LF, I read the Brown report. I think it is fantastic. Spot on.
Thanks for the link.
There is so much in the report.
This is from the Brown link. Another link. Another frat and roofies.
It stuck me as so comprehensive and balanced. And frank. No wool over the eyes (whatever that expression is.)
Yep.
Like socalmom, I was struck by this, from the Brown link:
I hope and believe that the underlying assault rates have not tripled in four years. I think it’s likely that more people are reporting sexual assault now because recently more brave young women have come forward publicly to say they were assaulted, and also older women have been more willing to discuss rapes that happened in the past.
Yes. It seems Brown is changing to a culture that facilitates and supports reporting.
I can’t figure out how to cut and paste from the Brown SATF Dec 14 interim report pdf which LF linked. It talks a lot about acknowledging a culture of violence and the need to educate to change that culture. I am going to be waiting to read the final report in March.
Interesting article today. Don’t believe everything you read.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/23/the-media-is-making-college-rape-culture-worse.html
I found this poignant but so much about what I really believe is happening - buried deep in the above article:
In a previous incident at Brown last spring, a Providence College student alleged that two Brown football players drugged her, brought her back to their dorm and raped her. The student went to the hospital the night after the alleged assault. A grand jury failed to indict the two Brown students.
So that’s two different cases at Brown where someone says they were drugged with a date rape drug, and one of the allegations is substantiated by lab reports.
Although I don’t believe everything I read, I do believe in the use of date rape drugs.
Why would someone decide to use a date rape drug? In a group setting, why do others not intervene? In what kind of group is this seen as acceptable behavior?
edit: I changed from “like” to “helpful” for #4387. I don’t like the grand jury failing to indict.
Basically, isn’t that a lot like asking why are there criminals? I doubt anyone sees it as acceptable, really. But in a group you have leaders and followers. If a leader is a criminal the rest of the pack is either going to go along with it or stay out of the way. It is a rare follower who is going to step up and try to stop stuff. At least, that is my amateur analysis of what frequently happens in groups.
It wouldn’t be obvious to other people around that a person was being drugged with a date rape drug. To the casual observer, it would look like the victim was drunk.
As to why a woman wouldn’t go right away to the hospital if she thought she’d been drugged: When you wake up from being drugged with one of those powerful drugs, you are mentally foggy. You might not realize you’ve been drugged until later. When my husband had a colonoscopy a few months ago, the facility required that I be there to drive him home, and for good reason. After he woke up from the drugs, he was talking and interacting with me. Only someone who knew him well would realize that he wasn’t as mentally sharp as usual.
Brown has this stuff in their report.
That’s true, I was addressing this recent Duke case where the warning text would indicate that people knew there was the potential for something not good to happen that night. Also, the police took DNA from 3 people so it doesn’t sound like the girl has any idea what happened at all or with whom. And, the Vanderbilt case that just went to the jury involving four men.
Cardinal Fang: I am there are lots of different scenarios. In some cases, at some houses I am sure beyond a reasonable doubt fraternity members are aware of date rape drugs being used and don’t intervene. This is one of those ideas that is difficult for decent minded folks to accept. The bolding is to make clear I’m not suggesting this as a fraternity norm.
marie: I think you are correct.
Many of us have sons in fraternities. One of mine was in a fraternity. Why are some of our sons criminals? Where did we fail them? What separates the monsters from the heroes? Can we change the monsters? Or were they always unredeemable? We failed them, imho.
adding: actually Marie, you hit the nail on the head… Are there fraternities with criminals as leaders, and are they corrupting the rest of the membership? Or is this just like attracted to like?
Especially when the thing you read is in the Daily Beast. That Daily Beast article rehashes all the discussions we’ve had here, and adds no new information. It quotes some anonymous official who says that the sexual assault cases he reviews are “enormously complex, full of truths, lies, reversals, angry parents, hungry lawyers, and empowered supporters.” This is a surprise to who, exactly? None of us here, that’s for sure.
It also says, “Before Ali’s Dear Colleague letter, clearly criminal cases were typically turned over to the police.” That may be true on Mr. Anonymous’ campus, but as we know in this thread, it was not true nationwide in general; most schools then and now generally do not report cases to the police unless the accuser wants them to.
