<p>So I had this idea in the middle of the night. How about a “Hook up” App? </p>
<p>Each person has to sign into the app and enter some sort of unique identifier to signal that they are a consensual couple. Obviously it would have to go to some super secure site and it wouldn’t help the “I agreed to X but not Y” problem. But it would perhaps help eliminate the “He said, She said” problem? Also, you would have to be fairly coherent to be able to open the program and put in you #, so might cut down on the “too drunk to consent” problem. </p>
<p>I’m thinking you would use your student ID which might be hard to remember if you are inchoherent? And the app would scramble the numbers sort of like you can get a scrambled credit card number for online purchases. Then it could only be unscrambled again by authorities if there was a problem. Before that it would be anonymous.</p>
<p>A benefit would be that it would work for any couple, no matter the sexual orientation. And it protects both parties. Each person knows that the other is consenting and they have “proof”. Which in my opinion is the big gaping hole in the “enthusiastic yes at every stage” idea. You still don’t have any proof that the other person said yes at the time. Actually it would even work in cases where there were more than two people. :"> </p>
<p>Would it work? It seems like it wouldn’t be any harder than requiring a condom. Everyone has a phone on them nowadays. Too far out? Too onerous? What downsides am I not seeing?</p>
<p>Anytime there is social change there will be iconic figures. If it helps just to think of the mattress dragger or the Occidental guy or the Michigan guy or Jackie as iconic. The bottom line is that no matter what the social change was in any historical civil rights movement there were icons AND there were court cases the shaped how we, as a society, moved forward. Many people will argue we already have criminal law that covers sexual assault and we do. However, if we are going to insist as a society that universities, or the NFL, or really any business must (as the DOJ is saying) investigate AND adjudicate criminal acts outside of the criminal justice system then they will need to do this without infringing on the individuals civil rights - and those rights extend to both women and men. They cannot create a process that is reductive - in other words they cannot ignore this, that and the other thing to get to their 50.1%. I think that is what is wrong with some of the arguments that say forget that “Jackie” may not have told the whole truth. Universities that are shelling out tens of millions (and yes it is tens of millions) of dollars to people whose civil rights were violated - irrespective of their gender - will “shape” how all colleges will move forward. Unfortunately many deep pocketed universities will choose simply to pay people like “Drew” confidentially and move on and by the time he and others are 30 perhaps they will have their degrees, but at some point these deep pocket corrections will need to grind to a halt. </p>
<p>My concern is that the college bubble is on average 4-6 years and these young men and women then are in the general population. We need to be teaching them how to stand on their feet in society not creating a protectionist parallel bubble that is not reflective of society as a whole. </p>
<p>The primary support should be for the victims. They should be believed and supported. Clearly the number of women telling the truth far outweighs the number of false accusations. There are also cases, however, where the women may be telling the truth as she recalls it but is mistaken in who was responsible or in enough details to make it challenging to find the man responsible. If the consequence in a case where the evidence is limited or the situation is not clear was not to essentially deprive the man of a college education and have a sexual assault “conviction” on his educational record, I think many more would be comfortable with that lower standard of proof (51% sure). A suspension or (in the UMich case), being kicked out of the"program" dorm and not allowed to be a peer mentor or even being asked to transfer with nothing on the permanent record about the incident may be more appropriate than expulsion in such cases. This may be why Dean Eramo and others have stated that women do not always want to go through a formal process because they want the man to admit they did wrong and be accountable, but not to deprive him of his education or even get him kicked off campus. Not, of course, in a case like Jackie’s (either version) or where a completely incapacitated women is raped; then expulsion is the very least appropriate measure as the evidence allows. </p>
<p>dstark, Thanks for your post. Your response makes sense given how you view the situation.</p>
<p>It does surprise me though that, without hesitation or reservation, you expect of me what you do not expect of yourself. You say you want the system to work better for both men and women. Great, I am with you there. But yet you have many posts that very clearly say you do not care about the men who are having problems. Not sure how you can want the system to work better for men too, while admitting you will do nothing to make the system better for the men as well? OK, I respect that point because you have taken sides and believe all your energy should be helping the women you see in need of advocacy in this arena. My hat is truly off to you there for I have the same passion for things I believe in.</p>
