All UVa frats on suspension

Parents Forum
4221

Momofthreeboys: All good questions. I can tell you what I did to get the numbers I used in post 4207 if that would help.

  1. In the Yale case I took their reports of sexual misconducts for 7/1/2013-12/31/2013 and 1/1/2014-6/30/2014 to cover one complete academic year. I just manually counted all the new reports of “sexual intercourse without consent” on a female Yale College student. I counted every report (not “convictions”) regardless of whether it was formal/informal/Title IX. For whatever reason there were lots more in the spring semester than the fall semester. Hope I counted right.

  2. The Krebs definition of rape is “sexual assault that entailed oral, vaginal, or anal penetration”. I only took completed rapes (n=181 + 507 in their Figure 1). Note that 74% of the rapes involved incapacitation (usually alcohol or drugs) instead of physical force. This gave 11.9% of undergraduate women respondents as being raped. But I felt there were two major problems with taking their numbers at face value. First, the response rate was only about 42%. I assumed that sexual assault victims would be twice as likely to respond as non sexual assault victims. This means the 11.9% is too high. However, women in all class years were surveyed, and freshman should be reporting fewer rapes than seniors just because less time has elapsed. Also, the survey was done in the winter instead of the end of the year. So the 11.9% number is too low if you want a 4.5 year rate. After trying to fix both problems I got 11% over the whole undergraduate career.

4222

I found this very interesting because I wondered exactly where do colleges think this responsibility to protect students actually begins.

I thought about it from this angle:

We have many a college students working for us, as interns, and most (95%+) are underage. We follow strict rules at gatherings and parties with them re alcohol consumption. They wear bracelets, and they are not allowed at the alcohol bar and a couple other safeguards.

We do those safeguards because if they were to drink at our events, and they were caught by authorities the company would be charged with allowing illegal activity - they have a plethora of statutes they could use, but we would be in big trouble - and do not let an accident happen, as we would be toast.

But, if we went even further and allowed them to get drunk with our knowledge, we could be up a creek without a paddle because the charge would be upped to promoting illegal activity - a lot worse. Sure we have insurance, but the costs of everything may even surpass what the insurance is willing to pay. But insurance is besides the point; we could easily be found criminally negligent, and the executive(s) who knowingly allowed or actively promoted the drinking could be in jail.

What I find interesting, and I am sure will get addressed by a lawyer in one of these cases, is why is a company is held to that tough standard of responsibility to protect college interns re underage drinking, but the college two miles down the road is not held to that standard to protect the exact same student? It is not like the the laws of the state are not applicable behind school walls.

This is why I think that it will come to a head over drinking and the fact that colleges are enabling students (by turning a blind eye) and then not taking responsibility that they are passively promoting underage drinking. And then when the males and females get into bad situations because of the drinking, the school pretends that its not enforcing the law has nothing to do with it. My company could not get away with not enforcing the law like that; and I do think that schools are not going to be able to for that much longer either.

Even more interesting is that if two college interns were allowed to get drunk at a company gathering and then the female accused the other person of rape, I cannot imagine the legal morass the company would be in - even counsel just shakes his head and says let’s just make sure that does not happen. When he does that, that means its really, really bad . We would probably just pay the $15M settlement and not even fight it. But a college allows the same and nothing happens to them legally. Hum… wonder how long this will last?

4223

awcntdb: If I read your post right, you are agreeing (at least for this one post) that colleges have a moral and legal responsibility to protect their students from sexual assault. You just think that they should also enforce underage drinking laws.

The analogy to your company is imperfect. The schools aren’t serving students drinks; they are turning a blind eye to underage drinking in non-university spaces. For example, your company doesn’t go knocking on the doors of their underage interns on Friday night to see if they’re drinking. You probably aren’t aware if a group of employees go out drinking together after work even if one of them is underage and manages to get served (could be a problem if a supervisor or someone senior was there of course).

How can schools turn a blind-eye towards underage drinking in dorms or university recognized fraternities? Not sure of the legal basis frankly. I’m sure this has been well tested in the courts though. However, one important distinction is that society clearly views underage drinking by college students as a misdemeanor, and views rape as a major felony. The Federal govt. through the OCR is clearly concerned about one vs. the other. Also, the municipal police are clearly turning a blind eye as well. Maybe it will change in 20 years, though I personally doubt it.

4224

My Post #4215 does not say one word about my company telling the another company anything.

It talks about the option of letting the person just move on without calling the police; I said not calling the police is an option I would not entertain - this means I would call the police.

When we call the police, and the charges are substantiated, and there is a trial and conviction or plea deal, then automatically the person does not get to just move on to another company that easily since he or she has a record.

