voted to expel Doe. The administrators did not merely refuse this request; they were apparently incredulous that such a request had been made at all—that a student could possibly have the gall to ask for some basic transparency with respect to the Kafka-esque procedure that ruined his life.
The venomous statements of USC’s Title IX team give this case a unique flavor, though the rest of the details make for a textbook Title IX dispute: spurned female student, bad breakup, after-the-fact accusation, total absence of due process, predetermined finding of responsibility. Doe recently filed suit against USC, and a state court issued a stay preventing his expulsion from going into effect. As KC Johnson writes, “On this record, it’s not hard to see why.” (Special thanks to Johnson for providing the relevant court documents.)
Betcha she voted for Obama.