<p>Where I am truly befuddled is you summarily dismiss the need to help men and focus only on the women, but when I say I will help the men, you create an entire new standard for me and present an argument that I am a deficient person if i do not also help women’s advocacy groups? Hum… taking your own logic and the fact that you refuse to help men, even if though you acknowledge you want it to work bette for men too, means, by your own standards, you are an equally deficient person for not wanting to help the men too. </p>
<p>This is exactly what I mean by people creating different standards and principles, while simultaneously wanting to be taken a seriously. No one takes being duplicitous seriously. </p>
<p>You posit one standard for you that supposedly makes you an honorable person in your eyes, i.e., on principle, you help one group, the women’s advocacy group. However, I cannot be an honorable person your eyes if I to choose, on principle, to help one group, a men’ advocacy group. Therefore, the standard you set for me is being honorable means I must help both groups, but your standard for you is helping just one side is makes you honorable. So, the standard of being a good person for you and me are by definition, unequal. One principle I have is I steer clear of groups that promote such inequality and, unfortunately, the current women’s advocacy groups are promoting a value, the disregard for individual rights, which I cannot condone and support. </p>
<p>And you have missed the point, it would not be an ad campaign. It would be much more direct, useful and hands on than that. It will providing young men who claim to have been falsely accused or claim to have their due process rights violated the legal services to properly fight back. Ad campaigns are way too passive for my personality, and I never get involved in those.</p>
<p>However, I am the least of your worries - my board includes both men and women and NONE of the women are on board the dismissal of due process for the men either, People are not stupid; they recognize a dangerous slippery slope when they see one. If it is OK to trample individual rights for this one cause, then it only a matter a time that the trampling of individual rights would be seen acceptable for any cause.</p>
<p>No one is suggesting the men should be helped at the expense of helping women. The women are getting so much help that they in a position of too many cooks are spoiling the pot. What is being said is that, from a judicial process perspective, the women and men should be afforded equal treatment. Not sure why such a standard is a now a controversial position in today’s world.</p>
<p>awcntdb wrote: “if it is wrong not to give a female rape accuser a fair system for her to try and garner justice, then it is equally wrong to not give the accused male a fair system for him to try and garner justice. Not sure why this basic standard is now considered a draconian concept.”</p>
<p>MomofJandL wrote: “Sorry, I missed it. Which poster on this forum claimed this to be a draconian concept? Or is this another straw man?”</p>
<p>I say my quote above applies to any poster who advocates not presuming the innocence of the accused is promoting, by definition, an unfair system. Why? Because in a fair system BOTH the accuser and the accused are given the benefit of doubt. The accuser’s claim is taken at face value, and any denial claims of the accused is taken at face value as well.</p>
<p>Heard through a (long) grapevine involving sorority alumni. There will be another backlash in this season of giving. The sorority alums are really angry that they were lumped into the suspension and that the president of UVa has yet to apologize for her rush to judgment. She apologized to the staff members who were smeared by Rolling Stone but never to the students. I imagine the fraternity alums feel the same. U Va is going to feel the pinch in a drop in donations from alums. Greek students account for 30% of campus. </p>
<p>It was really wrong to suspend the entire system in some sort of guilt by association, sororities in particular. These women are angry.</p>
<p>I woke up this morning and wondered why the article that Consolation posted hit such a raw nerve in me. It helps me understand my own priorities, and this is what I realized: it said the story of a person who is facing a massive bureaucracy with no recourse and no support. It is reminiscent of the kangaroo courts in Stanilist purges. It is Kafkaesque. It is straight out of One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.</p>
<p>It also helps me shape what the proper response should be. You always want to strike at the root cause using all available means. You don’t want to be bogged down by symptoms or minutiae.</p>
<p>To me, it had nothing to do with rape. Nothing. Whatsoever. It was all about secret courts and middle of the night knocks on door (or middle of the summer cryptic Skype inquisitions). It was all about all evidence ignored, including evidence given by the accused that it was not rape. It was all about making the Office of Civil Rights happy by feeding them some raw meat, so that the Federal funds keep flowing. It was all about using the power of the Office of Civil Rights to score brownie points on a resonant political agenda, which is not backed up by facts. Been there, done that.</p>
