Looks like plenty of heroes in the Stanford case. By the way, the Vanderbilt rape victim is a hero too. To have to go through the legal system and have to relive the case over and over…
I love this …
The Stanford swimmer left the school voluntarily…except Stanford said you can’t come back. Don’t set foot on the grounds. (That was a different link). Sounds technically like an expulsion to me. I guess Stanford doesn’t need a conviction.
This guy was a collegiate swimmer. He has to have a lot of strength. Two bicyclists held him down. That’s pretty good. Some of the bicyclists I know don’t have strong upper bodies.
The accused was assaulting an unconscious person. That was more important to him than going to Stanford? This guy…really…blew …it.
And guess what? From Swimming World:
“In terms of swimming, Turner’s career is likely over as the mere act of being arrested on a sexually-connected felony is a Code of Conduct violation bad enough to put Turner on the USA Swimming Banned for Life list.”
And not even convicted yet.
(I understand a significant difference is witnesses and police involvement. But see how they have Code of Conduct, too. In essence he is expelled from swimming.)
I like the idea of a public acknowledgement as well, as long as these young men are okay with that idea. Some heroes do like to stay private. These are the sorts of young men we want our sons to have as models.
I am still trying to grasp this story. A woman is lying unconscious out in public. A 19 year old male sees her and decides to rape her, and penetrate her with foreign objects. In public. ???
Pizzagirl, The leaders ended up going beyond what the letter says(which used terms like request, encourage) to some chapters telling the women they risked fines and suspension -an edict. Bid night is not a fraternity-sorority event. It is a party and has gotten wild in the past . I don’t believe (but not 100% sure) the women ever wore their sorority colors or t shirts or whatever the heck is involved in that but probably did go together to the houses to party with their friends. The ban extended to not only any parties at fraternity houses but also off campus and even in bars. That is overreaching to my mind but obviously we disagree.
I thought the same thing ahl. So bizarre. What was this boy thinking? I suspect that there had to be drugs or alcohol involved on his part as well. Otherwise it is very hard to process such animalistic behavior.
Yes. All these cases we have been reading about on this thread and I start to wonder how unusual this behavior really is… though I have to think raping someone on a public throughway has to be an unusual occurrence. Maybe HarvestMoon, you are right about drugs or alcohol. I shudder to think what sorts of young men we are raising. I honestly don’t believe I know any of these young men in real life. I am beginning to feel like I really do live in a bubble.
I sort of hate to admit I feel sorry for these bad guys. They are so young. How on earth did they end up like this. It is difficult for me to believe they were all just born this way.
In the bubble it seems so inconceivable we have to provide role models to inspire our sons to intercede and protect someone from being raped: on the street, at a party, in the dorm. However, evidently we need to do this. They need some very strong positive role models to counter the negative models they must be learning somewhere.
adding: Let’s send dstark on a campus speaking tour!
In the fall of 2014 approximately 21 MILLION…yes 21 MILLION students were in colleges of one kind or another across the country to give you perspective on the story or two or three that catches the media’s fancy.
MOTB: Many of these bad guys are at very competitive colleges which use holistic admissions. My understanding has been that part of what is being judged is character.
I do appreciate that Vanderbilt took quick action, and Stanford seems to have responded correctly as well. However, how are these guys being admitted in the first place? Do they just lose their minds when they step on campus?
Predators and psychopaths are experts at covering their tracks and hiding activities. People may have thought he was a bit weird, but weird is not a reason to arrest anyone. Most serial killers were never suspected as being that until caught.
People know he is sick now; it has to start somewhere.
The answer is yes.
In his mind, he did not blow it; his processing skills knew no better. There was no comparative he was making between Stanford and what he was doing, as to which more was important. And this is the person that cannot be trained to behave differently.
It is also important not to conflate completely different situations, and pretend if it OK here, it is OK elsewhere.
Expelling a person who is identified attacking an unconscious person (or conscious for that matter) prior to a conviction, is not the same as a messy, grey area he said, she said when no one knows what happened inside a closed room between two people both with fuzzy memories.
This public intimacy thing is definitely a new trend. There was a recent thread where a poster recounted an incident where her son was on an overnight admitted students visit at a college. That night the girlfriend of one of the boys in the room where her son was staying walked in, took off her shirt and got in bed with the boyfriend. Honestly this kind of stuff just stuns me. Who does that? And what boyfriend who cares about a girl wants his buddies to see her naked? This is just a world I do not understand.
Right now, all the colleges that use the Common App agree to be holistic. I think character may be noted in an LoR, but how would teachers necessarily know more than what they see in class? And a senior adcom once said to me, yeah, you see all the greatness in an app, then they get to college…
“The ban extended to not only any parties at fraternity houses but also off campus and even in bars. That is overreaching to my mind but obviously we disagree.”
How else are the fraternities going to clean up their act unless what they want – and make no mistake, what they want are girls – tell them unequivocally - make your parties safe or we aren’t showing up? There’s just no other carrot to dangle in their faces. None. Legal liability doesn’t seem to work.
The Stanford student was noticed by the cyclists at 1 in the morning on or near a path outside a fraternity party behind the Kappa Alpha fraternity house. Reportedly he and the victim both had been at the party. This is an area that would have been dark and deserted at 1 am. Two cyclists happened along, luckily, but that’s not a busy area even in the daylight, let alone after midnight. This wouldn’t have been a particularly brazen attack. He was unlucky to be seen.
Assuming for the moment the allegations are true, I wonder if this is the first woman he raped while at Stanford.
I guess Stanford doesn’t need a conviction.