Looks like Michigan’s policy includes the following definition of “consent” which may explain the inclusion of the pressuring tactics:
“Many of the sex acts may not be criminal acts but we have cultural issues. UMich is looking at student culture.”
Stark – Sure. But the language and labels really matter.
The UM president chose what to put in his speech. He chose to highlight that 12% of female undergrads were victims of “nonconsensual sexual penetration.” That sounds like rape. But we all know that it isn’t what the actual data says.
Why express yourself in double-speak?
What double speak? The UM president didn’t say rapes.
@northwesty, you said rapes. You said rapes and then you complained about it. 
UM expelled one student over a 12 month period.
There is behavior that doesn’t meet a rape standard that is still objectionable.
UMich is trying to find out what is happening with their students. UMich found out that almost 12 percent of its female undergrad students in a survey said they had nonconsensual sex. The UMich president reported this. The president thinks that number is too high. Me too, but that is not a surprise.
Maybe, there are things that can be done to lower that number. I am pretty confident there are.
Moon – thanks for that policy excerpt. But some common sense needs to be applied.
We’d all agree that coerced consent is not consent at all – “have sex with me or I will kill your family.” That’s nonconsensual.
But that’s not the same thing as “have sex with me or I will break up with you.” Neither is what many of our wives have to endure – “please please please please please please please please please please please have sex with me.” Those are manipulative and/or pathetic. But consensual.
These surveys stimulate a few thoughts, some perhaps not politically correct (so sorry).
First, no matter how you slice it, there is too much truly non-consensual sex. If “only” 5% (and not the pumped-up rate of 20%) of our daughters were being kidnapped at college, we’d want to launch a full-out program to eliminate this. Why all the fancy-footwork and evasion with rape? Sometimes, the argumentation here has the feeling of climate change denial (it is all due to solar activity or dinosaurs). I don’t get it. What to do about it is less clear, but I have a hard time coming to the conclusion that this is something we should be parsing with a fine-tooth comb for years to make up a controversy so we don’t have to do anything.
Second, I am a bit baffled by including verbal pressure as non-consensual sex unless there is incapacitation or an implicit or explicit threat of physical violence. He says, “I will break up with you if you don’t put out tonight.” Seriously? If that’s all you are worth to him, girl, send him packing. But, if you have sex after such a verbal threat, isn’t that consensual? You decided to do it. How about if we work on self-esteem? Consistent with that, I suppose, is the flip side: In the old days, some females would use sex manipulatively and that probably hasn’t gone away. Equally pernicious, but makes begging and cajoling make more sense.
Finally, what is wrong with these boys? Back in the dark ages when I went to college, after the first two years when coeducation was being phased in, sexually willing females were not in short supply – and I was a complete nerd just learning social skills. I don’t think that has changed. I don’t discuss details with my son, but he is living in a grad dorm and was decrying the lack of a double bed – somehow as an undergrad, he and female companion could sleep on the Twin XL dorm bed and he finds he can no longer sleep well in tight quarters so he’s buying a queen. This seems to be a problem even though he has no GF and has dated a number of young women this year. So, given the fairly promising environment at college, can’t these guys just move on to someone who wants sex and not resort to verbal pressure or begging? Or is the probability of success with that tactic just too high? [Back to self-esteem training?]
Females are saying some of the sex is not consensual and middle aged or elderly guys are arguing here that the females are wrong. Lol.
Its obvious why there is a problem. Why do a bunch of old men get to tell young females what to think? We didn’t have sex with these young guys. 
@shawbridge , I like your post. Sometimes verbal abuse leads to nonconsensual sex.
@northwesty, I didn’t pay much attention to the verbal numbers until you kept bringing those numbers up.
And yes to the following…
A bit of a boggle here if you were serious, @rhandco—if you were, you clearly have no idea what a random sample actually is, or how one is built.
ETA: I haven’t had time to look at the methodology of the Michigan survey myself, so I don’t know if it used a proper random sample. (Hence the if in my original post on the subthread.) However, @rhandco’s response is pretty typical of the sorts of objections people make to properly developed samples in properly conducted studies more generally, and so IMO needs to be responded to.
In my opinion, the surveys are looking for something different than what they are being used for. The survey data, I think, is mostly designed to illuminate a range of sexual behavior, some illegal, some the result of thuggish behavior, some the result of poor choices. If the purpose of the collection of data used to populate the survey is an academic/educational one, namely to find out what young women think about sex and the reasons they engage in sexual activity when it was not fully their intent to do so at inception, then the broad and vague definitions and questions make a certain amount of sense. Unfortunately, the surveys are also being used to make a political point that I think would be better served by asking more limited, defined questions.
