http://time.com/3936005/university-michigan-sexual-misconduct-survey/
Forgive me if someone has already posted this (I’ve missed the last 1000 posts!) but here is another excellent set of comics that illustrate the concept of consent in ways that all of us can understand. I think what’s key here is “ownership” of the female body. Once you get that the female owns her own body (and the male owns his), consent becomes pretty simple.
I love the tattoo one.
“Under severe stress the brain shuts down in weird ways.”
Sure. But a jerk hitting on you too aggressively isn’t severe stress to everybody. Surely with better education and preparation, a woman doesn’t have to react to a classmate unbuttoning her blouse like there’s a gun in her face.
I agree completely with the rest of your post, but the claim quoted above isn’t necessarily generalizable to the entire population.
I think this is probably true. The problem, however, is that laws and rules need to be generalized to the entire population. You can’t make workable rules that try and account for every possible reaction to every possible affront. I think that is why review of the college survey data is less valuable when discussing what college sexual misconduct rules should be. Education has to be a big part of whatever effort gets made to address the problem that exists on campus/
The “joint letter” submitted by the attorneys basically sets out their legal arguments. I think Nungesser is going to have a hard time showing that Columbia discriminated against him based on his gender. He can claim Sulkowiz’s actions were gender based, but in oder to show gender based discrimination by Columbia he will have to prove that in similar circumstances they treated a woman differently – i.e. stepped in and stopped the behavior. I think he will have hard time showing that.
Well, it is not just discrimination. Title IX supposedly covers harassment based on gender as well. It appears clear that Columbia, through the professor and its decision not to enforce its rules, at the very least contributed to what is facially a campaign of harassment by one student against another. If Title IX does not require a school to stop conduct akin to Sulkowz’s, or at the very least not actively support it, then we might as well stop talking about a university having an affirmative duty to stop harassment. I am not sure how a Court is going to be able to write around that.
Thanks. That is my point. All the arguing over the terms of the fine points may be a desire to deny an uncomfortable reality. So, let’s work with 3%. Assume that there is a 3% chance that a female student will be forcibly raped in a year. What does this mean for the chances she will be raped over her four years at college. I’ll do the math quickly (I’m working on a proposal so need to pay attention to that, but this isn’t complex) and look at it with two sets of assumptions.
First, assume that the probability of rape for a female student is the same every year, whether or not she has been raped in a prior year. Then the probability of not being raped in each year is 97% and the probability of not being raped in four years is 97%^4 and so the probability of being raped once or more in the four years is 1-.97^4 = 11%.
However, suppose that a student who is raped becomes a lot more cautious and thus is highly unlikely to be raped in a subsequent year. This seems quite plausible. So, the probability of not being raped in her freshman year is 97%. But, conditional on the fact that a student hasn’t been raped in her freshman year, the probability of her not being raped in her sophomore year would be 97%-3% or 94%. Similarly, the probability of her being raped in her junior year if she has not been raped in her sophomore or freshman years is 91% and the probability of her not being raped in her senior year given that she has not been raped in her first three years is 88%. Then, the probability of her not being raped in four years is .97.94.91*.87 = 73% and thus the probability that she will be raped once in four years of college is 23%. [Maybe 1 in 5, though likely overstated due to fuzzy definitions, is not so crazy].
So, unless I’m missing something, if the 3% figure is accurate, somewhere between 11% and 23% of college age females would be victims of forcible rape (no verbal pressure or begging). I’d guess that it is closer to 23% because I think rape victims would typically become very self-protective thereafter and avoid all kinds of situations that would make rape more likely (e.g., the student in the WaPo article is unlikely to go into a male’s room alone) but not all the way there because I would think the kids would get a little wiser about putting themselves in potentially risky situations (e.g., big drunken frat parties far off campus) but I don’t know that for sure and the Michigan survey does not suggest that the incidence of sexual assault goes down over the four years of college…
So, while it might be fun to spend a lot of time arguing about the specifics of the fluffier part of the surveys (“Oh, I don’t like the wording of the questions” some of which seem a little sloppy) or questioning the sample size while avoiding the real problem, that would be somewhat useful if it is somehow helping us size the problem but seems a lot less useful if it is merely a way for people who don’t believe the problem exists or is large to avoid coming to grips with the data. As far as I can tell, the data suggest, however you slice it, that we have a real and sizeable problem – it is quite plausible given the Michigan survey and others that 11% to 23% of female students are raped over the course of a college career. Thus the need is to start thinking about what to do about it.
The what to do is hard as I (and others) have said before. There are only two witnesses to many of these rapes and one is the rapist. That means that it will always be hard to prove the cases and while I disagree with some of what @northwesty has written in this thread, I think he(?) is correct that adding a beefed up college tribunal isn’t going to make a major difference because we come back to he said she said cases. Educating and training females will likely help. I’d suggest that being clearer rather than vaguer about what are transgressions that get you kicked out of school would be a good thing, so I’d rule out only persuasion attempts that are only verbal (“I’ll dump you if you don’t put out” or “Please Please Please” or “You’ll really like it”) but include those that involve a threat of physical force, even if not applied.
@shawbridge, the he said she said cases aren’t going anywhere so reducing cases is the way to go. Education and bystander programs work. We are talking about educational institutions so…these institutions should educate students on sexual issues and sexual assaults.
I think a course on sex and a course on finance should be mandatory or at least strongly recommended to college students. Really high school or middle school students should be taking these courses, but I guess politically that is not possible.
The college tribunal system will make some difference because not all cases are he said she said.
You travel a lot. I don’t know if you have time to read during your flights. You might be interested in reading ‘Missoula’ by Jon Krakauer. It is a very easy read.
http://www.amazon.com/Missoula-Rape-Justice-System-College/dp/0385538731
I like your post.
