<p>parent57, nobody here has said that “men are predators.” Nobody has made that kind of generalization. I’m not the only one who said that they believe that it’s a small percentage of men who are responsible for the crimes (and other incidents) like those discussed. </p>
<p>If there’s any underlying theme I see, it’s that a lot of people find the way that women are routinely disbelieved and challenged and shamed when they come forward to report rape and sexual assault, in a way that almost never happens to people who report any other crime, to be appalling.</p>
<p>DonnaL, I understand what you’re saying and agree with it, but in the Duke case some of the TV commentators repeated the theme you cited that woman are routinely disbelieved and shamed, and used this hypothesis to justify their belief that the Duke players were guilty.</p>
<p>Interesting that there’s exactly one (1) well-known case of a false accusation of this type, which everyone always points to. There’s a statistic for you all by itself.</p>
<p>No one has claimed any of the things you are proposing. Not all women are victims and not all men are predators. There are many threads where posters vent about negative experiences with attorneys, doctors, insurance companies, teachers, unions, bad neighbors, you name it. If this seems like a thread where posters are venting about males, that seems to be an overgeneralization. This thread was to address how some schools handled cases of reported sexual assault, and led to a discussion about sexual assault. It is not a man-bashing thread. As far as I am concerned the only man I want to bash is that %&$&<em>*^&$</em>$^ straw man!!</p>
<p>Speaking for myself, while yes, I had the experiences I mentioned above, they did not traumatize me or affect my relationship with men. I have been happily married for 27 years and have 2 sons. Heck, even our dog was male. I am a perfectly happy camper in this male-dominated household. That said, I don’t plan to trivialize the experiences others have shared here, esecially those who have been traumatized. As they have said, it hard enough to share shameful or embarassing experiences, and to have them interpreted as somehow male-bashing can be seen as disrespectful of them, their feelings and their experiences. While what people may be saying is that the prevalence of abuse is higher than one may thing, due in part to the discomfort with disclosing it, no one is saying that men are all terrible people not ot be trusted. </p>
<p>If you would like to discuss mens issues, that is a perfectly appropriate topic. … for a separate thread.</p>
<p>Thank you, frazzled. Apologies for the 2 typos at the end. Meant to say higher than one may *think (not thing) and not *to be. But I figure most can read past my constant typos.</p>
<p>BC – you say I don’t think that schools can deal with reported sexual assualt in
a way that is fair to students given the high-stakes nature of college. </p>
<p>Do you think colleges can deal with alchohol or drugs, given the penalty may be much severe than a legal penalty?</p>
<p>This past summer, my son walked into an apartment (on-campus) where people there was an apparent drug sale going down with people using drugs. If an RA or campus security showed up at the door at the moment that he was inside, he would have been in a huge amount of trouble including legal trouble. He saw what was going on and left and asked me what he should have done (including asking if he should have reported it). I just told him to leave an apartment if he sees something like that in the future.</p>
<p>We have another parent that reported an incident where a roommate was holding a party in their dorm/apartment/suite with alcohol and the student was in his own room. The host of the party stepped out for a moment and then security or the RA knocked on the door. The son opened the door and you can see the problem.</p>
<p>Anytime you have a shared living situation where everyone can be responsible for the actions of one presents the possibility for an unfair outcome.</p>
<p>A clear-cut case would be where you have a single where only one person has access to the room. But it seems that multi-person living arrangements are the norm on campuses.</p>
<p>This is for the situations that colleges can control. I think that colleges have a much harder time controlling behavior at off-campus housing and I have seen streams of students walking from the dorms to the off-campus apartments for parties and then back again on son’s campus. The local city police turn a blind eye to the parties at off-campus housing and students appear to have no problems acquiring alcohol, and I would assume, drugs.</p>
<p>tsdad,
The video in the OP seems to indicate that even though the federal govt is supposed to have the clout to withold funding or impose some other sanction, the reality is they don’t. Take a peek at the video.</p>
<p>They’ve actually just released new guidelines for how colleges are to deal with issues of sexual harrasment and sexual assault. It goes hand in hand with the current suit the DOJ is bringing against Yale under, I believe, title IX.</p>
<p>They intend to begin to withhold funds more regularly, from my understanding, and the Yale suit is the first step. fwiw</p>
<p>It would seem to be common sense for the police to investigate assaults on or off campus.
While the colleges may have their own ways of forcing students to be accountable for their actions, they don’t have the investigation resources of the police in these matters.</p>
<p>However, even in our own school district, when things are reported to the principal, they may not be reported to the police.
A disabled girl was sexually assaulted at one of the high schools & while it was reported to the principal, the most he did was suspend one of the students involved retroactively after school was let out for the summer. ( her guardian eventually went to the police & the man is now serving jail time, the other boy involved was a minor & while the principal has recently been transferred , he remained at the school for several years after that incident- which was only one of several.) There is still a stigma involved for victims of sexual assault, particularly if the attacker is on a sports team.
:p</p>
<p>For those of you who think a flasher is no big deal, the flasher who hung around our high school campus was put in a mental hospital briefly, but let out because after all he hadn’t hurt anyone. He came back and raped and murdered a girl.</p>
<p>The threshold for involuntary commitment is whether you intend to hurt yourself or hurt someone else. State mental hospitals have been in a mode of cost cutting for decades moving patients out where possible.</p>
<p>I never heard anything about the guy that flashed me in the library. Some may be dangerous and some may be harmless. Some drivers are dangerous while most are harmless. There are those that are caught drunk driving multiple times that eventually kill someone. But we have a schedule of punishments that allow them to do that. Does that make all drivers dangerous?</p>
<p>There is something about sexual assault, even after the physical scars have faded that is insidious and takes a great deal of time & effort on the part of the victim to resume a " normal life". Even something as relatively innocuous as participating in this thread has brought up very painful memories which I thought had been walled off for good.</p>
<p>While I don’t doubt that there are those who toss off predatory behavior by voyeurs or " flashers" as not a big deal, I would also argue that to a child or a teen it is a * very* big deal and* it is a* sexual assault to force another into sexual behavior even if the only contact is visual.</p>