The Daily Beast article continues, "The Dear Colleague letter tacitly assumes the truth of Lisak’s predator theory. So it rules discretion out of order and mandates strict legal procedures and harsh punishments. " This is not true. I’ve read the Dear Colleague letter. It doesn’t mandate strict legal procedures (although many of us believe that in cases where expulsion is on the table it ought to) and it doesn’t mandate any punishments at all.
This is the kind of shoddy journalism I expect from the Daily Beast. I read this piece of crap so you don’t have to.
I don’t doubt that for a millisecond. I am sure that some fraternities, athletic teams or other groups of men have a culture of getting and using date rape drugs. In joining such a despicable group, a young man might be encouraged to use date rape drugs and enabled in their use.
My point was more about the casual observers, the other partygoers. If you were standing next to a woman who had been given a roofie but you didn’t know her and hadn’t been with her through the evening, you probably wouldn’t suspect that she had just been drugged.
I’ve seen lots of these tasks force reports over the years. Always well written, but translating the words into effective action is very difficult. I’d caution about expecting any silver bullet solution, particularly concerning an issue that is this tough. I think the recommendation section reflects this. The data sections are always the most useful and interesting parts to me.
Digression - I looked at the Lisak study that supports the repeat serial rapist claim. I’ll share my own personal opinion - his conclusion may or may not be true, but you’d have to be crazy to rely on the data in his study. It seems poorly done and not generalizable. I wish we could rely on it though, since it would say that the 11% of undergraduate women who are raped are assailed by only about 3% of the men.
So at Brown the rate of completed rape is 1.5%. But that’s per year, so have to multiply by 4.5 years (at Brown it’s probably 4.0, but a higher number is probably more typical). Also, that’s all students, and these silly people didn’t break out men and women separately. I’ll multiply by 1.5 to account for this (the rate isn’t 0 for men). This gives 10.1%. Have to lower it a little if you want to count distinct women as opposed to distinct incidents. So this gives a crude estimate of 9% of women being raped during their undergraduate years.
Brown’s 1.5% /year -= 9.0% total estimate for their student body may or may not be right, but personally I don’t see how anyone can claim 1.5%/year is “obviously” wrong. It also is in the same ballpark as the Krebs study.
Massive underreporting problem even after the more than doubling from 24 to 60 reports / year.
Another digression - I always felt that the most vulnerable population of women on campus for sexual harassment and sexual assault were female doctoral students. We almost never talk about them, but they are completely powerless when their assaulter is a faculty member. Much worse situation than for female undergraduates. But the drunken hook-up thing isn’t the big problem for them. I worried a lot more about worse predatory behaviors and even more massive underreporting.
Momofthreeboys: I tracked down a link to the full article that was excerpted. Its
Many of the opinions expressed about the Dear Colleague Letter mirror those of officials that I’ve spoken with.
Personally, although I very much disagree with the direction the OCR went in, I can’t argue with the big picture - a solid kick in the pants was required and delivered. I really wish they would have exercised their leadership more thoughtfully. It’s hard to reverse the bad policy aspects once there’s a lot of momentum.
That’s my impression of the Lisak study as well. I don’t disbelieve the conclusions, nor do I believe them.
4396, al2simon: [quote] Another digression - I always felt that the most vulnerable population of women on campus for sexual harassment and sexual assault were female doctoral students. We almost never talk about them, but they are completely powerless when their assaulter is a faculty member. Much worse situation than for female undergraduates. But the drunken hook-up thing isn't the big problem for them. I worried a lot about more predatory behaviors and even more massive underreporting.
[/quote]
I like this comment! Are you aware of current instances of faculty misconduct? I am 59. My whole adult life has been spent in university communities. It is my opinion the norms of acceptable behavior of professors towards students have really changed in the past decades. It has been 20 years since I’ve heard anyone express anything but disgust towards faculty predators. I believe there will be a lot of support if a student, male or female, reports this sort of misbehavior. Also, lots of graduate students and young faculty confide in me and I don’t hear this. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I may be seen as too much part of the establishment to be given access to this sort of information.
However, I “think” that culture has changed. That is what interests me about your comment. I think faculty culture has really changed in this regard. I have no idea if I’m correct.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9932/
^^Does this still happen?