They distract. They speculate. And they sure sound like a move to minimize the issues. One discusses the expectations and another says, “Yes, but some of these advocates, tsk tsk.” The outcome most of us would like is a reduction in the problem, in the first place.
That doesn’t come about via excuses and left field statements.
What I think is very simple, really. Felony rape is a criminal issue not a campus problem. The end.
@marie1234 - Your premise could be put put it this way, “What do you think would be the reaction if the result of expanding Title IX into areas where schools are incompetent at best is the conviction rate for sexual assault goes down?” I suspect ther would be an uproar that something is wrong, again. And this would happen even if the outcome is exactly what should happen because the cry would be that cannot be right.
It would be “ostrich burying head in sand” behavior to believe that the entire issue here is getting a process, which gets to the correct decisions. There is a preconceived notion about what the correct result should be. And this is why many are skeptical about what some are trying to implement in this arena.
Marie, sexual assault, including rape, all sexual violence, is both a criminal issue AND a campus issue. We’ve been over this.
If the “preconceived notion about what the correct result should be” refers to the specific conclusions that should be found and punishments of an extreme order…that comes from observers, not Title IX. Again, Title IX asks for a process, does not dictate how colleges must find.
And that’s another example of how one’s own impressions or concerns can mislead.
I believe poetgrl, early on here, said it is not either Title IX or police, but both Title IX and police.
awc, could you rephrase this? With more words? You may have been more terse than you intended to be.
I’ll observe, however, that the conviction rate for sexual assault is largely under the control of prosecutors, at least in the short run, and is not a good measure for most people’s purposes, including, I imagine, yours and mine. If prosecutors choose to bring fewer ambiguous, lower probability cases before juries, then the conviction rate will go up; if they bring more ambiguous, lower probability cases, then the conviction rate will go down.
My goal, and yours too I assume, is that the criminal justice system convicts more guilty rapists, while acquitting innocent people accused of rape.
Just because it has been discussed, and you and a few others agree with X, does not mean everyone else agrees.
In fact, I do think when it comes to serious crimes that schools are going to be taken out of the picture because of the larger moral aspects of publicly dumbing down their seriousness to an administrative matter. Imagine if schools could adjudicate murder and kidnapping just because these crimes foster an unsafe campus for students? No one would have that.
I just went back and could not find this “larger conversation” you were supposedly talking about, nor could I find anything about “activists/advocates who don’t counsel anyone but rather publish and produce data”. Who were you referring to?
And in the quote above you say
yet your original quote says
Finally, what is your theory behind the supposed agenda of advocates?
Obviously we all don’t agree.
And many people are, it seems, frightened and confused.
That doesn’t change what Title IX asks for. It’s not dumbing down, it’s an assignment of responsibility. That scares all those who wish the colleges could just send this over to the police.
Likewise, I could say, just because Y sees it one way, doesn’t mean they have examined it with all due rationality. There’s a lot of emotion here. And some attempt to “understand” it by seeing the reports that do surface in the media about some college actions/findings. Kind of like trying to recreate the elephant from a nose cell.
If College A made mistakes, if College B expelled a kid, if C found the accused innocent or only slapped his hand, golly, Title IX must be lousy-??
Awcntdb’s firm is letting people go who butt slap people more than once.
A firm that does that is probably not going to tolerate a suspected rapist in the work force. Do you wait for a conviction before letting somebody go? You aren’t waiting for the butt slapper to be convicted.
It would seem to me, the more serious the accusation, the less tolerance there is to keep somebody around.
Personally, I think it’s best to be open minded about what both sides are saying. I do worry about men being wrongly accused of rape by a woman who later claims that her consent was invalid because she was too drunk, mainly because it seems that in many (not all) cases it will be impossible to prove it one way or another. On the other hand, here’s a small bit of history that I think about:
When I was younger, as a matter of law it was impossible for a man to be found to have raped his wife. As the laws were changed, many people were worried that there would be a rash of false accusations that men would be unable to defend themselves against. Women calling the cops after they had consensual sex, etc. Particularly in bitter divorces or big marital spats. People were up in arms at some of the court cases that made the news. However, as far as I know there is no epidemic of men being thrown in jail for raping their wives. Just isn’t happening. And anyone who’s seen a few bitter divorces knows that both women and men are mostly just lying through their teeth, but either the accusations aren’t being made or the police are filtering them somehow. I don’t think 95% of people even think about this anymore.
So this whole episode of societal adjustment as consent standards are being changed and increased scrutiny is being brought to bear will probably just work out somehow. There are 160 million women and 160 million men in the country and you can’t be too lopsided in practice or there will be a revolution (at least at the ballot box).
