Yale did the correct thing in this case IMO including telling these two to stay away from each other. Again i find it interesting that the accuser waited a year and needed to be convinced by others to report and then was surprised that Yale did not expel and somehow expected a 'slam dunk." In many of these cases far too much time passes between the incident and the hearings and it is becoming clear to me that many accusers are not understanding that it is the decision of the college what remedy will be implemented and seem to expect that winning = expulsion. in this case it seems to me they both learned a valuable lesson - and isn’t that what the college “bubble” is about? In the real world these two would have had to work out their issues without the paternalistic/maternalistic access to the various offices supporting Title 9 issues.
Waking up the next morning and thinking “that’s not what I meant” is not sexual misconduct, that is a communication problem.
@momofthreeboys - I thought the two student journalists who wrote the Yale article did a better job than any professional journalist in any article that I’ve seen. They presented lots of evidence, little opinion or agenda, and even some raw data in the form of text messages. Based on my limited experience, it painted a good picture of a typical case, and I agree that Yale appears to have made the right call here. But if the standard for affirmative consent was slightly higher then I could see the case being decided the other way with a preponderance standard.
We should note that although the accuser waited a year to file formal charges she did tell the accused that she felt she had been taken advantage of within a week after their encounter. She was clearly very shaken up about something; she did take a year off of school.
To change topics away from drunken hookups … As a man I’ve always wondered about something that maybe the women here could answer (apologies if this is offensive, I really don’t mean it to be). Let’s take cases where a male student is accused of forcing themselves on a female student who is very definitely not willing. Why don’t more women scratch or claw the man in that situation? I understand that they could still be overpowered and they might be afraid to resist too much after delivering an initial scratching. But three things: 1) the physical evidence of scratches could help make it easy to convict & expel these guys 2) even though some people think a fair number of college men might be latent rapists, unlike the case of stranger rape as far as I know no one thinks these guys are murderers or are going to break an arm or something. Don’t the statistics say that most of the time the students know each other? 3) isn’t it a natural human reaction to fight? Perhaps as a 6’ 2" male I really don’t get it, but shouldn’t this be happening more than it seems to be? I’m thinking of the Jameis Winston case, but it’s probably not a great example since he was a semi-professional athlete and probably very physically intimidating, and the two didn’t know each other before the incident.
Familiarity can be and is often just another word for bias.
And a proclaimed expert is of one’s choosing. Again, biased. Name your expert on this issue, and it is a piece of cake to find another supposed expert, who went to the same schools and has done similar or more, who thinks just the opposite.
Therefore, calling and choosing to view someone as an expert is no indication they are more correct in said situation. These proclaimed experts may have more experience, but experience is not equivalent to having logic, and experience surely does not automatically constitute what the proclaimed expert is saying is the best approach.
More importantly, annointed experts can be and are often wrong. History is replete with endless examples: before Einstein, the experts were wrong all over the place re atoms, gravity and molecules; before Bill Gates, the IBM experts etc. got computers all wrong, as to how best build them for the 21st century; before the Founding Fathers, all the government experts in the world could not write an enduring Constitution with power emanating from the people; before Tesla and Edison, all the experts were essentially clueless about harnessing electricity…
But, even more important, proclaimed experts, like all humans, get intellectual tunnel vision. And in new, challenging situations, it is often the fresh set of eyes that gets it and provides the best answer going forward.
So, in short, you expect people to be followers not thinkers who assess a prescribed solution to see if something is amiss with it? This is definitely not for me or my company.
If I had a dollar for every consultant who was a supposed expert who has initially prescribed just the opposite of what I ended up doing, and being widely successful by not following the advice… But, why do I still hire them? So that I, at least, get more context and perspective. But to then say, one must just follow blindly is really for the non-thinking person because in the end it is me, not the consultant / expert, who is on the hook.
Interesting too how all experts demand total indeminity contracts and clauses even though what they are saying they say they are sure they are correct. That should tell us a lot about the so-called experts right there and the faith they have in what they are saying. I take that as a big clue to study what they say really hard.