Here is what I wrote again for those who did not understand the first time:

4225

It’s legal for your company to share why your employee was fired, but your company doesn’t share that information, because your lawyers think it would be more trouble than it’s worth. Colleges may conclude that it’s more trouble than it’s worth for them, too.

Do we know anything about what percentage of colleges/what percentage of students have information on their transcript about the reason for their suspension or expulsion?

4226

CF - I don’t have any statistics. However, my post 2628 is relevant and might be helpful even though I wasn’t able to reach definite conclusions. It has links to two other documents.

I speculate that FERPA provides a safe harbor for schools to share information with each other. There is no such safe harbor for companies.

4227

Awc, when you call the police and the person who was attacked refuses to press charges, what do you do then? Do you keep the employee on, or fire them?

4228

Another conclusion is that college women who’ve been raped should be reporting more often. They really need to. This is one area where the current victim/survivor support groups might want to rethink their assumptions and procedures (it’s not all on them of course).

If you believe the estimate that 80% of rapes at Yale (sorry to continually pick on them - I have no reason to think they’re worse than anyone else) went unreported then there’s lots of room for improvement.

4229

Do you think rape survivors are stupid? Do you think they are wrong about what their experience would be if they reported their rapes? Are there rape survivors who DID report going around saying that the experience was just great? If we want survivors to report, we have to make it less awful to report.

4230

A number of comments:
I agree on the alcohol. I’ve said it numerous times in 4,000 posts. The focus is wrong. The focus is on the outcome and not the inputs. Colleges should be focusing on alcohol on campus (if it continues to be illegal) and their federal funds ought to be held over their heads about upholding local and state consumption laws .

I do not agree that colleges should be able to share disciplinary measures, they should not share anything but attendance dates and GPA and classes taken. This DOES parallel business and industry and frees colleges up to do what they want with kids on campus and kids to move on if there is an issue that shouldn’t impact there ability to graduate college and become a functioning world citizen. I even feel that way about plagiarism.

I’m not sure how I feel about “reporting more.” I still think a woman has a right to decide if she was raped or not and I’m not sure that pressuring women doesn’t just instill more emotional issues if someone tries to “convince” them they were raped when maybe they are thinking they were just stupid. I think “reporting more” is presumptive thinking that there are “more” rapes. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. I also think the concept of “reporting more” might make colleges “think” that also means they need to find more guilty verdicts…again could be faulty logic, there are not trustworthy facts right now.

I do not think it’s wrong to turn to the real world to look for parallels. These are legal adults and the days of colleges and universities being “absent parent” disappeared long, long ago - mostly under pressure from 60s and 70s feminists AND males. They wanted their rights and their independence from segregated housing and 3 feet on the floor with the door open rules (which were in effect still when I was a freshman in an all women dorm) so sometimes “we” as a society reap what we sow and I’m disinclined to return to an era where we had to protectt adults from each other - work it out, communicate, take some responsibility and i would say that to women AND men.

Finally, like a broken record rape is rape and needs to be dealt with as a criminal offense. College can “focus” on the education part, the “climate” surveys, the misconduct mediation and punishment. But that’s never going to happen until people develop a common language. Too many of these cases there is plenty of “guilt” to go around and plenty of these cases probably would never meet a felony test - maybe a misdemeanor criminal behavior equivalent to drunk and disorderly (and i mean the girls and the guys).

4231

This is not fully accurate.

A lot of the drinking occurs in dorm rooms and at parties in buildings that universities own and are university spaces. And school security is purposely told not to enter unless called for an emergency (at least at my DS school) and even then if they see alcohol, they do not confiscate - the look the other way thing.

You separate two things, which I do think will turn out to be inseparable, but it is a yes to both.

I do agree that a school has a moral and legal responsibility to protect students, female and male, from sexual assault, just as they have the same responsibility to protect against general crime with locked doors, blue light phones, whistles, emergency locators etc. I never said that schools do not have this responsibility to protect students, so to restrict concept to this one post is inaccurate.

What I have said, and will say again now, is schools do not have the responsibility to protect an adult student(s) from said adult student’s own reckless behavior. I say this because they cannot; no one can. If an adult wants to do something reckless, he or she will.

Another way to put it is with the increased personal freedoms of being an adult also comes the concomitant increase in personal responsibilities of being an adult.

And these are adults, albeit students as well, and if they want to drink to the point they cannot think straight for themselves and are doing things they would not do when sober, they have no one else to blame for that physical condition, but themselves. They put themselves in that altered physical state.

If that altered physical state leads a student(s) to do something he or she would not not normally do, which I highly suspect is the case with drunk sex, that is not the school’s fault IF the school is not enabling the activity. However, if the school is enabling, then I would say the school is promoting reckless behavior and bears some responsibility.

