<p>CF not everything is rape. Not everything is sexual misconduct. Not everything is black and white. Not every accuser is telling a true story. Not every accused is telling a true story. I also think it’s a tad disingenuous not to have an inkling what drunken sex and hook-up culture is, especially since it been detailed quite graphically for dozens of pages. </p>
<p>@collegealum314
“Shooting to prevent rape, well, you’d have to show that the person was clearly going to do something”
“I would think it would be a tough sell that the store owner gave an item to the person for free.”</p>
<p>I think those are answers that a lot of people would give. Thank you for answering.</p>
<p>In the shooting case, the defendant needing to prove anything seems inconsistent with how rape cases are handled where, as soon as the defendants says that she consented, the burden is on the victim/prosecutor to prove that she did not consent. It seems to me that a consistent rule would be that in the murder case, the burden should be on the prosecutor to prove that she is lying. That would be very difficult since no one else was in the room.</p>
<p>In the theft case, it seems to me that this is also a clear “He said, She said” however, for some reason, people seem willing to accept this as reasonable. I am not sure I understand why the legal burden of proof should not be the same. Why wouldn’t the store owner/prosecutor have to prove that the victim is lying, as is the case in a rape.</p>
<p>What do others think?</p>
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<p>They still do have to prove it. But part of this determination is determined by the likelihood of such a scenario.</p>
<p>Do you know how many car thieves say that the owner lent them the car? If they have no prior relationship with the owner of the car, this answer doesn’t fly in court. </p>
<p>BTW, you cut out the entire logic behind my response. If these situations are truly analogous, then consensual sex in and of itself would be extremely rare and hard to believe. </p>
<p>Oh stop with your stupid nonsense. No one on this board believes that all heterosexual sex is rape.</p>
<p>The William Paterson case is a criminal case where charges were filed almost immediately so what point rare you are making about that case? They may get off, but I doubt it. And, we don’t know. Who thinks that was consensual?</p>
<p>RE: 2846 
II’s so awful but I would take a bet that some risk manager administrator somewhere is running the numbers. I honestly think that most colleges by now have basically “decent” written processes and procedures and if they don’t OCR is ramming them up their proverbial behind. The Dartmouth piece seems quite logical. Clery reporting has been around for awhile. And do think a great many colleges quietly muddle along figuring out if Suzie is just totally POed at Johnny or if Johnny poses a campus threat. The civil cases, while abhorrent, over time should tend to quell, lets say, over exuberance of administrators charged with sorting out the Suzie/Johnny scenarios. I still think there should be mandatory reporting for all colleges that have accusations of felony sexual assault and i think colleges and universities have an obligation to at a minimum to consider the outcomes of any criminal trials when dealing with felony accusations.</p>
<p>This is good. I’m not claiming it says the college perfectly adheres- we don’t know that. But this is a great read. And read it all, if you want to learn from it. I was going to except, but so much of it is good. One thing that could confuse is that “voluntary resolution” or “conflict mediation” or a “restorative conference” don’t apply to cases of sexual misconduct, which are handled per T9. (Explained in the main handbook.)</p>
<p>Don’t tell me it reeks of title IX, I know that. Of course it does. But also please don’t just pull out some one or two flashy sentences, in isolation.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/deanstudents/handbook/studentrights#appendixb”>https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/deanstudents/handbook/studentrights#appendixb</a>. </p>
<p>I do agree that we need to have a better understanding of the statistics. Right now it’s apples and oranges with felonies, misdemeanors and non-criminal behavior all lumped into something called sexual misconduct and a cohort of advocates that want the same outcome for all those cases. At least with Clery there are some terminologies in place. We can’t even agree on terminology on this thread. </p>
<p>“I was thinking of cases where the accuser says she was gang-raped, and the accused say the sex was consensual, but everyone agrees penetration took place. Like the William Paterson case.”</p>
<p>CF,
I live in NJ and absolutely no one I know is asserting that the woman in the William Paterson case is lying. It is not even showing up in the papers as a possibility, people are not making excuses for the men, no one is saying the girl asked for it. The men were arrested almost immediately. How is that case a problem so far? The law seems to be handling it properly.</p>
<p>re-post
This is good. I’m not claiming it says the college perfectly adheres- we don’t know that. But this is a great read. And read it all, if you want to learn from it. I was going to except, but so much of it is good. One thing that could confuse is that “voluntary resolution” or “conflict mediation” or a “restorative conference” don’t apply to cases of sexual misconduct, which are handled per T9. (Explained in the main handbook.)</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/deanstudents/handbook/studentrights#appendixb”>https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/deanstudents/handbook/studentrights#appendixb</a>. </p>
