"What would you rather have the nationals do? Nothing?
In this case, probably yes. Stay out of it and let the women decide for themselves how they want to proceed in interacting with the fraternities.
4854, #4858
Harvestmoon: I absolutely agree. This has been my reaction all along. I am not speculating, but I am waiting to see what happens next.
I decided I’m okay with having national direct membership to boycott fraternity parties. I am with PG. We were both in sororities. What do other sorority women think?
I am absolutely not trying to silence non-sorority women weighing in. It is an interesting perspective, but I am more interested to hear from those who were part of this world.
Re: the non speculation about UVa, Yes,There could be something else. Who knows. But , again, there are things that have happened/could happen on many other campuses that have sororities. That is what remains curious to me that a national council would focus on one campus. Of course, Erdeley decided to focus on just one campus too so maybe UVa is just lucky.
Boycotting fraternity parties by “national direct membership” of many sororities is different what the national council mandated the UVa sororities to do.
UVA is representative. Jackie was representative, too.
sevmom: “National” in my post is a kind of short hand, a nicknaming. That is what “we” called the National Panhellenic Council in my day. I am agreeing now with PG, regarding the boycott at UVA, mandated by National. I would be delighted to support a further, nationwide, boycott. I don’t have time to write more about my reasoning to get to this point. I am between appointments here.
Yes, I knew what you meant by “National.” What would you see as the purpose / good outcome of a “nationwide boycott.” Just curious.
I just read that talk by Dr. Campbell, and it’s very interesting. I think she makes some strong points–the strongest, in my mind, being that police officers may be mistaking trauma for untruthfulness. I think it makes sense to give training to first responders and others on how best to interview complainants.
I have a few reservations, though, She implies, but does not say directly, that the main reason for attrition among rape cases is this hostile attitude of police. I have to wonder, however, how much of the attrition is really attributable to honest evaluations by police or prosecutors that a particular case is highly unlikely to result in a successful prosecution. As I think I’ve mentioned before, one potential result of pursuing more rape cases could be a lower conviction rate–because more cases that can’t be proven would be pursued. This might be OK if the overall number of convictions go up–but the rate matters too, especially with respect to public confidence in the system.
I also am a bit troubled by the way the presentation goes back and forth from quantitative to anecdotal support, but that’s not unusual these days.
And one specific point. It might well make sense to wait a few days before questioning a victim about the details. However, this will weaken the effectiveness of that evidence in court, especially if the victim has talked to a number of other people in the interim. How to balance this isn’t easy.
Could some of these issues be improved by having more female police officers and detectives?
“In this case, probably yes. Stay out of it and let the women decide for themselves how they want to proceed in interacting with the fraternities.”
Should the nationals of the frats stay out of it too and let the guys decide for themselves how they want to proceed in running parties and interacting with girls?
Wouldn’t you applaud if a national frat instituted a set of safety rules?
I wrote this before… 86 percent of the cases end up in the garbage and the fbi says about 8 percent of the women lie so probably a number somewhere in between is a good number.
Let’s see the police become better educated first and we will see how things play out.
If we listen to actual victims, we hear them complaining they are poorly treated and not believed. We need to listen better. Then more victims will come forward.
I think this is going to happen. There are policemen interested in doing a better job.
i thought policewomen may do a better job, but I saw this video of a policewoman giving this victim a really bad time. The victim had MS too. I don’t know…
“Yes, I knew what you meant by “National.” What would you see as the purpose / good outcome of a “nationwide boycott.” Just curious.”
Same as the boycott of any business. To bring about change by saying - we won’t associate with you until / unless you change. Ball is in your court.
I’m not talking about false claims; I’m talking about claims that aren’t going to result in a successful prosecution whether they are true or false. It’s a valid question to ask how knowable that is, and when. I suspect there are many cases when it’s pretty clear from the beginning that a conviction is highly unlikely. It may be a bit like what happens when you contact the police to ask how likely it is that your stolen bicycle will be recovered. Do you want the truth or not?
As I mentioned way back up in the thread, this is an issue for assaults reported to college authorities as well. Do we want the college people to give the complainant an honest evaluation of what is likely to happen if she takes her claim to the police? My daughter made the persuasive point to me that it may be a good idea for a woman to call the police immediately even if there are obviously proof problems–because that at least shows that she is serious about the complaint, and didn’t wait a long time before filing it–this may help in the college disciplinary process, even if the criminal case doesn’t proceed.
