Dstark: Thank you.
Thanks for posting that. Brown certainly sounds like they admitted a serial predator. This issue cuts across all lines, campuses, genders, orientations.
More details on the Stanford case:
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_27421028/report-details-alleged-stanford-rape
The accused guy says he fondled her but “kept his pants on.” Unfortunately for him, she was discovered unconscious with her underwear off and her dress up around her waist, and penetration of an unconscious person even with a finger even a tiny teeny bit is felony rape.
Oh look, Stanford has that same “suspension after graduation” policy for sexual assault.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2014/06/05/rape-survivor-demands-change-to-sexual-assault-policies/
Who was it upthread that said the colleges don’t seem to believe their own conclusions? If you discover a student raped another student (or, in Brown’s case, TWO other students) you don’t leave them on campus so they can keep raping. That’s crazy.
The Brown sexual assault survivor, Andrew, sounds just like the many female survivors we’ve read about here. When he was assaulted, he froze-- he didn’t fight back. He didn’t immediately admit to himself that he had been sexually assaulted. He didn’t accuse his attacker right away. He didn’t go to the police. After a while, the trauma of the rape became so serious he couldn’t stand it and sought help. Seems like the way he reacted is a normal way for people to react when they are sexually assaulted.
I was wrong about the exact details of California law. But it’s a felony to penetrate an unconscious person with your finger, even a teeny tiny bit.
After reading 5000+ posts the thorniest issue for me personally is how to reconcile my belief that colleges should not adjudicate felony sexual assault with the need to get possible (or probable) assaulters off campus ASAP. I don’t disagree that women shouldn’t have to live with and study with men whom they have accused of sexual assault and I recognize that in some situations (like the Vanderbilt videos) the men’s guilt is a slam-dunk case. So, how do we remove these guys from campus but still give them a fair and transparent hearing?
The accusers themselves seem conflicted on this issue. In many cases they’ve said that they never intended for their assaulters to be expelled or for their lives to be ruined. They just wanted them out of their chemistry class, or some such no-contact resolution. I found the Jezebel article “Rush After ‘A Rape on Campus’” overall disingenuous, but the part that really puzzles me is the conclusion that
If this is true, then there’s a huge disconnect between the victims’ intentions and the OCR’s objectives. At this point the OCR is investigating nearly 100 colleges for violating Title IX regulations, in many cases, I would presume, because the penalties have not been severe enough. Maybe there needs to be a more nuanced classification for one-on-one, he-said/she-said sexual assault cases, with less draconian penalties.
I also find it interesting that the prosecution in the Vanderbilt case said the victim would be allowed input into the sentences of the convicted ex-students.
Again, some random comments on the posts of the past 24 hours:
The Stanford swimmer case is slightly different from some of the other cases we’ve been discussing because the victim is not a student, and therefore – I believe – the case doesn’t fall under OCR’s purview.The Stanford swimmer (and some of the Oregon basketball players) withdrew from the university, so they weren’t technically expelled or suspended. I’d be curious to know if this option is always available. It might make a difference in how the offence is entered into the ex-student’s official college record.
I think you’re referring to the Duke/Mcleod case. The significance of this witness – the person who was dancing with the accuser before she took up with the accused – is that the university’s case for expelling Mcleod hinges on establishing that the accuser with drunk to the point of incapacitation. Mcleod’s claims that several witnesses who interacted with the woman over the course of several hours – the dancer, the taxi driver, and three people who lived in the house where the incident occurred – could have testified that she was not incapacitated, but the committee didn’t allow them to speak.
I don’t think that “public intimacy” is a new thing. It was certainly around when I was at Michigan in the late 60’s, but then it was more of a hippie/free love event. Maybe the today’s college students have caught up with the worst of 60’s counterculture meets today’s porn culture. 