The turning the blind eye is what is the kicker to me because it really more than that - maybe an “active blind eye” is a better term.

For example, when a school tells students there must be sober monitors, it is acknowledging that underage drinking is going on and it is enabling it by even having other underage people agree they will be sober that night. The school does not have to serving alcohol to make it easier for alcohol to be knowingly served. The point is the school knows and even facilitates at that point. That facilitation is legally more than just a blind eye.

It is one thing for adults to choose to engage in reckless and illegal behavior if they want, but to then essentially set up a system which promotes the environment in which to conduct that behavior is only a couple eye shades away from being complicit.

Put another way, if my company sets up a room where underage drinkers can bring their own beer and alcohol in the building and drink, the company is in serious legal trouble. And we would be even if we never saw the beer, alcohol, and students enter the building - it is the fact we set up the room for that purpose that would get us creamed.

4232

Yes.and yes. My dad always said a year or two doing national service for all kids would be a good idea because he always felt that kids went off to college “too young”.

4233

A lurker passed on this link, from Cal Poly SLO: http://campusclimate.calpoly.edu/include/CampusClimateFullReport.pdf

Cal Poly did a campus survey, asking students and employees how they felt about their experience at Cal Poly. They asked whether the respondent had experienced “unwanted sexual contact,” which the survey defined as "forcible rape, use of drugs to incapacitate, forcible sodomy, gang rape, sexual assault, sexual assault with an object, and forcible fondling.” A full ten percent (10%!) of the female undergraduates who responded said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact while at Cal Poly. Most of the unwanted contact occurred in their first two quarters at Cal Poly. (pp 108-113, 160-161)

The survey asked if the students had reported the contact. Most hadn’t. It allowed them to elaborate on why not. Pages 110 and 111 have a long discussion about what they said. Some answers are sad:

4234

@momofthreeboys wrote:

I find this statement a bit disingenuous. Are all bad things the result of pressure from so-called feminists? Are 17-year-old college freshmen (the most likely to be raped) considered legal adults?

So there was less rape back in those golden years? With systematic underreporting there is no way to be sure but ALL violent crime has decreased dramatically since the 1980’s. Is it because we have more coed dorms now? I don’t really believe that but anyone can put out a strange correlation and hope someone else will find it convincing. Doesn’t make it true.

4235

I do not think they are stupid. I do not think it is easy.

But it is a moral and civic burden they need to be more aware of. Only they can decide how to discharge their obligation. But this strikes a personal chord with me. I have family members who swore oaths to sacrifice their lives if called upon. One of them did so. I’ve only cried a few times in my life as an adult. Never did I cry so much as when I read his citation. Perhaps if there were more emphasis on the need to prevent serial rapists from raping again then we as society could help victims find the inner bravery and strength to do this mitzvah for all of us.

Yes.

But it will always be awful.

4236

I differ in your assertion, as I doubt this has been tested thoroughly in court.

And I think this for one reason - before these grey area, intoxicated sex cases, no one was blaming others for their reckless behavior and the resulting problems which arose from said behavior. And in many ways, that is still the case for most things, which happen when students are drunk.

For example, this year, as with every year, several students already have been drinking and they either wandered off, got lost and fell into a river or wandered in the roadway and got hit or fell off a bridge etc. There are many stories like this every year.

In these cases, so far, the overwhelming majority of parents of the unfortunately dead or severely injured students did not blame someone else for what happened to the students while in that intoxicated state, much less blame the school. They saw it as an unfortunate event that took place when their kid was drunk, and some them then go around and preach about the dangers of heavy drinking.

Similar to the drunk student who wanders and falls off a bridge, drunk students are doing sexual things that if sober, they would not do. The one student did not have the intent to and would not soberly walk off a bridge, and many a drunk students did not have any intent to and would not have had sex if sober.

But beforehand, they both took part in voluntary behavior that altered their mental capacity and state and they were unable to positively act on their intent and unable to do what they would have done sober. And alcohol is scary because it can also temporarily alter intent and that is something that scientifically cannot be dismissed.

However, these sexual assault cases are different in a major way - intoxicated females are saying that similarly intoxicated males are responsible for them having sex when drunk, even if the female was also positively active in the deal. And she is saying so because she was intoxicated and her intent were not to have sex, and her actions and even words are to be seen as irrelevant. Yet, that same intoxicated female, if she wandered off and fell off a bridge, would have no one to blame for her unintended action of falling off the bridge.

Here are two cases where that same intoxicated female did something she had no intent of doing and would not do when sober, but in one of the cases the female is trying to hold another accountable. Some do find that a bit off in logic.

Sure. As usual, as those guys are not paying the bill, but it will change when colleges realize the price is too high. The price has not gotten there yet.