I think if a guy overpowered me and raped me, I’d be too shocked and frightened to calmly game out how my rapist could be convicted. And if a guy is violently attacking me, I have all too good reason to know that he is violent-- do I want to make him even more violent? Do I want to lose my teeth as well as getting raped?
It’s the usual thing; we imagine that we’d react in a certain heroic way in a certain situation, but since most people don’t act in that heroic way, we probably wouldn’t either. We’d probably be just like everyone else.
Al, it can be sheer inability to move, arms pinned or blocked, difference is sizes. If you’ve never been pinned by someone, held down by position or weight, in sports or roughhousing, you just have to imagine. And yes, unfortunately, alcohol impairs thinking and responses. This isn’t pretty.
Lots of good reading material today. @northwesty, could you please give me a link for Elizabeth Bartholet’s comments?
I acknowledge that we’re stuck with the OCR’s regulations, at least for now. I believe it’s a good thing that attention is being drawn to the rights of the accused. As lawsuits begin to pile up claiming that students’ constitutional rights have been violated, the OCR will have to work with the colleges to provide better balance between protecting the accuser and protecting the accused.
Going back to the University of Oregon case – three basketball players and one allegedly drunk young woman. The victim has now filed a lawsuit against the university claiming that one of the players in the first place who had a prior accusation (not conviction) at another college never should have been admitted, and that the university shouldn’t have allowed the players to continue playing after complaint was filed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the players filed their own suit against the university for violation of their due process rights. As unpalatable as the events of that night were, there’s a difference between terrible judgment and sexual assault.
The comments of one the players’ attorneys at the time that they were expelled are interesting in that they’re pretty much a compendium of unfair procedures.
The point is, in a fair and transparent hearing both sides would be able to present their cases, call witnesses and cross examine. When that doesn’t happen, the proceeding is arbitrary and inconsistent.
Reading about these various he said/she said cases – like the Yale account – has left me with an overarching feeling of sadness. For the most part, these are not violent assaults. These are just kids in young adult relationships, experimenting with their sexuality, drinking more than is good for them, feeling remorse and emotional confusion, and in the end being manipulated by political and ideological players. Everyone loses.
I agree with you momrath that most of this is just sad. I find it unbelievably sad that supposedly intelligent cream of the crop kids would vandalize property. I find it sad that young people are having such a difficult time formulating healthy relationships. I find it sad that we need to create parallel governance for legally adult, soon-to-be college educated young men and women as some sort of “stepping” stone into the real world. I do think in some ways they are being manipulated and held in childhood an additional 4 years,
It will be interesting to see if any college will reject OCR’s requirement for a preponderance standard. If that happens, it might get to court if OCR takes action against the college. I suspect what some colleges will do is accept the preponderance standard, but add on a number of other procedural protections–I suspect this is essentially what Oberlin has done.
One of the comments from the Oregon article are apropos to the UVa situation " What happened to all the people who cared so passionately about this issue?..Seemed like it was open season on young men for a while there, but now, in the face of reasonable defense, and, given the circumstances, extremely measured counter accusations, all I’m hearing is crickets." and this is what so often occurs. The media gets all stirred up about athletes, or fraternities, or whatever…all kinds of stuff gets hurled around the internet and then when the facts aren’t quite what snared the attention suddenly it’s crickets.
And this is where the court cases are going to get interesting because colleges have become absolute enablers and cannot escape culpability in the end.
These cases have not reached one yet, but they will eventually get to a judge who will ask the most logical question, “Why are you colleges turning a blind eye to underage drinking, and then think it wise to criminalize the resulting intoxicated behavior afterwards? Would it not be a whole lot smarter to do your job in the first place and not allow the initial criminal activity?”
The mix message to students must be confusing as heck. Go ahead and CONSCIOUSLY break the law essentially with our blessing, but be aware that the potential resulting SUBCONSCIOUS activity will be criminalized and prosecuted. And people think this is a brilliant approach to learning responsibility in life? Sounds like bad training to me.
Not saying not to allow drinking in college, but as discussed before, drop age to 18 and have real security, as in adults, everywhere at the parties just like in a nightclub.,
At a minimum colleges cannot penalize one student for drinking and not another one or try to adjudicate an issue that at it’s root is drinking…and in many cases underage illegal drinking…and avoid contemplating alcohol in the decision making process when alcohol is the 10 ton gorilla in the room.