<p>For those still claiming that the rape epidemic is real and supported by facts, they should read the excellent meta-analysis in the article posted by Consolation, which clearly shows that experts are aligned and certain that the numbers are nowhere as big as bandied around, the real incidence is in fact far less than the 1% I calculated and in the 0.25% range, and almost all of it is drunken sex that is regretted. When a panel of experts tell you the same story, as in climate change, for example, I believe them. I do not debate anyone who doesn’t, as they are true believers who will never change their mind.</p>
<p>So, who is at fault here? Quite clearly, it is the OCR. They are forcing a standard that is violating civil rights, and that has to be stopped. What’s the way to do it? Well, it is to file Title IX complaints for discrimination against men and flood the system with it, too.</p>
<p>Now, does it matter whether 1 or 100 ot 1 million men are impacted? The answer is, of course not. It is the procedure that should be on trial, just as laws that violate the Constituiton are immediately challenged in court before they have had a chance to cause harm to a single person. This is because Americans hold Civil rights and Equal Protection near and dear to their heart. </p>
<p>For those that want to believe the standard followed by colleges is one that is followed by the civil courts to ascertain preponderance of evidence, read the link. It is nothing like that. In fact, it is nothing like a court. It’s a kangaroo court, at best, as even kangaroo courts allow defendents a sham lawyer and presentation of evidence. The current system in the colleges do not. It is set up as a grinding mill, enter the accused, exit the guilty.</p>
<p>Shame to anyone who supports such a system.</p>
<p>The central issue with using gross numbers as justification for a position is the fact that people do not assess personal risk like that; only advocacy groups do.</p>
<p>Let’s take one individual family:</p>
<p>It does not matter to that individual family if the number of women who are telling the truth far outweighs the number of false accusations. This is because to that individual family its son being falsely accused is EVERYTHING. </p>
<p>The individual family is not sitting around the dinner table saying, “It is OK son that you are falsely accused because there are more women telling the truth. It is way less important that your life is turned upside down because of a lie or an error in someone’s memory, because please understand it is all for the best for women.” </p>
<p>Such conversations are definitely not happening. </p>
<p>But the guy in the U of M case is clearly innocent. Why should he be forced to leave a program or asked to transfer when he is <em>clearly</em> innocent? </p>
<p>There are two separate issues here: the quality of the investigation and judiciary process, and the scale of punishment. In his case, clearly the first two were abysmal. Why was that? Was it because the Dear Colleague letter and accompanying threats make it more financially attractive for a university to throw a few innocent men under the bus so that no one even questions their compliance? The increasing number of lawsuits may tilt things back to something resembling balance.</p>
<p>As to the numbers, I would point out that just as the number of rape complaints adjudicated almost certainly do not reflect the total number of actual rapes–a position that is GOSPEL here–the number of lawsuits brought by males most likely does not reflect the true number of innocents who have been railroaded by appallingly unfair processes like those at U Mich. </p>
<p>Honestly, the whole thing is increasingly striking me as something out of The Crucible. If you say you’re innocent, that’s evidence you’re guilty. If you are clear and cogent, that’s evidence you’re guilty. If you insist upon your innocence, we’ll expel you but if you agree to falsely say you are guilty we’ll let you come back eventually…with an assault on your record. </p>
<p>The first minister of my church was accused of witchcraft at Salem, where he had previously served. He went back to defend himself, since it was clear that he was no such thing. On the scaffold he recited the Lord’s Prayer, something that witches were supposed to be unable to do. They hanged him anyway. I’m sure that they came up with some reason why Satan enabled him to deceive the assembly. Because the thing about people conducting witch hunts is that THEY REALLY BELIEVE IN WITCHES.</p>
<p>Is this “better” than a system where victims are routinely disbelieved and it is almost impossible to get a conviction? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>How many times did I say yesterday that it is mostly about drunken sex and nothing else? And that women are enthusiastic participants as well in this? </p>
<p>Awctndb, I know I started out very aggressively on this subject. </p>
<p>I believe in justice for men and women. If the stories we read on the internet are true, both sides are not able to present their sides of a case. We see this in the Columbia case and the Michigan case. This should be rectified. </p>
