Wonder if anyone has done a study comparing the frequency of sexual assault and campus binge drinking when the drinking age was 18 vs now…
I think most people believe ,at least I do, that excessive alcohol in college does lead to both more accidents as well as more sexual assaults. I think there are some families that would pursue things legally if their child died at college when alcohol was involved. Without excessive alcohol, both accidents and sexual assaults would be reduced, as well as the obvious- alcohol poisonings. Suicide attempts, interpersonal violence , etc. would probably be reduced as well.
This is very good point to make. No one has a clue on the prevalence of such drugs. Given the nature of these drugs and how easily they can be administered, it would seem that more is definitely possible. If the Cosby stories are any example and are even just half true, a lot of women do not even report being drugged, which is not a good thing. And worse, many do not know they were.
5232 [quote] Wonder if anyone has done a study comparing the frequency of sexual assault and campus binge drinking when the drinking age was 18 vs now...
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Not only do we have underreporting, but the term acquaintance rape doesn’t even really appear until about the same time the drinking age is raised to 21. We defined rape differently pre- 1980s.
oops - I just responded for PG. sorry.
yeah - I know I do that all the time. bad manners.
We do have clearer definitions of date rape now, alh. Wonder about differences in assaults, alcohol related campus deaths, etc in the years after the raising of the drinking age, etc. Just seems to me (and I am showing my age) when alcohol was legal at 18, it was not such a big deal to get ones hand on it in school or at parties.
I am 59. While still in High School, before my first fraternity party, my parents sat with me and poured me mixed drinks at hourly (or maybe 2 hour) intervals and had me walk a line between drinks. They wanted to be sure I understood how it affected me… At my southern state flagship, we served alcohol at sorority parties. We kept alcohol in our rooms. Friday noon we opened (tapped?) kegs. Women were raped in fraternity houses. Fraternity houses were considered places where one needed to be on guard. I don’t think there was the same amount of binge drinking. This idea of drinking till vomiting and then doing shots again (described in media account links on this thread) was a new concept to me. Maybe we had more/better drugs?
I tend not to believe in the good ole days.
adding: just off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen alcohol related deaths on campus while I was there. All but one were fraternity related. One fraternity was closed for a while for essentially killing one of their pledges during initiation/hazing.
jym, I do think it has become so arbitrary with the drinking age and college students. Some sophomores can drink, some juniors can’t, etc. just because of the way birthdays fall. Kids getting MIP’s , etc. 18 for beer and wine sounds okay to me, cuts down on a lot of drama (and arrests!)…
wow, alh, your parents sound interesting!
I don’t know but sometimes when I read all this I think that perhaps the legalization of marijuana would not be such a bad thing after all. The lack of control is not as pronounced with marijuana as it is with alcohol.
I’m all for legalizing pot. There is no doubt in my mind that people are much safer smoking pot than drinking. And in general I am opposed to blue laws on principle.
Investigating a sexual assault by the college or by the police is not an either/or choice. Under Title IX, any attack that is reported to the college by the person attacked or by a mandatory reporter, must be investigated and adjudicated by the college. I believe that the college also must investigate any attack reported to the police if it involves two students, but I not sure of the mechanism of how this actually works.
Colleges must not discourage alleged victims from filing police reports. This isn’t quite the same thing as saying that colleges must encourage victims to file police reports. That decision is left up to the victim and from what I’ve read in the past two month’s victims’ rights advocates vary widely on this step.
II believe that police and the courts do the best job of investigating and trying rapists. Not perfect, but better than the colleges. But for now the way Title IX is structured, some cases will get to the police, some will not, but all will be adjudicated by the colleges.
I’ve reluctantly come around to the position that the colleges must take some kind of action on reported sexual assaults, even if the alleged victim chooses not to file a police report. The first objective is to secure the safety of the accuser and in some cases the campus community. Often this can be achieved by separating the accuser and accused by a no-contact order, moving dorms, changing classes. At the other extreme, the accused may be considered dangerous to the campus at large. In which case getting him off campus is required.
Either way, the decision to separate, suspend or expel needs to be made quickly, in violent cases more quickly than a fair and thorough proceeding could be conducted. Therefore I understand the college’s authority to make an interim decision, while the investigation and hearing or (police investigation and trial) are in process. Perhaps assigning a gradation of offence degree, the same way that crimes are graded in the court, could help.
Once the immediate safety issue is addressed, then I would like to see felony cases handed over to police and courts and not adjudicated by the colleges as is currently required by Title IX. I have two problems with simultaneous college and police/court procedures.
First, responding to two sets of investigators and questioners, increases the chance of the of victim self-incriminating, especially if he is denied counsel by the college. Second, if the colleges defer to the police investigation before beginning their internal investigation/hearings, then they’re in trouble with the OCR because they didn’t take action with the guideline period. Third, the OCR mandates that if appeals are allowed at all, they must be offered to both parties, not just the accused. Therefore the accused could conceivably be “tried” (I don’t know what other verb to use) by the college twice and once again by the courts for the same crime – double jeopardy and triple jeopardy – and this doesn’t even include a possible investigation by the OCR of the same case.
Currently 94 schools are under investigation for violating OCR’s rules on how the schools must adjudicate sexual violence. Some OCR investigations are initiated by individual complaints; some are part of compliance reviews by the OCR. The sheer volume of bureaucracy that these investigations will entail is mind numbing. The number of cases is increasing exponentially; in May the number was 55. Resolution can take years.
It’s difficult to get details on the reasons behind the investigations unless the schools themselves release that information. As far as I know the OCR doesn’t publish details until the investigations are resolved. According to this WaPo article, the procedure for OCR investigations is opaque and inconsistent.
