Marie: You seem to be suggesting there is an effort to inflate rape numbers. Why would you believe this is true? What would be the point? What exactly do you think is going on?
Bring up preventive measures to one of the more well-known victim advocacy people and see what happens. Name-calling begins very quickly for some reason. And, acw whatever is right in that they deal with victims which means something has already happened…So, please don’t try to make it sound like I’m slamming all volunteers. Anyway, I have no more time for this right now which is probably a good thing. But, there are distinctions here and they are not insignificant.
Are you really saying victim advocacy groups don’t want rape stopped? Don’t want to change rape culture?
adding: This is where those typos have had me confused, because sometimes it seems like some posters are suggesting there actually are rape advocates and I have no idea what this means.
Re Post 3917:
@aL2simon Thanks for the explanation. I accept that based on your explanation that I had it reversed, and I stand corrected if I made mandatory reporting sound too general.
You are correct that the use of the terms are confusing because technical terms are being used casually. I am acutely aware of this pitfall and avoid reading things literally because terms differ often based on context, and by federal, by state, and even by jurisdiction. And that is why in one of my previous posts, I wrote that law…
And as for corporate-wise, we are subject to mandatory reporting for several executives, myself included, and a quite a few employees. And this is by federal law when dealing with XXXXXX issues. Not even allowed to state which issues they are, but we would be complicit if we looked the other way knowing something is a known infraction. I understand that that does not apply to all other companies and not to the general public,
But here is something interesting on one college - my DS’s college’s honor code says it is mandatory for a student to report any cheating or known academic dishonesty by a fellow student. If it is later found out that you knew something and did not tell, then you could be hauled up to the honor committee yourself for staying quiet. Yet, the same seems that it does not apply for a serious crime.
awcntdb, Are you saying that at your company you are legally required to report crimes? What is the relevant law?
al2simon, rape is not unique among violent crimes as to mandatory reporting. A mandatory reporter has to report the apparent physical abuse of a child too, not just sexual abuse. Equally, doctors have to report suspected abuse of other vulnerable people: elders, and the disabled. So, for example, if a doctor suspects that a baby is being beaten by its caregivers, he has to report the suspicions to the authorities. But if that same doctor suspects that an adult patient is being beaten up by her husband, boyfriend or girlfriend, he is under no legal obligation to report it.
It seems to me that mandatory reporting is for protecting vulnerable people who are unable to report crimes themselves.
CF - you’re right that there are some additional crimes subject to mandatory reporting, but the two main points still hold 1) the vast majority of crimes are not subject to mandatory reporting by the vast majority of people 2) there are at least some mandatory reporting requirements for sex crimes, so the argument that there’s some bizarre conspiracy to stop sex crimes from being reported to the police is in fact partially contradicted by mandatory reporting policies.
Many people have argued that mandatory involvement of the police when sexual assaults occur would be better. I’m open to the possibility, though I reject the notion that schools shouldn’t also investigate and punish sexual assault. The fact that there are some colleges with mandatory reporting and some without means that comparing the two groups might be a great way to test to see if they are right. These social science studies are never easy to do, but it’s better to have some imperfect data than continue to argue about the number of angels on the head of a pin.
al2simon, I agree that it would be interesting to compare schools with mandatory reporting and schools without. I do’t think there are very many schools with mandatory reporting though.
[This article in the Atlantic](Which Matters More: Reporting Assault or Respecting a Victim's Wishes? - The Atlantic) suggests that many colleges have a rule that employees who come to know of sexual misconduct must report it to the college’s Title IX coordinator. But the Title IX coordinator is not required to report it to the police.
Looks like this whole issue of mandatory reporting is much more complicated than I thought. In addition to the issue of who is a mandatory reporter there’s the issue that CardinalFang identified of whether the reporting is done to the Title IX coordinator or the local police. But I also found one example of a college that requires mandatory reporting to the police but then doesn’t give identifying information about the victim. So this isn’t the type of mandatory reporting.that some people want. Oh well. And here I thought I’d found a way to shed more light than heat on the issue. Better stick to my day job!
Marie, perhaps I assumed you know what advocates do.
“Bring up preventive measures to one of the more well-known victim advocacy people and see what happens. Name-calling begins.” Is this a first hand experience. because it’s another mighty generalization-maybe even just speculation or something from some one or two media reports.
“colleges are deemed to deal with sexual assault and not the crime of rape.”
You can’t be serious.
“not reporting a sexual assault is fine, state dependent.”
Nope.
“A female gets sexuality assaulted just 30 feet inside the college gate, and it is not a crime,”
Wrong.
Al2, embedded in the info is that a college can determine the reporting chain, as long as the chain gets properly used. Some may publicize campus security, as in the slc example, which operates 24/7, or a Title IX coordinator. Colleges will post the phone numbers and the etc on their web sites, have posters displayed, etc. In the link I sent you, there was also wording about RA’s.
A victim can call the local police or the campus folks. Or both. Or a support group. The Title IX folks aren’t required to report each case to local police but are given leeway under circumstances described in Title IX documents. In fact, there are a lot of words about letting the victim know of her (or his) option to inform the local police. The college is supposed to make the right efforts to protect the accuser’s confidentiality- but can break this, as described. They are obligated to tell the accuser if they need to do this. Etc.