Pizzagirl, The sororities and fraternities at UVa have been working for weeks on coming to agreements about sorority/fraternity behavior, fraternity parties, etc. Why an outside force has to also come in and mandate something is what I don’t get. The vast majority of the women in sororities there seem to object, as does the student council;. As I said earlier, UVa is very big on self-governance .
In terms of s national boycott by all sororities- what if some members/individual sororities aren’t interested? Should it be mandated anyway in your view? I would imagine some sorority women are more into the advocacy issues than others are or would want to be.
I completely agree! I might even go further and say that there might be no reason to ask that in the first place. What does it matter if she had 1 beer or 10? A woman who has consumed 10 beers has the same rights not to be raped as the one beer drinker (and the teetotaler!).
I could even argue that asking if she gave him any signals is immaterial. Woman: well, I kissed him and fondled him. I was really into him and wanted to do some heavy petting. I was really into it until it became obvious that he wanted more so I told him to stop. He didn’t. That is when he raped me. Officer: ooooh! well that explains it then. What did you expect?
Is that woman not entitled to the same protections from rape as the woman who was randomly picked off the street? The sad thing is that in some of your minds I bet you the answer is “no”.
You could really take it to the extreme and say that she purposely led him on and gave every indication she wanted to have sex but never said that she did. That same woman might be a $#%^ (or even have mental issues) but she has every right to get to that magic point and say “no, I think we have gone far enough”.
“Is that woman not entitled to the same protections from rape as the woman who was randomly picked off the street? The sad thing is that in some of your minds I bet you the answer is “no”.”
I think you are confusing a few things here. First, protection from rape is not the issue since that has already happened at this point in the process. Second, her memory of events is critical not incidental, especially if there is no other evidence a crime occurred. Third, there are going to be unprovable cases which really has nothing to do with who believes what, at all. Cops take crime reports all day long and as has been explained, they always ask questions. Actually, the more the better because if it does go to trial there will be a defense attorney asking a lot of hard and unpleasant questions. Nobody is saying go home it didn’t happen. But, I do think girls may translate it into this and perceive disbelief when the issue is lack of evidence and I have no doubt that sometimes the cops know this in about ten minutes similar to the missing bike analogy above.
The woman randomly picked off the street has a different problem called finding the suspect. Frequently, that doesn’t happen such as the woman who went the cops after being raped by Jesse Mathew. It took years and two dead girls before they finally had a sample of his DNA.
I’m not confusing anything. Maybe I should have said “protection from people trying to prevent prosecution of the perp”, etc, but people knew what I meant.
Secondly, why is rape considered so different? I have been a victim of crime. So have many of my friends, relatives, neighbors etc. Never once has anyone been asked if they were drinking because the police needed to make sure that my memory was going to be ok. That is a BS argument.
@momofthreeboys when you were robbed did the cop ask you if you had been drinking? Did he somehow imply that if you had they wouldn’t search for the robber because it was your fault?
I never said that officers shouldn’t ask questions. It also isn’t their job to prep a victim for hard questions because it is just going to happen if the case goes to trial.
It’s impossible to untangle the alcohol aspect of the campus rape issue. It’s front and center in almost every case. And, implying that people are trying to protect perpetrators when they are just trying to explain reality is not worth addressing, right now. Someone else can take that one on if they so choose.
The case has to be accepted by an ADA who is going to evaluate whether or not it is winnable, unless you just want a bunch of male students arrested for the record but that would require a procedural adjustment in most jurisdictions. Arrest first and ask questions later is an interesting idea, though.
Where in the world did you get that? I said nothing about believing the alleged victim or arresting the alleged perp. I pointed out that the questioning process is different and should not be.
I thought this whole conversation was about cops not believing victims which I’m not even convinced is the case. And. the campus rape tribunal advocacy people are also the no mandatory reporting to police people. They want an alternate system because the criminal system is not going to find guilt in some of these two people behind closed doors cases. It can’t. That is just reality.
^^It is, but that doesn’t mean it is about believing them either. It is about gathering facts and not making presumptions that you don’t make for other crimes.