Why is this a particular area of concern? As you say, in many cases it will be impossible to discover the truth, and the accusations (whether they had merit or not) will be dismissed. But in some cases, there will be enough evidence to determine what happened-- perhaps the woman will be determined not to have been too drunk to consent, and the accusation will be meritless and dismissed. In some cases, the woman will prove to have been so drunk that she couldn’t possibly have consented, and the accusation will be upheld. Why is this bad?
As a practical matter, in reading about the crime in California of Rape of Intoxicated Person, I get the impression that prosecutors are sometimes using this charge to get around the issue of whether the woman consented. That is, I suspect in some cases a woman comes to the police and says she had been drinking and a guy had sex with her against her will. The prosecutor then concludes that he can’t prove that she never consented (even though he believes she never did). But he can prove that even if she had consented it wouldn’t have been legal consent, because she was too drunk. That’s how he can convict her rapist. I don’t know this happens, but I suspect it does, because why wouldn’t it?
The Occidental case is unusual in that the FACTS of the matter are, as far as I can tell, largely undisputed. All that remained to the adjudicators was to determine whether the intoxication of the woman, which was known, rose to the level of incapacitation. That was a judgment call, and not an easy one.
We let people go for way less than that.
The worst ones really are the serial huggers (male and female) who do not even realize their gesture is not seen as nice. And they are hard to stop, darn near impossible, because hugging is part of their “interaction” makeup, i.e., at OCD levels of habitual.
But, there is huge, huge distinction here, we do not dismiss on an accusation alone, never. If you recall in my post, I stated things are verified. Verification could be a multitude of ways, but accusations must be dealt with carefully. There are cabals and cliques do develop and I have seen group accusations that turn out to hold no water. Cameras do help a lot.
Yeah, but colleges aren’t dismissing on accusations alone either. And nobody says they should. At least, nobody with any sense says they should, and I don’t think anyone in this thread says they should.
I know what you mean about huggers, awc. In my area, there are many huggers, of both genders, and in most cases they’re obviously not intending to be predatory or sexual; it’s clearly a social gesture. But all that hugging is a little too much for me.
I would like address the issue of intent more directly because I believe this is a focal point in this issue. It was brought up earlier by @momofthreeboys, @marie1234, and later by @mom2and. But, I do not think it was ever put into context legally re the grey areas and the tough cases that colleges are trying to adjudicate.
Against one’s will is not something that is determined after the fact, especially if other actions have dictated otherwise. This is exactly where a lot of advocates are stepping on the third rail of the subway car and not realizing it, but many others are seeing it.
I will get to your “against her will” point in a minute, but first, I will address intent.
Intent is not something you decide on at the beginning of the day or the beginning of a situation and it then becomes the controlling criteria. Intent must also be reinforced by actions and other communication in order to remain operative.
What is happening at many colleges are the grey cases where the accusing female says it was not her intent to have sex (we accept that at face value), and therefore the sex was “against her will.”
Yet, this same female whose intent was not to have sex, may have done everything action-wise that not only indicated she wanted to have sex, but she may have even prepared for the event by getting a condom, telling her roommate not to come back, taking off her own clothes etc., and even told the male yes she wants to have sex. But then after, she realizes what happened and accuses the male with rape.
And here is the legal problem this female has - her intent is not aligned with her actions. Legally, then she cannot use her “mental” intent as a justification that the sex was “against her will” because she may have never given any indication to the male that the sex was against her will, and she did everything that indicates communication-wise that her expectation and intent were just the opposite.
And this runs head-on into the issue of intoxication and that the male should somehow reasonably know that the same intoxicated female above cannot consent.
I ask, “Yeah, exactly how is that done? The female and male, who have been both drinking, are both saying yes to each other, and both are taking positive actions that indicate they both want sex. Exactly how is the male suppose to know the female does not mean what she is saying?”
The question answers itself because to say the male should somehow magically know the yes and positive actions are not real is the same male who would be chastised if she had said no, then had sex with her, and then he said her no meant yes. No one, males or females, are mind readers, and actions and words said do matter.
And this “unable to consent because of ingestion of drugs or alcohol,” also misses the mark. It is not a carte blanche statement. There are some major "Yeah, but"s here.
In the adult cases I have seen in corporations, this statement only applies if the drug and alcohol ingestion result in definable incapacitation where the female (or male) cannot respond positively, cannot act under her / his own power, or is incapacitated to the point of not being to take action one way or the other, i.e., unconscious.
