How would that work? Would it involve documentation?

Asking for consent rather than assuming it. More to the point, it involves changing the standard of how complaints of sexual assaults are handled within the colleges to one where the responsibility for maintaining consensual sex is on the initiator.

But if you want to apply this standard in any meaningful way I would think some sort of documentation would be required. If you want to prosecute someone for rape, you have to prove that consent was not given. When two people agree to a legally binding shared activity they agree to a contractual obligation that is enforceable by law. A contract is proof of that agreement and assumes paperwork with negotiations and signatures and wotnot.

Unless I'm missing something anything less would leave us right back at "he said she said".

because all parties understand that this is the expectation. Unlike the prof who thinks men will shy away from colleges with this policy (because apparently he thinks only men are initiators) I think that affirmed consent encourages both men and women to take more responsibility for keeping sex consensual.

I don't for one minute think that this will end the "he said, she said."

such a policy was enacted at a college. The man was expected to ask permission at every juncture of the sexual encounter. The name of the school will come back to me around midnight tonight. It became just another hook up line as in "wanna enact the policy?"

and unlike in the 1980s, it's not a novel concept now.

You can't prosecute somebody without evidence. What do you suggest as evidence for non consent that would prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

However, simply having a law in place tends to make people take notice. Civil rights legislation didn't cure racism, but it has over time weakened it considerably. In a simpler context, traffic laws also are effective mostly because most people want to obey the law.

civil rights legislation was backed by the national guard. Mandaterd busing actually moved people from one place to another. Equal rights resulted in people actually working at certain occupations, attending certain schools and patronizing certain establishments. That happened because people violating the law could be prosecuted for doing so. It represented a sea change in our nation's culture. Rape has been a serious crime for a long time. There has never been any doubt about the abhorrent nature of the act.

In the end, if a woman says, "he raped me", even if he did, nobody will be able to do anything without evidence. You can't lock people up without proof. A law mandating certain negotiations without any way to prove that those negotiations actually took place will be a toothless exercise in futility. And the politicians who put it in place will lose credibility and possibility elections because of it.

and the penalty for not complying is loss of state funding.

The details of rape charges will still be handled by the courts. However what changes is that the colleges have a compelling reason to set the tone, educate students and staff, and to implement protocols that don't allow them to favor the accused over the accuser.

and administrators to understand what constitutes affirmative consent.

Section 2 goes on to define now invalid excuses like the accused was drunk, or the accused didn't take reasonable steps to assure consent (I'm guessing things like asking someone "Do you want to screw me now?"
for example rather than assuming that a sleeping or intoxicated person is fair game.)

The indemnity against disciplinary action because the assaulted student was breaking the school's drinking policy is a no-brainer. It takes away one of the coercive means used currently by some administrators to dissuade formal reporting of sexual assault.
It's called blaming the victim or in some circles, personal responsibility.

This proposed law wasn't invented out of whole cloth. It is reactive: there are too many tales of colleges working diligently to under-report sexual assaults and to place an unreasonably high standard of proof on the victim.

You seem more concerned about the chance of false reporting than of the acknowledged large problem of unreported sexual assaults and improperly investigated complaints.

and how would the accused prove he employed them?

Like I said, I can understand the motivation and the need for this effort. Yes, rape at colleges and universities are a problem. Yes, it happens all too often. But we don't get to use generalized statistics to prosecute individual cases. You don't get to take away people's rights in specific cases because lots of other people are doing bad things. That's why we have courts, the rule of law and the rules of evidence. The alternative is vigilante justice and mob rule.

"The indemnity against disciplinary action because the assaulted student was breaking the school's drinking policy is a no-brainer. It takes away one of the coercive means used currently by some administrators to dissuade formal reporting of sexual assault."

Yes, that's exactly the point. By creating the impossibility of irresponsible behavior by the accuser the weight of disciplinary action will fall all the more easily on the accused who is offered no means to refute the charge. It's a perfect kangaroo court.

If you're concerned with adjusting the behavior of college students pushing everyone around a drunk into a parental role is the wrong way to go about it. Especially when the person who has to shoulder those responsibilities is little more than a child himself.

"You seem more concerned about the chance of false reporting than of the acknowledged large problem of unreported sexual assaults and improperly investigated complaints."

This is an interesting sentence since I took the time to address the issue already. You can allude to ideological heresy all you like, but in the end you have not provided any way for the accused to make an affirmative defense. Nor does the law, and the authors of it should know better. Administrators aren't engaged in some sort of conspiracy to conceal rape statistics out of misogynistic motives, although their motives might be financial. They are on the horns of a dilemma whereby the parents of Mary may sue them for not keeping her safe while at the same time the parents of Johnny may sue them for false accusations and defamation of character. And it's all because there is insufficient evidence either way.

There is nothing wrong with teaching kids right social and moral behavior. Most colleges and universities have courses in ethics, philosophy, sociology, and religious studies. But like I said, partisans on both the left and the right attempt to rebrand basic human ideals for their own ideological ends, and that always ends badly. When the law is designed to defend ideology rather than justice horrible injustices result. This law is a fine example of that.

But maybe I'm wrong. The solution is an affirmative defense for the accused. I have already asked for one but I haven't seen one yet. I realize this is a protected group so I'm not going to crowd you for it any more. Have a nice day.

It's intended to correct well known, existing, widespread biases that have been used to stifle sexual assault charges on college campuses.

Again, I'm not a lawyer and can not address how the accused will be protected legally.

As to the motives of administrators for downplaying sexual assault, it's about protecting the public image and thus probably about protecting the institution's financial health.
You wrote:

Males are responsible for the vast majority of rapes in this country. We all know what we're talking about here, as do the authors of that law and their constituents.

All laws are reactive. That's how the legislative process works. People see a need for a law and politicians cook one up. That doesn't mean the law will work. And given the information that I have made available, not to mention the rest of that available on the internet, there is no excuse for not considering whether or not the law will actually work in the real world. Understanding the consequences of our legislative actions is just good citizenship.

Look, I'm trying really hard to be nice here, but I have raised issues that you continue to ignore. I'm not an attorney either, but I can spot a raw deal when I see one, and this law is a raw deal. It simply makes no sense to move responsibility for the actions of one party onto the shoulders of another, and then leave the burdened party no recourse when accused.

If you have any interest in justice apart from ideological imperatives you will consider a way for the accused to make an affirmative defense and explain why the accuser is absolved from responsibility for their irresponsible behavior. If you don't want to do that, that's fine. But understand if you stake your claim on an ideological foundation without any relationship to practical application in the real world your position is not significantly different from any religious fundamentalist. Which is, again, your prerogative. But if you do you change the issue from one of public policy to one of faith which offers no solutions for real people and lots of opportunities for your ideological opponents to cry foul, and for good reason. This law is classic culture war pap and if enacted will only give MRA's something to complain about to no benefit other than conservatives and their attendant bloviaters.

It was Antioch College.

along with Reed, Hampshire, and others.

verbal consent to sex for college kids, and I like the mindset this engenders where no one can get off with the excuse, "I thought she wanted it."

But I'm not sure how, in the event of a rape, this prevents the rapist from saying, "But she said yes" when she didn't.

Of the law is that the burden would be on him/her to prove it, if questioned, rather than the burden on the victim. The prosecutors would still have to prove the case overall, but it appears that this element change means that we don't assume consent, but rather assume nothing.

I'm not a lawyer so this is a layperson's guess.

for prosecutors often rape becomes a he said/she said thing in the lack of explicit evidence. so frustrating for me when people dismiss rape accusations as "lies" and such.

I need more coffee

The proposed legislation is SB967