Another “breakdown in the moral fabric of our society” is coming from popular music, especially rap and its offshoots. The lyrics commonly encourage sexual violence and abuse of women. It’s so permeated our environment (in shopping malls, restaurants, even public figures’ playlists) that many people don’t even realize how aggressively criminal the words are. Where I live in Asia, English is not the first language but is widely spoken and understood. When I complain about the choice of music in a public place, people think I’m out of my mind. They can’t conceive that there’s anything remotely wrong with it.
I agree this is a good move, though it will be difficult to enforce private and personal consumption. Ironically, one thing I’ve learned from this thread is that the young women prefer hard liquor – like flavored vodkas and brandies – to beer. Will they still “rip six shots before leaving their dorm rooms to create a ‘buzz’ that will last all night” (from the Jezebel article)? I wonder why they don’t drink wine? Of course, you can become incapacitated from beer and wine, but it takes a lot longer.
I think the ban on hard liquor will help a lot. It is much harder to get blasted from wine or beer. But the ban will be of no use if the college is not going to enforce it.
A response yesterday from the president of the University of Virginia re: the sorority leadership actions.
http://news.virginia.edu/content/response-npc-advisory-sullivan-expresses-confidence-students-judgment
She’s right. The suggestion / edict / whatever you call it is between the nationals and their UVA chapters.
Agree. What is interesting is her remarks after that.
I believe the investigations relate solely to whether or not colleges and universities had processes and procedures in place that met the directive of the OCR AND if the college followed those processes and procedures when handling the specific complaint. The OCR has not directed specific punishments for specific allegations in any of it’s correspondence with colleges and universities to the best of my knowledge.
I think what we’re seeing now with Dartmouth, with UVa and other colleges is the focus has shifted from a reactionary one to something more proactive whether those actions come from the college administration, from greek life, form the students themselves. Personally I find this a refreshing change and one that has the potential for more long-lasting campus environment change than allowing campuses to become charged with a divisiveness and a war between the sexes.
Agree, momofthreeboys, I can’t see how divisiveness, adversarial positions between men and women, between sororities and fraternities (which like it or not are here to stay), helps anything in the long term either.
I have been trying to understand the continued objections to the NPC mandate to sororities at UVA not to participate in fraternity bid weekend, which seems to have always been a national policy, even if not necessarily followed on all campuses. When you join a sorority, you give up some autonomy. You should understand this. If the rules are offensive enough, it would be appropriate to quit. I believe there always have been issues worth protesting and quitting over, but missing fraternity bid weekend at UVA wouldn’t seem to me in that category.
Not all fraternity houses are unsafe. However, some clearly are and rapes and sexual assaults take place in those houses. I think PG’s point about sister care is excellent. On one level you use a buddy system at the rapey houses. National mandating not to attend events at those houses takes it to another level. National has that right. Sorority women gave them that right when they pledged.
Sure, active sorority members have the right to object. They should if they feel strongly enough. I am always happy for actives to challenge the sorority status quo. However, complaining they can’t go to events they evidently weren’t supposed to be at in the first place doesn’t seem to really make sense to me.
If their point is the support the fraternities, I am not sympathetic. Sure not all fraternities are bad. Still they are places where sexual assaults take place. It is true assaults happen in many organizations: Churches, boy scouts, etc. I don’t guess we want to shut down churches or scouting. The difference to me is the fraternity culture sometimes seems so misogynistic as to create an environment within the group (which then sometimes impacts the larger campus culture) that is dangerous to women.
I certainly agree about being pro-active and have been mainly posting here about preventing rape, not about Title IX. When women can’t imagine needing a buddy system or keeping an eye on their drinks at fraternity houses, then I will be able to support fraternities. Do I support the concept women have a right to put themselves in risky situations if they so choose? Absolutely. But when they join a sorority, they agree to follow rules and if their alums want to protect them from risky behavior, they are obliged to go follow those rules.