And @dstark, the obvious answer to your question is that “old men” don’t get to tell young women what to think. But us old men are as much a part of the larger society as you young women, and it is the province of the society as a whole to determine what laws we live under.
The more limited defined questions are in the survey.
Honestly, can’t some of you read? 
The answer is on PAGE 6 of the report. No, the respondents weren’t from a women’s studies class. The Michigan Survey Research Center is a well-respected institute that knows how to select a study population:
[quote]
Given the large U-M student population, this study used a sample survey approach rather than a census of all students. The survey was sent to a random sample of 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students. U-M chose a randomly selected sample, because it allows researchers to make scientifically based inferences to the population as a whole, and to focus finite research resources on successfully contacting and encouraging the participation of the broadest, most inclusive, most representative group of students.
[quote]
“What double speak? The UM president didn’t say rapes.”
Totally my mistake.
He used the term “nonconsensual sexual penetration.” Which clearly isn’t intended to mean rape.
Since the dictionary defines rape as the “sexual penetration of another person without the consent of the victim.”
So those are two totally different things. Or, I guess, they are the exact same thing?
@dstark, or anyone else I guess, did the Michigan survey define consent other than that quoted here from the Michigan policy?
@northwesty, there was a survey of guys.
The guys were asked if they would have nonconsensual sex, if they knew they wouldn’t get caught.
32 percent said yes.
Then the same guys were asked would you rape someone if you knew you wouldn’t get caught.
14-15 percent of the guys said yes.
@northwesty, are you worried we are going to expel a bunch of guys for verbal coercion?
I haven’t seen any numbers that back that up. Maybe you have those numbers? 
I think shawbridge’s post was quite good.
“In my opinion, the surveys are looking for something different than what they are being used for. The survey data, I think, is mostly designed to illuminate a range of sexual behavior, some illegal, some the result of thuggish behavior, some the result of poor choices.”
OhioDad – completely agree. But here’s the problem.
UM’s president makes a speech saying 12% of his female undergrads suffer “nonconsensual sexual penetration” each year. That sure sounds like he’s talking about rape. And then the dominoes start to fall.
That’s a rape epidemic on campus!! How come UM isn’t expelling all those rapists its own surveys show?
What do you think would happen if the UM president said this instead. “We found that 8% of our female undergrads reported that they relunctantly agreed to have sex in circumstances where their partner continued to verbally pressure them to have sex after they initially said no.”
3 percent is a rape epidemic.
@northwesty, what are you afraid of?
Schools implement programs to reduce sexual assaults?
That the 95 percent of students who don’t report assaults, start reporting assaults?
That schools figure out how to make tribunals work? The schools educate lawyers. Maybe the schools can figure this out.
@northwesty, how many complaints were there at Mich? 129?
The accusers won how many cases under a preponderance of evidence standard? 27 cases were tried? I can’t remember the exact number.
The accusers won 11 cases.
You don’t think anything good is going to come out of all these surveys?
There was a Supreme Court ruling today. Did the ground you walk on sink into he&&? I heard the world is going to end today.
“Acquiesced” is doing a lot of work in that statement, northwesty. But acquiescence doesn’t necessarily mean consent; only consent means consent. Acquiescence can range from a reluctant Yes, to a failure to deliver a kick to the balls. You seem to be saying that the women answering the survey are lying: they say that something was done without their consent (it’s right in the survey, without your consent), when in fact they did consent, however reluctantly. You are asserting this without any evidence, however, because we have no details about the incidents the women are talking about.
Consider this incident, from the Washington Post survey:
The guy would probably say she acquiesced. Maybe you would say she acquiesced, by not fighting back physically, by stopping her futile protests. She said “No,” and he kept going. She said “No” again, and he did not stop. This guy was not taking no for an answer. At this point, she should have delivered a knee to the crotch. But her failure to stop him raping her doesn’t amount to consent.
Absence of a well-deserved kick in the balls is not the definition of consent; it’s an example of an unfortunate reluctance to physically injure a predator. She told him she did not want his ***** in her vagina, and he put it there anyway. That’s rape.
@Ohiodad51, you commented on a survey you haven’t read.
And you accuse others of politics.
The survey is linked in this thread mutilple times. If takes about 20 minutes to read it. If you read the survey, you don’t have to use anybody else’s filters including mine.
@dstark I am commenting on the surveys, plural and in general. I did not say anything about the Michigan survey specifically, which you are correct I have not read. But now I guess I will have to :((
@Ohiodad51, that would be nice.
The surveys are not all the same.
Ok, so the answer is no then. The survey does not define consent (or at least I didn’t find the definition in the survey instrument or the released results). I also find it interesting that you highlight the surveys are not all the same, when the Michigan methodology description says it “drew heavily” on the SES survey.