Of the college reports that I’ve read about, the majority of complaints appear to have been filed by victims, accusers and victim advocacy groups. It would be interesting to learn percentage of complaints filed by the accuser versus the accused and also the percentage of complaints from each that the OCR pursues. It would also be interesting to know why the OCR initiates its own compliance review investigations. The OCR, as a government agency, could be more transparent with this information.
I certainly haven’t researched all of the OCR investigations, but there are a few higher profile cases that were filed by accused students, and I suspect more to come as “the other side” gets more organized. One that is under OCR investigation was by a Brandeis student, a male, who was accused by another male. Another which was filed by an Occidental student was refused by the OCR.
Issues that are repeatedly cited in the complaints are failure to use a preponderance of the evidence standard, failure to issue an adequate sanction, failure to take effective interim measures, failure to end a sexually hostile environment, failure to provide a prompt and equitable response.
So yes, while the complaints and resulting investigations ostensibly concern processes and procedures, not specific penalties, the inference is that the college’s ruling are deemed too lenient, too biased toward protecting the rights of the accused rather than protecting the civil rights of the accuser.
The threat of withheld funds is very real, even to wealthy colleges like Harvard, and it’s not surprising that eventually the colleges have to bend to the OCR’s rules, even those that don’t sit right with legal rights advocates. To me, threatening to levy a monetary penalty on a college that doesn’t rule the way the OCR thinks is correct is tantamount to buying a decision.
Again, this puts colleges which need to treat all of their students fairly, in an untenable position. If they decide in favor of the accused, they’re likely to get hit with an OCR investigation for not following OCR guidelines. If they rule in favor of the accuser, the accused may sue them because they DID follow OCR guidelines.
My conclusion: It’s a good time to be a lawyer specializing in sexual assault.
5245 monwrath: [quote] Of the college reports that I've read about, the majority of complaints appear to have been filed by victims, accusers and victim advocacy groups. It would be interesting to learn percentage of complaints filed by the accuser versus the accused and also the percentage of complaints from each that the OCR pursues. It would also be interesting to know why the OCR initiates its own compliance review investigations. The OCR, as a government agency, could be more transparent with this information.
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…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annie-e-clark/rape-is-like-a-football-g_b_2769576.html
http://www.vogue.com/2210627/college-sexual-assault-harassment-annie-e-clark-andrea-pino/
a very in depth article:
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/unc-and-its-honor-court-have-failed-sexual-assault-survivors/Content?oid=3461355
What really upsets me in these cases (not that the whole thing isn’t upsetting) is the young girls who feel for whatever reason they can’t tell their parents what happened, and consequently suffer alone. As a mother of a daughter, that just hurts like hell to think that my daughter would bear such a horrible secret herself without my / our support.
momwrath, i think most accused have chosen civil court probably because they want compensation and the college to remedy an expulsion or a suspension. The only thing I’m unclear about is if an accuser “wins” a Title IX complaint I don’t think the college can legally go back and effectively “retry” an accused without causing civil action by the accused, but I’m not sure. The title IX complaints can lead to changes in the college’s processes and procedures going forward I think. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. One thing I read awhile back resonated with me and that is that the college honor code tribunals is not unconditional support and validation for alleged victims because that’s is what therapy is for. The tribunal’s job is to weight the evidence and weigh the risk to not only the accuser but the campus community as a whole. There is much to improve, but it is incumbent on all parties to understand the ground rules if they chose the college over criminal courts. If it’s confidential, then it’s confidential for both parties. If one or the other continues to harass it is a violation of the same nature as the original complaint. If counsel is provided to one it should be provided to both. If either the accuser or the accused feels aggrieved at the end they have civil courts to elevate and most importantly Title IX does not prescribe punishments,
Interesting. Freudian slip? The accused is the victim?
Who are the victims in the above sentence?
Alh, great links.
Actually that probably applies to both the accused and the accuser.
I’m not going to put words into someone else’s mouth, but I associated “victims” as “victims” of rape - forced, coerced or drugged sexual assault - I read accusers as those who are filing complaints of harassment, stalking, relationship issues etc. and advocacy groups is clear - people who file general complaints using other people’s stories to support the claim.
AWC – the college and frat liability cat is already completely out of the bag. Drunk kids on campuses all over the country kill themselves every weekend of the school year. I don’t think you read about those much as they are typically quietly settled with the college’s insurer and the grieving family. I think an actual trial of those incidents is pretty rare. There’s really no point to do that – the incidents are so common that those claims typically get processed as a routine matter. And the assumption of risk/contributory negligence on the part of the kid is a severe impediment to the parents’ being able to make a blockbuster case against the school.
My kid’s school had 3 last semester – two falls off dorm balconies, one kid walked drunk out into traffic. Campuses today are awash in alcohol of all types despite the 21 drinking age. So it is hard for me to see how the liability of Dartmouth and UVA (both well known play hard schools) goes up with their new regulations. Although it does seem strange – banning hard liquor implies that beer and wine are allowed?
Harvest – I don’t think legalizing pot really makes an impact. First, it is only legal in WA and CO at 21 so you’ve got basically the same issue of something that is illegal to most college kids. Second, pot is widely available everywhere to college kids already. But college kids still generally choose to use illegal alcohol over illegal marijuana.
I agree though that pot doesn’t seem to cause the same level of damage (rape, brawls, falls, car crashes) that booze does. Although it does seem to cause more harm to the young developing brain than booze. From a brain perspective, you want your kids to be moderate drinkers until age 25 then switch over to weed.