It is not applicable if the female is taking positive action under her own power, taking positive decisions and actions to have sex, and or verbally or in some other way positively communicating she wants sex. The female cannot be an active participant via words and actions then turn around later and say “I had two or three drinks and did not intend to have sex, and even though I did all those things clearly indicating I wanted sex, I was raped.” Sorry, it does not work that way.
I am not your problem, and it is not my principle.
You and others keep trying to act as if this is some strange personal opinion. Your problem is the law actually is on my side in the way I am interpreting it. You never seem take into account that when intent, will, and consent are determined in such cases that timeliness matters and what actions where taken at the time matters.
One’s actions and words leading up to and during an event are what are used to determine what statement of intent and consent could be reasonably expected to be understood by the accused at that time, not what the accuser intended after the deed is done.
What advocates want is something they will not get legally, i.e, the option for the female to say after the fact that her actions were not indicative of her intent, her verbal statements were not indicative of her intent, and thus sex was “against her will” and a crime has been committed. Not going to happen because people see that is just plain wrong. There is no time machine where you can go back and say one’s actions and words were not what they meant when indicating consent and intent.
Intent becomes irrelevant real fast if one’s actions and words belie and indicate otherwise. You cannot have it both ways; either your actions and words back up your intent or they do not. But one cannot turn around and later and say ignore my actions and words because I did not mean them.
Big OOPS alert! My quote was:
“In 2012, the FBI changed their definition [of rape] from “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” to…”
Since I’ve been partially making the point that people aren’t being careful in their reading…
You miss the point, awc.
“You and others keep trying to act as if this is some strange personal opinion. Your problem is the law actually is on my side in the way I am interpreting it. You never seem take into account that when intent, will, and consent are determined in such cases that timeliness matters and what actions where taken at the time matters.”
Intent, will and consent are aspects of the college’s review process. They very well may lead to one decision versus another.
Don’t interpret the law on more than it actually says.
And why do you keep returning to the categorical example of, “may have done everything action-wise that not only indicated she wanted to have sex, but she may have even prepared for the event by getting a condom, telling her roommate not to come back, taking off her own clothes etc., and even told the male yes she wants to have sex. But then after, she realizes what happened and accuses the male with rape?”
That’s one very big Yes, But. One extreme example.
I can tell you what we do in the case of theft in the workplace. Bluntly, we play judge, jury, and executioner. We certainly don’t wait for a conviction. Behind the scenes, we gather the facts and make a determination ourselves. If we’re pretty sure (clear and convincing?), we’ll call the guy down to HR at 9am and lay out the evidence we have. We’ll fire him and ask him to sign a full release agreeing not to sue and waiving all rights, Give him a few hours to have his lawyer review the release, but we’re generally not negotiating it. Escort him out of the building immediately. Tell him if the release isn’t signed by 5pm we’re going to the cops. Total time elapsed = 30 minutes. It’s happened a few times. Everyone signs.
Not sure if the seriousness of the accusation should carry that much weight once you’re in the territory of fireable offenses. I care about trying to figure out the truth of what happened. One difference is that we can always put someone on leave while we investigate. But in a workplace it’s mostly just a matter of money - if they’re innocent then their paychecks continue and for the most part as long as things have been kept confidential there’s no further damages.
Seems like one key issue is to decide is it worse to be fired or to be suspended / expelled?
Awcntdb, verified is not a conviction.
You aren’t going to want somebody around if you have any thoughts…
And obviously… You don’t if you are firing people for a lot less.
The last company I worked with we fired a guy who we thought raped somebody…
Picked up a drunk girl at a bar and she had to be carried up a stairway to get to his place…
He was techically fired for something else. There was no arrest or conviction. We didn’t want him around.
Just like a school may not want somebody around.
And I daresay, awc, that this why you are occasionally questioned about your core attitude toward women. You tell us we misinterpret. I’m not sure you see how your words come across.
I don’t know what state you live in, awc. But your statement of the law is not correct as to the state of California. Here’s a section of the relevant appellate court decision, [People v. Giardino](People v. Giardino (2000) :: :: California Court of Appeal Decisions :: California Case Law :: California Law :: US Law :: Justia). Giardino was convicted of raping someone who was intoxicated, under California section 261(a)(3), the law against raping an intoxicated person. He appealed, saying that the jury wasn’t instructed that lack of consent was an element of the crime of raping an intoxicated person. He wanted the jury to consider that his victim apparently consented. The appellate court smacked him down. (I removed some of the legal cites, but you can find them all at the link.)