On a bit different note, I live in a highly liberal area with primarily conservative local radio and can absolutely tell you that anyone opinionated thinks they are right (even when utterly obnoxious) and right to be heard, ad nauseum, haha. And we live it all the time on CC.
Anyone want my real opinions? Another haha.
FeministMom: I wonder if you have been reading all along, or are just jumping in now? Please stay. I have to go to sleep now, but hope to see you back here.
I wish lots of lurkers would join. With all the views this thread has, there have got to be a lot of lurkers. Please consider posting.
Because we have once again circled back to the silencing of women, I’m responding to this post from yesterday:
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TatinG wrote in #3421
I thought jonri had an excellent and thoughtful analysis in #3439
momofthreeboys: #3467
There is then some discussion that Emma did go to the police, but not immediately after the assault.
In #3496 to support the point I’m trying to make, that calling Emma a bully is trying to silence her and other rape survivors, I link to a story about Savannah Dietrich. It is correct that Savannah has nothing to do colleges. I do think she has to do with silencing and with how we think about rape. When I asked Marie where she was getting her stories, it was to try and understand her thinking about rape. We are bringing some pretty radically different world views to this thread. I am trying to understand where she is coming from.
I was aghast at the “To Kill a Mockingbird” analogy upthread, but could google to see this analogy on several news sites. If I knew what Marie reads, I might understand her posts better. That is why I asked her the question. It is difficult to communicate when there is no common knowledge base. We see that all the time on the wedding threads.
This really does go round and round, Unfortunately, when someone does not go to the police initially (and I do understand that ) it can’t help but cloud the issue and potentially leave it to sexual misconduct boards . There is in many instances in college going to be a he said she said situation. There can also be rumor and innuendo about fraternities, sports teams, groups, etc. that may or may not be fully accurate. I really don’t know what the answer is but the pendulum can’t swing so far that a man’s rights aren’t protected .
There was thread on the parents forum where a parent had said her son was fighting with another guy and if I recall a semester suspension was the outcome. Makes sense, fighting often is a misdemeanor criminal offense (disorderly conduct) and suspension is almost always used in high school when kids get in fights. I can’t find the parent link but if I do in the alloted edit time I will add it.
The Alaska case is interesting. I will note that, in my opinion, it will always be difficult to get a rape conviction in a case in which the people involved have had consensual sex multiple times before, unless the subsequent situation is really crystal clear–and getting into bed with the former boyfriend is already lacking in clarity. I suspect that no state (or court) will require that there be verbal assent before every sexual encounter–rather, actions indicating consent will also be sufficient. Drawing the line as to what action is enough to show consent won’t be all that easy.
In other words, there may not be that much practical difference between “did she resist?” and “did her actions indicate consent?”
“Why do feminist activists think they are the only ones that have a right to be heard?”
Ummmm, awfully broad brush here, on several levels.
I do think my posts get frequently misunderstood sometimes intentionally and I agree that people are coming from different knowledge bases. My original interest in this thread was the Rolling Stone story and the information that informed my opinion was not media based at all. It was reality based, if that helps. I understand from real life experiences how that story landed in that magazine and it was as clear as day to me that something was very wrong with it from day one and that was my issue through pages and pages of being told I was being mean to Jackie. And, then being told the details didn’t matter because other stuff happens. I disagree. I care about the truth.
As far as the high school girl in Kentucky I don’t really know what to say. No, I was not familiar with that case and reacted to what was posted which was incomplete. I’m not sure a 16 year olds twitter feed rises to the level of a national news story with which everyone should be expected to be familiar, but we can disagree on that too, I suppose. And, I still don’t think my angle here is being fully understood, at all.
