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There is little disagreement about the ability of government regulations to become too onerous, costly and labyrinthine. But there are instances were the drive to simplify risks tossing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. As surely as there can be over-regulation, we have ample evidence of insufficient government oversight.
For this area, the scars of the coal mining industry remain quite vivid to anyone who wants to look. Waterways tainted by the orange outflow of acid mine drainage, culm banks jutting up like giant black blotches amid the green forests. Northeast Pennsylvania likely would have rebounded from the decline of anthracite if mining companies had been held more accountable for their environmental impact. More haunting: The lives shortened and lost by shoddy safety standards.
The trick is to find the balance of regulation and commerce. Sometimes, regulation deserves the benefit of the doubt. We can’t live without clean water and air, for example, or with contaminated food.
The renewed debate about government regulations designed to curb sexual assault on college campuses may seeem a little less clear cut. President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have bandied the idea of nullifying guidelines laid out by the Obama administration.
It is true, as reported in this paper in October of 2014, that the guidlines were complex — 227 pages — and expansive. Colleges and universities were required to increase training for staff and students, expand data collected and publicly reported, and allow alleged victims and perpetrators to have ‘advisers” present during any school proceedings related to assault allegations.
That’s just the bare bones list. There were also efforts to clearly define “consent” in a sexual relation, and substantial pushes to train students how to respond as bystanders to a potential assault situation.
One local campus security director even conceded he worried the public reports and documents would get so complicated students wouldn’t bother reading them, defeating the purpose.
But here’s the thing: Local instituions had already implemented most of the changes a year or more before they were required. And for good reason. Nationally, campus assuault data has been unsettling at best.
A 2017 University of Texas survey found 15 percent of female undergrads at the Austin flagship said they had been raped. Earlier surveys had suggested as many as one in five women faced some type of sexual assault in their undergraduate years, and that the majority never reported it.
The Obama-era guidance may indeed need tweaking, but the numbers strongly suggest it should not be abandoned wholesale.
“It’s about what one has to do to treat others with respect, to find what that means in a number of arenas is extremely important.” Misericordia University President Thomas Botzman said back in 2014.
“I do think this is going to be an ongoing discussion,” he added. “It obviously should be.”
Precisely.
– Times Leader
— The Dallas Morning News