Your math is right, Shawbridge, but your assumptions are backwards. A woman who has been previously raped is much more likely to be raped than a woman who has never been raped. This is probably because of drinking; women who drink a lot are much more likely to get raped than women who don’t. Moreover, being raped might be so traumatic it drives a woman to double down on just the kind of self-destructive behavior that ups the risk of rape.
The same goes for the number of women raped while asleep and forcibly raped. You’d intuitively think that for a single year, 1.1% say they’ve been raped while asleep/unconscious, 0.3% say they’ve been raped by threats of physical violence, 1.8% say they’ve been forcibly raped, and those numbers are so small that there should be no overlap so we can just add them up. But no! In other studies there has been significant overlap in those numbers.
I didn’t add those numbers up. If I did, I would have gotten 3.2 percent. 
I said close to 3 percent. Shawbridge said “if 3 percent”…
I don’t think 3 percent is a wild assumption. But yes, you can’t just add up the numbers.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Ohiodad! The “affront” we’re talking about here is the guy removing a woman’s clothes and raping her after she has repeatedly told him to stop. Most people would think of that as more than an affront. And although it would be difficult to prove, it wouldn’t be impossible to prove, particularly if the guy was accused by several different women.
That’s the context of this discussion. Momofthreeboys apparently has abandoned No Means No, and now thinks that the guy is justified in raping the woman who has repeatedly told him to stop, because she didn’t get up and leave, or decapitate him, or something. dfbdfb says that some women find being attacked after repeatedly telling the guy to stop would be so stressful their brain shuts down and they freeze, as the Washington Post victim says she did. Hanna thinks (as I do) that better education can prepare the woman to shift from the rules of a consensual encounter (be polite) to the rules of a sexual assault (fight back) when a guy begins to assault her, so that she doesn’t shut down but instead screams and kicks him.
Fang you need to stop expanding or distorting what I say. This is the third time I’ve asked nicely of you not to re characterize pretty straightforward sentences of mine. I am saying exactly the same thing that others have said. Women need to get up and leave if the situation doesn’t feel right, something happens that they don’t like and before something really bad happens. Here is the lead sentence that you’ve turned into something quite different. I won’t ask nicely again for you to stop. I’m pretty easy going but this is tiresome. Next time it happens I will report.
Why are you squeamish, momofthreeboys? Why does it make you “squeamish” when a woman is raped because a guy won’t take no for an answer?
@“Cardinal Fang” I expect more from you than to truncate a quote which was responding to another quote and then completely change the context. @dstark, sure but then s/he is a Michigan fan
It makes me squeamish that some young people get sexually involved when they do not have the ability to make mature decisions about their actions. I’m not sure where your contention that getting up and leaving has much to do with rape, what you’re trying to do and twist in your mind is off base. The idea of getting up and leaving is so you don’t GET in a situation you can’t control. It is so you don’t let something continue that you feel is inappropriate. It is so you don’t wake up in the morning and have to even wonder if you’ve been raped because you AREN’T in that bed.
Ok…I haven’t finished this…
University of Chicago…
http://csl.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/Climate_Survey_Spring_2015_preliminary_report.pdf
http://csl.uchicago.edu/get-involved/climate-survey-project/spring-2015-climate-survey-materials
http://csl.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/Climate_Survey_Spring_2015_survey_instrument.pdf
“@shawbridge, the he said she said cases aren’t going anywhere so reducing cases is the way to go. Education and bystander programs work. We are talking about educational institutions so…these institutions should educate students on sexual issues and sexual assaults.”
Totally agree on this.
While some folks on this board think Dear Colleague is OK, imho it has been counter-productive because it has focused on a path that really isn’t ever produce much progress, even if schools could successfully implement it (which they are ill suited to do). Process really can’t do much since there’s rarely sufficient proof. But the Canada data suggests that schools can actually do a good job on education and prevention, and that such efforts have massive positive ROI. When I read the anectdotes, I’m usually struck by how easily many of them could be avoided. Heart-breakingly easy.
That WAS the context, Ohiodad. I gave the entire thread. The story that momofthreeboys was “squeamish” about was the story in the Washington Post about the woman who said she was raped. And she was “squeamish” not because a woman was raped, but because the woman “could have” gotten up and left, but didn’t.
I’m not sure what “could have” even means in this context. One time I was on a bike ride with my son, and he crashed. There we were, him with blood dripping, me just standing there, and the ambulance (not called by me) showed up. My brain turned to tapioca: for quite a while, a few minutes, I couldn’t make the decision about whether to put my son in that ambulance. You might say I “could have” been reasonable and decisive.
But if I could have been decisive, I would have been decisive. And then it turned out, later, when I took a Wilderness First Aid class, that even in the practice scenarios where we were supposed to diagnose and treat pretend victims, those of us who were new to first aid froze up at first. That’s why we practiced with pretend scenarios: so we could learn what to do and how not to freeze up in real emergencies. That’s why the Canada-style education works: because people who practice learn how to handle stressful situations.
Similarly, if the rape victim “could have” not frozen up, and instead fought back, she would have.
If a person on a bike gets hit by a dangerous illegal driver, and then the person in their stress doesn’t know how to stop their bleeding, we don’t blame the victim. We blame the dangerous driver. And similarly, when a woman is raped and in her stress she doesn’t know how to fight back, we shouldn’t blame the victim or be “squeamish” about her. We should blame the rapist for raping her.
What can you possibly be saying here? She was in a consensual situation of kissing, and then he tried to go further by removing her clothes, and she told him to stop, repeatedly, but he didn’t.
Are you saying that no woman should kiss a guy unless she is willing to have sex with him?