Exactly so, HarvestMoon1. And the definition of “sexual misconduct” stands: it’s a general term for various infractions, including sexual assault, sexual harassment and stalking.
OK, I thought maybe I said something before I drank my coffee this morning 
Well let me re-phrase that then because I actually do not believe you are “awful”. What I find “awful” is a reference to the manner in which a woman may choose to dress in a thread on sexual assault. Sexual assault has been the topic of many, many threads on this board and the discussion has evolved way beyond those sorts of references.
If in fact this is not “a position that you have actually taken” then there is no issue and we are in agreement.
I think how young women dress and how young they start wearing makeup is a current cultural thing that we olders just have to get used to. The train has left the station. It can be surprising and while I’m not ancient, I did attend high school when there was a dress code…no jeans ever, skirts must reach your fingertips when your arms are at your sides, shirts had to have sleeves etc. and that was the age of hot pants, mini skirts and tight tops which drove our parents crazy and sent kids home to change…now it’s flesh all the time and lipstick and smokey eyes on 13 year olds and it can be surprising. About the only thing my kids’ high school didn’t allow was t-shirts with alcohol and beer slogans and spaghetti strap tops and in the past couple years the shirts must reach the tops of the bottoms (on both boys and girls, instituted when the exposed boxer era and camisoles hit the fashion trends). A neighboring school just sent a girl home from prom whose dress in the back went way, way too low exposing what generally one covers. I felt sorry for her as it became too major a topic of town conversation to suit my taste. On the other hand, men are growing up with those same women and see it everyday and have since middle school, so culturally I don’t think it is “titillating” anymore to them…they are just used to it.
I have no problem whatsoever with dress codes. If you choose an environment where one is in effect you honor it. My D who graduates in May just spent 4 years at a boarding school that has a dress code. In my early school years I also attended schools which had either uniforms or a dress code. We were fine with it but that does not mean that I would download those expectations on anyone else. Nor would I expect anyone to conform to my ideas on fashion or how I might prefer to present myself.
But I think we both know that dress codes are not what we are talking about here. It is the suggestion or implication that should a woman choose to dress in a manner that deviates from some arbitrary standard that no one agrees on in any event, that she invites harassment or worse.
I guess we have to hope that Eramo sues Rolling Stone so that her statements in the video can be scrutinized under oath.
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321677110/a-campus-dilemma-sure-no-means-no-but-exactly-what-means-yes
Good quote from from Djuna Perkins, a former prosecutor who now consults with colleges as an investigator of complaints (in that NPR article mentioned by @momofthreeboys) which illustrates the inane minutia of trying to determine consent. If no one was there but the two participants, and if one says s/he did and one says s/he didn’t, who’s to know if she lifted up her body or not?
I’m all for communication about sex and during sex, and I think the earlier that people learn to ask and request the better; however, I just don’t see any way that a he said / she said dispute involving consent can be decided by a college committee. One party can claim consent was given, one can claim it wasn’t. Who’s to know? Do we always assume the accuser is telling the truth?
I think that cases involving alcohol or drugs (which appear to be a good percentage of all sexual assault cases) take consent into a level of abstraction that is even more difficult to determine. At what point does a few drinks become drunk become too drunk become intoxicated, impaired or incapacitated? We understand now that consenting under the influence is not consenting at all. Some one who has passed out, is incoherent, stumbling, vomiting is not able to consent. Someone who’s been slipped a date rape drug is not able to consent: OK, agreed.
But there’s wide wide grey chasm between cold sober and passed out and how much is too much to consent is impossible to measure or to judge from afar. There have been several cases in which the accused says she seemed fine and the accuser says no, I was intoxicated. Once again, these are two people in a dark room; often without witnesses. Or the witnesses have been drinking or drugging as well… Or the witnesses – cab drivers, neighbors, bar tenders – don’t have a frame of reference of what the accused’s non-drunk behavior looks like. So who’s to know? Do we always assume the accuser is telling the truth?
I think yes means yes is a good policy and I don’t think drunk sex is a good idea for anybody, but my concern is that consent can’t be proven or mis-proven, days/weeks/months later when somebody may be lying at worse or may have sent ambiguous signals at best. It’s not like drunk driving when evidence can be gathered on the scene. By the time the two parties are in a hearing, the evidence is long gone and the decision comes down to who is more believable.
I would just like to raise the point here that you should always be careful what you ask for. In particular, I am thinking about the statement from OCR that informal/mediation procedures should never be used for cases of sexual assault, even if voluntarily chosen by the complainant. Is that really what we want? If that’s the rule, a person has the option of filing a formal complaint, or doing nothing. Do we think that this will result in more formal complaints, or might it result in the elimination of informal complaints with no increase in formal complaints? If it’s the latter, is that progress? With an informal process, there is at least the possibility of some kind of relief. The OCR removes that choice.
Sometimes it can’t be proved, but then again, sometimes it can be proved. In Missoula, Jon Krakauer’s new book, he talks about a couple of cases where the woman believed she was raped, went to the health service for a rape exam immediately, but then didn’t accuse until much later, in one case over a year later. So there was physical evidence, and the nurse could also report on the alleged victim’s demeanor. And then in at least two of the cases, the woman also sent a text or made a phone call instantly after the alleged attack, saying she’d been raped-- again, that’s evidence. So even if the two people were in a room together with no one else present during the alleged attack, there can still be relevant evidence.