More good information from FIRE:
Marie: When I read your posts, it seems to me you are saying rape isn’t really a problem on college campuses, that the numbers are being artificially inflated, and that most accusers don’t have a hope of legal recourse because it is “he said/she said.” Is this a mischaracterization of your views? I assure you I’m not intentionally misreading you.
adding: there are wide swathes of current events with which I’m unfamiliar. Since participating on this sort of thread the last few years, I have tried to keep up with events which may be pertinent, but not necessarily very successfully. I’m not trying to criticize you. That really would be a pot talking about a kettle… 
It is not a bigger problem on campuses than anywhere else. In fact, it may be a smaller problem on campuses and it is getting conflated with misconduct which is less than criminal.
Do you think rape on college campuses is a big enough problem that people should be talking about it and trying to lessen the number of incidents?
If you want to be perverse, the fact that colleges and universities do not seem to care about due process and seem more focused on getting to a punishment outcome that colleges and universities do not ascribe seriousness to claims. They don’t feel that it’s essential for some reason.Perhaps because deep inside they feel that students should deal with the local police on criminal matters and secondly because they are “only” doing this because Title IX tells them they have to. I suppose that most of this “stuff” is so clouded with who said what and who did what OR the local authorities have dismissed that the college feels the seriousness of it warrants much less than expulsion. My guess is when they do expel and it isn’t challenged in the civil courts by the expelled student, that the facts are clear, that the process exposed the truths and there is nothing the expelled student could change that would make his or her case stronger.
The bottom line for me is that most of what colleges and universities do is not parallel justice - it is something very separate but because individuals have protections under the law that extend to their time on a college campus, colleges and universities can’t go off in a renegade manner and “make up” their own rules as much as certain factions of activists “wish” they could and all the screaming and yelling isn’t going to take away peoples federal and/or state civil rights that are protected for sure on a public campus and even on a private campus. Even those colleges that have supposed decided to have “mandatory” suspensions are going to have to put so much language and so much process and procedures in place to make what they are claiming legal that it’s not going to magically make 70 cases of sexual misconduct a year turn into 70 expulsions.
I’m sorry for the broad brush last night.
momoftheeboys: same question as to marie: Do you think rape on college campuses is a big enough problem that people should be talking about it and trying to lessen the number of incidents?
I find it interesting that some people on this thread keep throwing around “due process” and saying that colleges are implementing a system that is biased toward the accuser instead of the accused like it is a fact. They say schools aren’t giving the accused their right to due process but are giving it to the accuser.
This is not true. There have been several cases that have been discussed where the accused was allowed certain protections that the accuser was not. To bring it back around to UVA- one of those cases involved a UVA student who was not allowed a lawyer at the Sexual Misconduct Board hearing but the accused was.
I remain unconvinced that on average (or, certainly, in totality) that it is the average male (or accused) who is being denied their right to due process versus the accuser.
Okay - that wasn’t supposed to be some kind of trick question. I thought a simple yes or no…
Hunt, #4125
I hope Cardinal Fang or HarvestMom or others will have time to respond to your post. I wondered some of the same things, but am neither a lawyer nor spent time recently in a law library looking all this up.
You have been very patient on this thread. I’m sorry to interrupt once again.
Please cite the specifics , TV4caster, about this case where the accuser could not have a lawyer but the accused could. Thanks.
sevmom: I have tried to avoid the Title IX debates because of my general ignorance, but perhaps this is something you will be interested in:
http://columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2014/10/02/open-letter-president-bollinger-and-board-trustees
The percentage per capita of rapes on campus is less than the percentage of per capita rapes in public - obviously those percentage are going to vary city to city and state to state. If rape is a problem then it needs to be examined systemically over the entire population of a city/state/county. I believe alcohol consumption and binge drinking is a far, far more serious problem on college campuses (and one that may very well increase sexual assaults per capita.)
I’d have to do some research to see outcomes based if settlements and civil wins have tilted one way or the other. In general the most publicized trials are the ones where the male’s rights have been not upheld. It “feels” like most women have filed with the OCR - which is not the same as a civil trial. It “feels” like most women are claiming that the outcome was not to their expectations - not that the process was unfair… but I could be totally wrong, not something I’ve looked into.