However, lawyers are seeing the gold mine now. School are in way over their heads and many a avenue exist to make them pay up. When the price gets too steep, the school will reign in what they need to.

As the economic saying goes, “Something that cannot continue forever, won’t.” And high costs of drunk sex between students that is deemed as rape is one of those things.

4237

If we read CF’s link, we see that some women do take some responsibility for drunken sex while at the same time saying they were raped. Some women make excuses for the rapists.

CF, thanks for the link.
This argument, go to the police, sounds good, but it is not that effective.

Let’s be real…

I think a woman should be encouraged to go to the police but…many cases are unprovable. That doesn’t mean the sexual assaults aren’t true.

4238

Feminism was very strong in the 60s and well into the 70s so yes, feminists wanted to be treated equally. They wanted the right to co-ed dorms and the right to have the same access to grad schools and the right to be promoted and not locked to a typewriter as someone’s secretary even with a college degree. I lived it in our suits and pumps with the little ribbon tied around our neck post-college and post-grad school and yes the men for the most part didn’t disagree with our ambitions (at least the smart ones didn’t) I don’t think they realized yet exactly what that meant in terms of jobs and responsibility in the home front, but frankly i think most men of my generation rose wonderfully to the challenge. I still think there is pay disparity but I think for entry level jobs men and women are judged pretty equally today and promotions are rejected far less frequently because of the belief that the man is “superior.” or the woman is going to home and stay there. My and my husband’s 50s moms paved the way by attending college while the man were at war and there were very few men on campus, getting jobs and working when we were very little kids. They were the original feminists. They were (at least my mother was) very open about sex, about birth control, about abortion, about relationships, about equal pay for equal work and they told us we could do anything we wanted to in this world. They started it and my generation advanced the cause and yes we thought of ourselves as 'feminists." Honestly I’m not sure I identify anymore with today’s feminist causes. I want to, but I do struggle and I’m a woman who when push came to shove with the kids it was my husband who ended up at home because he knew I loved my job and loved working but we wanted someone at home when the kids were in their teens during the crazy years. I don’t think I’m disingenuous at all, but you can see it however you would like. As you can tell from my above board position I’m not afraid to “take up” a position if I feel passionately about it.

In Michigan, a 17 year old is treated and charged and adjudicated as an adult criminal in adult criminal court for MIP purposes and believe me for the most parts the vast majority of michigan public unis and private schools try to keep the kids from getting “caught” by the police but they let them drink. I’ve reported that my oldest son’s rural small college ennacted very strict drinking rules and it simply pushed everything off campus. That same school then turned around after he graduated and made it mandatory for kids to live on campus for 2 years in an attempt to “deal” with college drinking. They also received a grant as a special study by that state on this topic. Everybody has to decide for themselves if their kiddo is really for adult challenges or not. It’s part of the raising and letting go cycle and it happens at different times with different kids.

I have zero idea what the rape statistics were in the 70s. We had the local planned parenthood office and the Dean of Women as our 'resources." I had a few encounters i wish I hadn’t had and yes alcohol was part of it and probably another common illegal substance (and i can say I’ve never thrown up from drinking or blacked out in my life ) but I doubt anyone could have talked me into thinking it was forced. So I’m probably very fortunate plus none of us drank “shots”, we simply couldn’t afford to - cheap beer and you can only drink so much of that crap before you feel bloated and fat and i quit drinking that when i could afford to switch to other libations.

4239

As I said, I’m not sure of the legal basis for how schools can turn on blind-eye to under aged drinking in dorms and such. But do you really think no one has thought of suing colleges for permitting under aged drinking? Google turned up this summary, which was the best I could find in 3 minutes:

http://compelledtoact.com/Involvement_pages/Litigation/Civil_law_Analysis.htm

Doctrine has evolved; I’m sure it will continue to evolve. Maybe the future you foresee will come to pass.

4240

Sure. And all over the US, students are getting drunk and mutually consenting to sex they wouldn’t have consented to while sober. If they later regret it, too bad.

And also, in some cases, students are getting drunk and attempting or having sexual intercourse with other people who don’t consent. They don’t consent at the time, they don’t consent beforehand, they didn’t consent at all. Having sex with someone who didn’t ever consent to it is a crime, just like getting drunk and driving your car over a pedestrian is a crime.

And also, in some cases, students are raping drunk students who don’t consent to sex, but who are unable to physically resist their attackers. Being drunk might make someone more likely to consent to sex, but being drunk in itself does not constitute consent. Having sexual intercourse with people who don’t consent is a crime.

For a lot of reasons, I think that students drink too much and we’d be better off with less campus drinking. But I’m not concerned with drunk consensual sex. I am concerned with drunken rapes and rapes of drunken students, and I think colleges should expel rapists, even if they were drunk or their victims were drunk.