And then in another case mentioned in the book, a woman went to the police saying she’d been drugged and raped. Again, the alleged attack occurred while the two people were alone, but the police were able to find video of the alleged attacker dropping surreptitiously dropping something into the woman’s drink, the alleged attacker had just filled a prescription for Xanax, which can be a date rape drug. (The DA’s office didn’t prosecute. The book alleges that the DA was reluctant to prosecute alleged acquaintance rape even in cases like that, which seem to have a plausible chance of conviction.)
I know I’ve mentioned this in one of these conversations, but I read an interview with a prosecutor who noted that bringing more rape cases was likely to bring the conviction rate down, because they are already bringing the cases that they think are most likely to result in convictions. As a result, prosecutors are not eager to just bring more cases.
Prosecutors and police can also learn how to investigate sexual assault cases better, and present them better. And that will bring the conviction rate up.
For example, when a woman came in to report an acquaintance rape, the police in Missoula were adopting an attitude of disbelief toward her. She might or might not be telling the truth, but the best way to investigate is take her story at face value as she presents it, and then investigate, rather than acting as if she’s lying right off the bat. If the police obviously don’t believe a woman’s story even before they have a chance to investigate it, women are going to stop reporting, and rapists will go free to rape again. The police are no longer adopting this attitude of disbelief.
For example, posters here are always saying, Why didn’t she yell and scream and make a fuss? Juries also feel this way. Prosecutors can educate them that freezing up is a normal response to the kind of trauma rape produces-- the rational mind disappears. Not everyone will freeze up, but some will, and it’s well within the normal bounds, so when a woman says she froze, her testimony should not be discounted.
“How many colleges are going to expel a student virtually wrecking their collegiate future when the student may not have even broken the law in that state? I would guess very few”
I would guess all of them. You can expel a student for skipping class. That’s perfectly legal.
I agree a rape exam of a video of drugging in process would be solid evidence. A contemporary text message maybe. A phone call may be less solid unless it was recorded.
I also think that police are more experienced and competent in gathering evidence than colleges. Another reason that favors reporting sexual assault to the police. The college may not have had access to that video or those phone records.
But what I’m talking about are cases in which the accuser didn’t request a rape exam, didn’t go to police, maybe didn’t even talk to her friends or family about the incident. This seems to have been the situation in several of the cases brought by men who say they were wrongly accused. The accused claims that the accuser consented. In the case of threesomes, the other participants may collaborate that claim.
And the cases in which consent may have been given but was invalidated by alcohol or drugs are even more common. Yes, in some cases, intoxication while maybe not provable, is at least likely. John Doe v. Occidental is an example in which the accuser was seen by many witnesses acting very drunk.
But there are several others, like McLeod v. Duke, in which the accuser’s level of intoxication is not substantiated by witness accounts.
This case illustrates both disputed consent and disputed intoxication:
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Complaint-John-Doe-versus-University-of-California-Santa-Barbara-filed-2015-4-3.pdf
@momrath, another one:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/05/29/amherst/4t6JtKmaz7vlYSrQk5NDyJ/story.html#comments
My practice in this area is just exploding – I’ve heard from 5 new families in the last 10 days. I think a lot of the decisions are handed down at the end of the semester, so they’re calling me when they’re certain the student isn’t going back. They’re coming from different types of universities (public/private, small/large, highly selective/average, conservative/liberal in reputation) in different regions of the country, but the stories are similar.
Hanna, that your practice is exploding means that more students are being expelled from their colleges for sexual offenses, right? It tells us nothing about whether those expulsions are justified. If I understand correctly, students who were justifiably expelled might use your services.
I think the thing is, every other kind of assault is considered non-consensual automatically - you don’t allow someone to punch you in the face or cut your hand with a knife. The fact that sex has to be consensual or it goes from voluntary behavior that adults engage in to a crime makes it different.
Many assaults are not reported. It is considered whether the assault results in temporary (a broken arm) or permanent (a chopped off finger) injury. It is considered if the two people were “fighting” “50-50”. It is inoften that it is considered whether the person has traumatic memories of the incident, let alone PTSD symptoms. Do you think you would have traumatic memories of someone breaking your arm? But yeah, your arm is broken, so that is “proof”, but if there were no witnesses (and some sexual assaults lack DNA evidence, and not getting a rape kit done is “suspicious” of being a victim or not), who is to say that the accused did break your arm, even if you were seen entering a room with them and they were seen leaving before you reported your broken arm?
I think the monkey wrench in the whole “he said, she said” aspect of rape is that DNA testing can prove that people did have sex, so no longer can you say “I don’t know, maybe it was some other guy”.
More than that rhandco…colleges and universities can expel students with absolutely no criminal trial and no due process. Only the wealthy can fight back (if they even want to) with injunctions to stop the expulsion or breach of contract suits or whatnot. But what’s the kid to do that has been perhaps falsely stripped of his college education and a big black mark on what could be a pretty decent transcript? The kid who maybe did forcibly rape someone has a whole different situation since he’s lucky he’s not in jail, but a naive guy who ends up in bed with a naive girl who regrets the evening or the guy who does something that ticks off the girl so she’s going after him 'cause she doesn’t want to see his face anymore can be in a really tough spot and may not even find a college equal to the one he’s at not to mention, shudder, what happens to his financial aid.
Cardinal Fang, it shows that the families of male students want to fight back. These families will go to those law firms who have experience in this area and have them represent them in a court of law instead of an administrative process where the accused may not have an opportunity to properly defend themselves.
Students who were also not justifiably expelled might use the service.
Actually, people do this all the time. You’re supposed to stop punching when the other person says, “No mas.”