<p>Re 2833–CF, yes, that’s what I was trying to say in one of my other posts—that I look at everything on a case by case basis, try to weigh the information of that particular situation and go from there. So believing one rape accuser does not necessarily mean I believe another, just as there are countless scenarios in Much2Learn’s example 1 where I might believe the shooter or might not (some put forward by collegealum). </p>
<p>I don’t understand the all-or-nothing thinking or blanket statements. I might personally agree with a statement like, “My default setting is to believe all rape accusations” but after that point the evidence in each specific instance, whatever that is, has to back up the charge. </p>
<p>Testing to see if the thread is working.</p>
<p>Looks like it!</p>
<p>CF - ok, hope you can understand my reaction. Anyway, to answer your question about the Clery act categories - those weren’t the categories we used. Best as I can recall, we had two categories. This might have been an internal thing, but I didn’t think so at the time. I don’t remember the official names of the categories, but I thought of them as “really really bad” and “everything else”. Not sure, but I’d bet that all the things you listed, with the possible exception of forcible fondling, were in the “really really bad” category. Trust me, no civilized person considers things like sexual assault with an object or forcible sodomy anything other than “really really bad”. BTW, there were plenty of women involved in the oversight too, at least one of whom I’d consider an activist on these issues. My expertise is in operations and financials, not sexual assault.</p>
<p>Anyway, if it’s ok with you I’d rather keep the discussion away from whatever specific cases I might have encountered.</p>
<p>Did something go wrong with this thread? seems some posts are gone?</p>
<p>Yes, something is amiss - tried to catch up on older posts and nothing makes sense. Seems posts were deleted and new ones are not showing up.</p>
<p>Threadus interruptus?</p>
<p>Is there a post at 2:45? I can’t read it. :)</p>
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<p>The five alleged attackers and their lawyers are saying she was lying, apparently, since they’ve all pled innocent. As far as I can tell, that’s going to be their line of defense, and that’s what they will say in court if the case goes to court. </p>
<p>The defense that the accuser actually wanted what looks like a gang rape has worked in court before. In the Naval Academy gang rape case last year, the defendants’ lawyers argued that the accuser consented. The defendants got off.</p>
<p>Title IX is open ended and ambiguous. It gives college vast discretion on how to model and conduct their tribunals. The reason that we have a criminal justice system from the Miranda rules to due process is to provide an overarching consistency in the hope that every accused individual gets the same shot at a fair trial. No one’s saying it’s perfect, but it’s good and solid and replacing it with another less transparent system is lunacy, especially in the case of violent crimes.</p>
<p>College faculty are simply not trained or equipped to handle felony cases. Expulsion – the ultimate penalty available – is either too draconian or too lenient. If the accused is innocent then expulsion can ruin their life. If they’re guilty then they should be behind bars, not on the loose and ready to roll again. </p>
<p>I don’t see this as a conservative / liberal thing or a parents of boys / parent of girls thing. What we’re talking about here is adherence to the American legal system and due process. We can’t have one system for college students and another for the other 99%.</p>
<p>That’s why I said it’s like Sharia law, not that colleges are lopping off hands or stoning adulterers, but that it’s a secondary, loosely constructed legal system used by a select group which is superimposed on top of the official system used by all. When the rules conflict, Sharia laws sometimes trump, sometimes don’t, leading to more conflict, ambiguity and unfairness.</p>
<p>We don’t need two systems! I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing these cases in the Supreme Court before too long.</p>
<p>It’s not just the lean-right media that is writing about these cases of overreach. Any one who has respect for the American legal system has to be skeptical about colleges’ ability to adjudicate rape, forcible sexual assault and other violent crimes.</p>
<p>One from the left (RIP The New Republic)
<a href=“College Sexual Assault Rules Trample Rights of Accused Campus Rapists | The New Republic”>http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119778/college-sexual-assault-rules-trample-rights-accused-campus-rapists</a></p>
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<p>And one from the right
<a href=“http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377878/overreaching-campus-rape-caroline-kitchens”>http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377878/overreaching-campus-rape-caroline-kitchens</a></p>
<p>This is from the Amherst policy:</p>
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<p>This seems exactly right to me. In particular, I like that they clarify that drunkenness in itself does not constitute incapacitation: “Where alcohol is involved, incapacitation is a state beyond drunkenness or intoxication.” If a sober reasonable person should have known that the person was incapacitated, that’s enough to prove there was no consent.</p>