If your student has been unjustly accused there is plenty a parent can do. The first step is to hire a lawyer and hold the colleges feet to the fire. They cannot be arbitrary and capricious, they must follow their own published rules, if it is a public university they have due process obligations. And that is just the beginning. A request for a stay can be filed if the college takes action prior to investigation. I’m sure there are other steps also but I am getting tired.
Given that I didn’t say incapacitated (for which there is no objective standard) and said drunk instead, of course you are not with me. You can’t be with me if you choose to put words in my mouth that I didn’t say. It’s called arguing with a strawman.
Mom12345, You are not answering my question when you refuse to answer it by claiming that it is irrelevant.
@momofthreeboys do not confuse public university due process obligations with due process required in criminal procedures:
See: https://conduct.wsu.edu/media/1330/parents-guide-to-the-student-conduct-process.pdf. Here’s an excerpt from Washington State University conduct procedure .pdf:
“The courts have consistently stated that even where a student is facing
expulsion from the institution, the process that is due need not be as elaborate as the process that
would be due in a criminal hearing. Thus, students facing disciplinary action from their institution
generally are not entitled to have an attorney represent them, to cross-examine witnesses or have an
appeal unless the institution’s conduct code allows for these procedures.”
In other words: Students accused of conduct violations do not face prison time and criminal repercussions. They face suspension, expulsion, etc. These conduct based repercussions are obv. not as severe as criminal consequences thus the due process required for conduct violations should not be compared to the due process required in criminal proceedings.
I am sure college women and their parents would love the lack of due process if and when men start to file claims of sexual assault against them.
All students (male/female/trans/ etc.) need to respect personal boundaries of classmates. They also need to follow the conduct standards imposed by the university. Got a problem with that @JohnDoe4? Don’t attend.
JohnDoe4, why are you talking about having sex with a drunk person as if anyone here says that having sex with a drunk person should be punished by colleges? Nobody here says that. Moreover, I don’t know of any colleges that assert that it is an offense to have sex with a drunk person, and if you do, you haven’t named such a college. Therefore, your talk about drunk sex is a strawman argument.
I hope that students do not waste their colleges’ time with false accusations that someone had sex with them when they were incapacitated, when in fact they were merely drunk, but not incapacitated. And I hope that you don’t continue to waste our time with strawman arguments about drunk sex.
Mom12345 it seems that many colleges have failed to follow their own guidelines. Since not all accused or accusers can afford to hire lawyers it is impossible to ascertain how many cases have been botched. That would hold true for the accusers and the accused. My gut tells me the colleges are probably not doing a good job in general. To tell someone to simply enroll elsewhere is a rather weak response as there could be a multitude of reasons why that may not be possible with the two most obvious reasons being financial and the year status of the student, say a senior or even a second semester junior for instance.
It’s almost the start of the work week for me, so I will move on and see you fine ladies and gentlemen on this same topic, same place, same time, next weekend.
I will leave you with what I think a true feminist should advocate for.
- No special rules for men or women, treat both the same
- In the case of relationship disputes don’t trust one over the other because of their gender
- Realize that by the letter of the law both rape the other gender all the time in college campuses when it comes to drunk sex
- Realize that sexist social expectations are such that women are more likely to feel and men more likely to deny that they were taken advantage of sexually
- Work to even out the playing field so that sex is not looked upon as something women give and men take
I would also leave you with that I think a civil society should advocate in the case of accusations
- Independent judiciary
- Legal representation
- Strict procedural standards
- Strict evidentiary standards
- Presumption of innocence
If you disagree with the above, more power to you, but you are neither a feminist nor a champion of civil society in that case.
Mom12345, I promise to you upon my honor that I will never attend college again. One time 3 decades back was good enough for me. Happy?
@momofthreeboys Civil suits against universities seem to be resulting in a fair amount of dismissals. Judges don’t seem to be buying the accused being unfairly treated due to gender mantra. If the universities were actually botching all these cases, do you think the court outcomes would turn out differently?
I remember someone on this forum (hmmm, I wonder who) who argued at length about how
- BAC doesn’t matter
- different people can get incapacitated at various levels of alcohol intake
- material facts (like a rape kit done immediately) are not important
- the women can complain a year down the line that she was incapacitated
- if a woman is slurring and vomiting then she is incapacitated, and
- the tribunals should take her at face value
I wonder who it was.
Women have been claiming rape and colleges have been kicking out mean based on those claims when there was no objective proof that such women were indeed incapacitated. So yes, I think incapacitation is the strawman, and not drunk sex.
Anyway, perhaps you should ponder how the law and precedence is a slippery slope, and what’s good for the goose today may be good for the gander tmrw. Men can come and claim rape, too, if women want to dump them. After all, who knows what happened several months back? It’s he said she said.
Talk about creating a poisonous environment. All this could have been so easily avoided if we just let go of current societies puritanical attitude toward sex (something done by men that women have to endure) and encouraged young women to enjoy NSA toe curling sex instead.
Can you please define fair amount in percentage terms and then provide examples?
I assuming that was said in jest.
Alas, Harvestmoon, but I was serious. Have you ever seen any men complain about women forcing them to have sex? It is always women who are complaining about having to have sex under duress.
How many rape cases are brought by men when both the men and women are equally drunk? It’s a product of social conditioning. Women are conditioned to think that they were taken advantage of in such a situation while men are conditioned to think that they “got lucky”.
Truth, though, is that they both just had sex, a basic physical act, nothing more or less.
So, if your daughter gets kicked out of college because she had sex with a boy who was drunk and claimed to be incapacitated, and I were to come and ask you, hey, I heard she is a rapist who had to be thrown out of campus because the men were terrorized by her, what would you say?
@johndoe4 … 5 in the past year according to: http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/list-of-lawsuits-against-colleges-and-universities-alleging-due-process-violations-in-adjudicating-sexual-assault/
Mom12345, so 5 out 73 is a fair number? What about the ones that got settled in favor of the plaintiff? That number is higher than 5. That doesn’t matter, eh? Just accentuate the negative?
What needs to happen is a class action lawsuit against the OCR. Does anyone know if one such is in the works? It would be a fun one for sure!
I have to say I find that line of reasoning completely unpersuasive. I bet that if every student read every detail of any college’s handbook, they would find something they disagree with in principle. And while it certainly isn’t the same thing exactly, it is a bit like people that tell others that disagree with a law in this country “Don’t like it? Go live somewhere else!”. With something as large and complex as a university, there will always be things that one might think needs to be improved/changed. Make that something a highly controversial topic like this, and you can bet that there will always be divisions among the students (and faculty and administration) as to what the right thing to do is. For this topic, for many people it would be hard to find a university that would be acceptable, since right now it is the Feds that are mandating much of the rules and procedures. There are still differences from school to school for sure, but I find your response glib and dismissive and without really offering a meaningful avenue for progress.
If you read through them, several were settled out of court, several are old, and several are pending. Those 5 were recently decided upon by judges. You can make what you want out of the stats.