It is fine with me if they all quit so they can go to fraternity bid weekend. I am okay with women leaving their sororities.
alh, It is not just about “bid night.” It extends to your personal movements even to go to off campus parties or bars where fraternity men might be present. The women don’t get in the middle of any of the official bid activities . They just sometimes go to parties afterwards, which are not an official fraternity-sorority event. It is also the implications involved in this edict as President Sullivan notes in her remarks. There are broader issues . I agree that the national leadership has the right to do whatever they please. Doesn’t mean the sorority sisters have to tike it. Or the school has to like it… Yes, sisters can certainly quit if they don’t like it. We obviously disagree and that’s okay. I only brought it up again because Pizzagirl earlier asked what UVa had done in terms of the fraternities and sororities working to make changes. I saw that President Sullivan mentioned that in her remarks yesterday so posted a followup.
5025 momwrath: [quote] The accusers themselves seem conflicted on this issue. In many cases they've said that they never intended for their assaulters to be expelled or for their lives to be ruined. They just wanted them out of their chemistry class, or some such no-contact resolution. I found the Jezebel article "Rush After 'A Rape on Campus'" overall disingenuous, but the part that really puzzles me is the conclusion that
- College girls who are raped don’t want to be dragged either legally or personally. They don’t want to “ruin the life” of a “good kid” when “stuff just got out of hand.” For the most part they just want to not have to look at their rapist when they go to class.*
[/quote]
If I have time today, I want to read that article again very carefully. It is long. On first reading, I couldn’t really figure out her main point, or if she had one. Maybe it is just a series of reactions to what she is observing? A snapshot of a particular time and place? I really appreciated the descriptions of racism on campus and how that plays into all this. That really hasn’t come up at all on this thread (well a little discussion of the murals in the first pages), or sexual assaults on male students, until dstark gave us those links. I have been wondering if we would get to those discussions here if the thread continued long enough.
Well, this means you will never be able to support fraternities.
Fraternities and colleges are not separate from the rest of the world, and they contain the same humans, only that these humans inhabit different cohorts at any one period in their lives. To have the expectation that women cannot imagine the buddy system and keeping an eye on their drink at a college party is equivalent to saying women shouldn’t have to imagine a buddy system and eyeing their drinks in the standard nightclub or bar in the real world outside the pearly gates.
It is just a basic fact in a population of 21M college students, that at any one time, there are going to be somewhere between 200K to 500K predisposed to predator behavior and there is nothing anyone can go about it except arrest them after the fact. And these are the people who are like that without alcohol. Add alcohol to the mix which changes how even normal males and females alike behave and the number of potential problem points multiplies.
Some might argue that when deciding on fraternity brothers, choosing mensches should be a priority. I believe it is for many groups, for my son’s group for example. The fraternity is in a way supposed to be separate from the rest of the world. It is exclusionary. It is selective.
I think we hear a lot on this board about what the women can do to reduce sexual assault on campus. Stop drinking to excess, stay with your friends, keep an eye on your drinks etc. Think all of this is good advice. But I would now like to hear what the men can do to reduce sexual assault on campus.
I am linking to this again:
http://www.ebony.com/news-views/5-ways-we-can-teach-men-not-to-rape-456#axzz3PyVLtdmZ
This is to be expected given the other messages that the females are hearing.
These women and people in general are not deaf. They have heard the call that many are saying that the police are not helpful; do not file a police report; the police will not take you seriously; the police will ask too many other personal questions etc.; and, we recommend you to go to the dean and college tribunal instead.
In short, the females get the fact that the college tribunal is a lessening of the severity of the charge, from rape down to misconduct and a school behavior code violation. So even if it were technically full on rape, the guy is not going to jail or paying a price beyond possibly switching schools.
The net effect is they got the message that rape is not serious enough to go to the police, thus the result is they take the crime less seriously and just want it the guy out of their hair so to speak. Therefore, they are fine with never seeing the guy again in their classes because realistically that is all the tribunals can do, even if the guy switches schools, as he never gets or even had the chance of criminal punishment via the tribunal.