<p>We also see that men also lie. We see this in the Hobart and Smith case and the Columbia case. Even if it is very difficult to ascertain who is telling the truth as far as the assault goed, the men 's lying should be taken into account. You can kick the men out of school for lying during the proceedings for example.</p>
<p>If men are being accused by multiple women, that should be considered. We have cases like the Columbia case and the Ohio State case where multiple women are complaining about a man. </p>
<p>We should not pretend that injustice during the proceedings falls equally on men and women. The unjustice affects women more. </p>
<p>Awctndb, I did not misunderstand you. I want you to take what you want to do and go further. Publicize what you are doing. You don’t have to do anything. There are 12 cases a year. How many sexual assaults are there? </p>
<p>Posting links written by Megan McArdle and the Manhattan Institute make some people feel good. This doesn’t change the fact that they are one sided opinion pieces, missing facts, getting facts wrong on purpose, misleading people including people that support their views. </p>
<p>I am angry at the RS piece. I said I was wrong about RS. I don 't like to be mislead. </p>
<p>Looks like you don’t mind.</p>
<p>Your posts are also filled with strawman arguments. I wonder about a company run by somebody that engages in this technique. I wonder what the discourse is at the company. </p>
<p>Edit… I eliminated part of the last paragraph.</p>
<p>I think that almost anyone would agree that there are far, far more drunken sex episodes than there are rapes. (I certainly participated in my share, back in the day.) But there are also rapes. And not of the “oh, she is a frail flower who can’t be expected to be responsible when she’s drinking because you know it’s all the fault of those big nasty men who only have one thing on their minds and sex is something men do to women because no nice girl wants it and therefore he must have taken advantage of me” variety. Real rapes.</p>
<p>Personally, I doubt that the vast majority of women who have drunken sex and regret it call it rape. There obviously are a few. Those are the ones we hear about, because those are the ones that, if investigated and adjudicated by an ideologue, end up in a lawsuit.</p>
<p>I disagree with his conclusion. I don’t think today’s college drunken hookups after binge drinking have anything to do with what “we” have taught or modeled or encouraged them to do. It’s their thing; like smoking pot etc was our thing, not what our parents et al taught us to do. </p>
<p>I agree and said that many times. Yes there is real rape. But they are vanishing rare, and this is why - real rape is committed by sociopaths and there are very few sociopaths. More importantly, there is no way to root out every single sociopath from society. If there was, we would have no crimes whatsoever. But we can try to catch and punish them within our current legal system. We do not overhaul our legal system to treat anyone accused as guilty, because, hey, that will root the sociopaths out for sure! This is not chemotherapy. Society is not on its terminal legs that it would die without it. </p>
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<p>I completely agree and said that too. But that doesn’t mean we should adopt a legal system that amplifies the effects of a vanishingly few who do call regret sex rape. </p>
<p>The issue at hand is the system of justice. The issue at hand is not rape or prevention thereof. If people want to prevent rape on college campuses they would focus on binge drinking and hookup culture, instead of a rape culture. I have tried to get the discussion there many times. I gave examples. I gave realistic solutions like following the European example to get to responsible drinking. That’s where the discussion needs to be.</p>
<p>Just for the record, Tutu was speaking in the context of war ravaged Africa where rape is routinely used as a weapon to intimidate the population. It may be fashionable and feel exciting to think that we are at just as much risk as war torn Congo, but reality is that we are in suburban middle class USA. </p>
<p>I would respectfully respond, if you could specifically point out what you consider straw man arguments. I have no problem being asked to defend what I write. A poster upthread just a few posts called one my arguments a straw man, and I responded directly, as to why it was not a straw man. You are free to be specific, intend of vague. </p>
<p>I get the impression that people what arguments based solely on their premises and their terms, irrespective of how the real world operates. I live in real-ville, not advocacy-ville. </p>
<p>One thing I can say about my company discussions is that regardless of what is being discussed, I always bring it back to fundamental principles and is what we are deciding following those principles. If we are violating fundamental principles, be it judicial fairness, product quality, customer service etc., then we start over and get it in line with said principles. Pretty easy thing to do if one vows not to violate one’s principles. </p>
<p>And in reference to this thread, two principles that stick out to me that are of issue are: 1) innocent until proven guilty and 2) that both the accuser and the accused have equal opportunity to present their cases. if you believe defending those two principles unwaveringly represents straw man arguments, then so be it. </p>