Personally, I’m very disappointed in how UVa’s administration and faculty handled the uproar. It would have been nice if some of them had cautioned against the rush to judgment by the mob before an investigation had even been conducted. There are two moral imperatives here - punishing rape severely and having a fair adjudication process. I understand that speaking out in the heat of the moment might have been very unpopular, but now that it seems that the rape story was (likely) a hoax it should be possible to speak out and lead a rational, balanced dialogue. The fact that they aren’t is disgraceful.
This is what tenure is for. This is a core part of the teaching mission of universities and most especially law schools. In the US we judge people on a case-by-case basis; someone owes the individuals who were implicitly and wrongly accused of the most heinous acts a huge and very public apology. I think it speaks to the level of political pressure as well as the moral cowardice of the individuals involved. The administration and faculty at Duke acted in an even a more disgraceful fashion during the lacrosse team incident. I have no connection to UVa or Duke but if I was an alumnus I’d want their presidents to resign.
UVA is a complicated situation. Anyone who is even slightly well versed in Liz Seccuro’s story, or who had read her book, cannot feel sorry at all for the school or for the fraternity in question. They both lied to her and colluded in covering up evidence back in the 1980’s and also 20 years later when the police finally got involved. Karma’s a bitch.
As for Yale, no one is expelled for rape, I mean sexual assault, ooops, I must mean nonconsensual sex. This is about the worst it gets, which isn’t bad if the action was as vague as the wording but we don’t know, do we?
Green – we don’t know the gory details of the incidents summarized in the Yale report. But with that caveat, I’d say Yale appears to be more than doing its required job under title ix.
The main reason that colleges (as compared to the cops) are in this business is title ix. The idea being that campus sexual assault and a hostile environment can get in the way of women being able to access educational opportunities on an equal basis as men.
In the case you cite, the female student presumably got a bunch of support from the school. School heard her case and booted the guy off campus for 2 semesters, imposed a restraining order and kept the guy on probation for the balance of his time at the school. All those things should go a long way to allowing the female to continue her studies at Yale despite the incident. And should also be a serious cautionary tale for any other male on the Yale campus.
Whether the guy is actually a rapist (and should be punished as such) doesn’t really relate much to whether the female would be able to complete her studies or not. If that is the justice that female seeks, we have a whole criminal justice system available for that purpose. Of course Yale would automatically expell any student convicted of a serious felony (rape or anything else).
As you can tell from my prior posts, I think that title ix should never have been extended into this particular area. But since it has been so extended, it should be limited to its stated purpose. Which is making sure girls can pursue their studies on a basis equal to guys. Not being a parallel criminal justice system available as a menu choice for that small percentage of U.S. females that transitorily happen to be enrolled in college at any particular time. Especially when the stats show that women not enrolled in college are in fact at a higher risk of attack than college students.
Greenwich, I think the best language to use in the college setting would be sexual misconduct as a general label, but the very bottom of the link you posted, Yale defines the terms they use. Anyway, I’m not sure what your point is, I glanced at the attachment and it appears that in each case there was a determination.
I think it’s great that Yale posts this information for students. It would be good if they did this for all misconduct including academic. It think it’s good for students to know what potential fall out there is for violating a code of conduct and if they are thinking of making an accusation within the university what might be expected. I also agree with Northwesty that I never thought that universities should adjudicate issues that have the potential to be criminal let alone felony, but it appears that universities are working their way through the procedural issues. As long as they come to these determinations using process and procedures that align with the recommendations of Title IX and aren’t depriving any student of their civil rights there probably isn’t an issue.
I also agree with your third and fourth paragraph.
The video report is worth a watch. The defense being offered for the 2 accused rapists? Heavy drinking and wild sex are the college culture, and these guys were just doing what the culture told them to.
Seriously. That is a major part of the defense.
The role technology will play in this case is also interesting—the alleged victim doesn’t really remember anything about what happened, and much of the prosecution’s evidence will be dorm surveillance tapes and texts/photos/videos from one of the accused’s cell phone.