I think that people who summarily dismiss Title IX haven’t looked into it in enough depth to see how and what it asks for. They rather instantly move into sharing their distressed opinions about hypothetical accusations and outcomes- or an abuse of powers. (And then go find the first media report or two about aberrations.)
Funny thing is, the documents themselves (and there are many) are quite simple. I think a hs kid could absorb it and follow the logic.
I think Title IX works very well if an accuser wants to make a claim that is non-criminal or would not stand the test of criminal behavior. I think colleges and universities are in the business of education and if two young people are in need of a mediator or individually need counseling or simply need to be separated Title IX works very well. It’s procedurally flawed for adjudicating criminal behavior and at times contradictory in its language and some colleges and universities have mus-interpreted the need to protect all students’ civil rights and I do believe that some colleges are under the misguided belief that the end goal of Title IX was to increase reporting based on the erroneous 1 in 5 statistics. Some colleges are probably executing Title IX well and some are clearly missing the boat (and paying dearly for the insurance claims).
3854 [quote] :So what do the colleges have to gain from undertaking the adjudication of these sexual assault cases then? They only seem to generate a lot of negative publicity for them. My own opinion is that is was set up by and for men.
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I have learned a lot from HarvetMoon1’s posts, too. This one was especially interesting to me. When I think about expanding definitions of rape, how fraternity men weren’t seen as capable of rape at my university in the 70s, how each and every one of these threads ends up focused on the remote possibility of false accusations rather than the horrific number of actual rapes, it seems to me very believable this is just part of a continuum to protect men on college campuses from the consequences of their actions. I don’t think it is necessarily even a conscious decision. The default position is just still protecting and advantaging men at the expense of women. Often we don’t realize what we are doing because it is so ingrained in our culture. imho. If the colleges are able to silence survivors through this type of adjudication, it does obviously avoid negative publicity.
Cardinal Fang: after all your research, what do you think about HarvestMoon1’s opinion here? What do others think?
Momofthreeboys, what is your job? Do you work for a college or university?
$3826
I liked this post a lot, since I keep trying to see the situation in a gender neutral way. It would seem to me a wonderful idea for college men to report women (or men) who sexually harass them. Maybe this is something that should really be encouraged.
http://www.advocacycntr.org/prevention-and-education
I can’t find a single “advocacy” website that doesn’t emphasize the importance of education and prevention. I don’t know what Marie and awc are talking about.
Alh: You are mischaracterizing the vast majority of posters on this thread who are not focusing on false accusation, but on trying to unravel what the real situation is on campus and how to best reduce the number of sexual assaults. True false accusations are likely very small meaning cases in which nothing happened and the woman says it did. Everyone (as far as I can tell) agrees that a crime is committed if a man rapes a woman who is so drunk as to be visibly incapacitated - she can’t walk a straight line, can’t speak coherently, or is passed out. However, some believe that colleges actually see many more cases in the grey zone - two drunk kids where the woman, although seemingly not too drunk and who consents through words or actions, later decides she really was too drunk to consent. Should the man have been able to figure this out? How drunk is too drunk? And who gets to decide? Those are the difficult cases. Some of us think the truth is what is important, not to protect frat boys or drunken men, but also not to excuse young women who drink too much and make bad choices and then accuse a man of a very serious crime.
Mom2and: In some ways I believe you are correct. The level of discourse here has been really wide ranging, which makes sensible discussion difficult. imho. I also think comparing sexual politics at small liberal arts colleges and large state schools isn’t necessarily a useful exercise. Sort of apples to oranges.
As a mother of sons, I do think we should be teaching our sons to “figure this out.” We should be educating them about these scenarios, just like mothers teach daughters how to protect themselves from assault. As I have said, repeatedly, I am all about changing campus culture so we don’t have these scenarios. At the beginning of the thread, I suggested if we could make condom use a cultural norm in our lifetime, it is possible to make affirmative consent and non-drunken college sex a cultural norm.
What is this belief based on? I am not trying to be snarky. Where does this idea come from and can anyone give evidence for it? Is there any reason to believe the majority of cases are these “difficult” cases or is this just what we hear about in the media? I have no idea. Does anyone?
This should be the assumed starting position of everyone discussing on this thread. I do not know anyone who does not think this is not rape and the perpetrator should not be punished.
Alh: I don’t know if there are any studies that accurately define what tyoes of accusations colleges are seeing in an accurate and clear way. There are several studies that looked at sexual assault, which found that the young women surveyed did not characterize what happened to them as rape. The researchers, however, characterized the event as rape in some cases due to the fact that the woman was drunk or did not recall consenting. The Lisak (sp??) study that indicated that most campus rapes are committed by serial offenders seems to be a broad generalization of one study at a non-traditional college. I also think this type of event is supported by the fact that colleges and campus advocates are not coming out with large number of stories that support other scenarios: with all the attention on this issue wouldn’t there be more stories?
However, my point is also that those are the cases that are difficult for colleges to adjudicate - the he said she consented, she says she didn’t or was so drunk the consent did not matter.