As a Bucknell alum, I would be shocked if two deans heard a man admit to raping a woman and then clammed up about it. Were that my daughter, I would have advised her to report the admission to the police and then see if the deans were willing to lie to the cops. I was there well before 2003, but I can’t even conceive that two college deans at any point in the last forty years would ignore a clear admission of rape. Now maybe the admission was something short of that, and the female student felt that what the guy admitted to should have proved he raped her, that maybe is a different kinda issue.
I think mediation can be useful in cases where the issue is level of consent, intoxication, thing of that nature. I think it can help two students come to grips with the consequences of their actions in a fuzzy situation. I say that because of an experience of a female family member in her college’s disciplinary proceeding a dozen years ago. She got into one of those grey area situations, allowed a professor to convince her later it was sexual assault and to file a complaint. The resulting investigation/hearing was messy and painful, and really didn’t resolve anything. Maybe being able to talk through things frankly in a controlled setting would have helped her get closure on the situation in a less painful way.
Mediation is not the right right vehicle for someone seeking vindication or in a situation where there is a stark disagreement in the facts.
Perhaps in some ways that is a trade-off that women make when they decide not to pursue criminal charges and colleges make when they decide it’s OK themselves to adjudicate felonious crimes like any other honor code violation. If the woman decides it’s not a crime and wants to keep things “confidential” and not press charges, then mediation can be appropriate. If the college decides it’s no worse than an honor code violation and doesn’t want to call in the police to investigate then I have no problem with mediation. We don’t have parallel criminal systems here…we have criminal and we have not-criminal systems.
I think it happened more than we might like to admit. See below link. These statements were of course made before the whole Rolling Stone fiasco. In the Heyman case, there was not even a suspension.
I’m not so surprised. The deans had promised confidentiality, and might feel that they couldn’t betray him. If he admitted to raping her, but without using the word “rape,” the deans might have “forgotten” what he said. A lot of guys, mysteriously, make a distinction between “forcing someone to have sex against their will” and “raping.”
The interview with Eramo is [url=https://vimeo.com/user20932862/review/112529177/b57f3948c3]here.[/url] The relevant section starts a little after 11:30. The reporter asks, if the standard of proof for sexual misconduct is lower than the standard for other honor violations, why more cases don’t end in expulsion. Eramo replies that if the board is only 51% certain that the accused person committed the offense, they would be unwilling to expel and would give a lesser punishment instead. The reporter says that she has heard that in some cases in the proceedings the accused person admits guilt (and therefore the board wouldn’t doubt that the person was guilty). Eramo says that if a student admits guilt:
Note, then, that Eramo made the above remark in the context of why there weren’t more expulsions. She was responding to the series of questions about what the reporter seemed to believe were light punishments for expulsion-worthy offenses.
i finished reading Missoula. The book is about college student assaults in that town.
I read that women should go to the police. Reading how the police, prosecuters and the public treats rape victims, why should our daughters go to the police? 3 percent of rape victims are convicted? The women are going to go through a physical assault if they agree to a rape kit. Women are going to be scrutunized, dehumanized, lied about, and have to relive their trauma in graphic detail. Photos or videos of Women’s private parts are going to be shown to strangers.
All this is going to be done with a very small conviction rate.
One thing interesting in the book is the University of Montana did a better job gathering evidence than the police… At least in chapter 8.
I think you mean 3% of rapists are convicted. And I think that statistic lumps all incidences of sexual assault together, regardless of whether the assault rises to the definitional level of rape or whether it is reported to the police or not. While the statistics for prosecution and conviction of cases of reported rape are still lower than most felonies (I believe they hover around 50% for each) that is a phenomena that travels through all domestic abuse/sexual abuse crimes. Much of that is caused by the complaining witness not cooperating, many times on the very eve of trial. I have a colleague who is a criminal prosecutor, and he tells me he has a stock speech he delivers to a female victim who decides on the eve of trial that she does not want to cooperate with the prosecution. He tells me that at least once a year for most of his career handling felony cases he has had a victim refuse to cooperate on the day of trial, which essentially results in the dismissal of the case.
I think it is important to resort to the criminal justice system when there is a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed. If victims of sexual assault do not give the police and the local prosecutors the opportunity to do their jobs, then there is no real hope of things getting better.
When you assert statistics like this, it’s good to give cites. Your numbers do not agree with any numbers I have seen.
In the particular case of Missoula, according to Krakauer, nothing close to 25% of rape accusations brought to the police ended up in convictions.
Yes, and if the police and local prosecutors don’t do their jobs and give the victims the opportunity to get justice, if they instead dismiss accusations without investigating (like they do in Missoula, like they did at Florida State), then there is also no real hope of things getting better.
OK, I listened to the video, or at least the section highlighted by @cardinalfang (I started about 10:30 and listened until after the why do an investigation questions. The discussion centers specifically on “violations of the policy” as identified by the interviewee, and “admission of sexual misconduct” as identified by the interviewor. Bucknell’s current Sexual Misconduct policy provides that the following are violations:
Assuming that the policy is the same or similar to what was in place in the early 2000s, while some of these things are certainly bad, the vast majority of defined acts are not rape or even sexual assault (assuming the standard definition that sexual assault is non consensual sex. Add force or the threat of force and sexual assault becomes rape.) Note too that if this policy were in place at Columbia, a very compelling argument can be made that Emma is guilty of sexual misconduct towards Paul. Is anyone willing to argue that Emma is raping Paul?
Reporter: How many students report sexual assault each year?
Eramo: <gives numbers=“” of=“” students=“” who=“” make=“” informal=“” reports,=“” how=“” many=“” formal=“” reports=“”>
Reporter: How come nobody was expelled, even though students get expelled for plagiarism?
Eramo: If the committee was only 51% sure of their verdict they were reluctant to expel.
Reporter: But some of the offenders admitted they did it!
Eramo: If someone admits they did it, that shows remorse and we should reduce their sentence.
In other words, Eramo was answering the question about why nobody got expelled for sexual assault. This entire discussion was in the context of sexual assault, not lesser offenses.
Not to sound mean, but I love the quote about how reliance on rape myths may at least be partially based on experiences in trying real cases. God, I love theoreticians!
I am sure I could find more. But given that both of these sources are assumedly entities not easily cast as members of the He Man Women Haters club, I would think it is sufficient.
That may be the way the author wrote the article, and the intent of the piece, but those were not the words that were used by the interviewee. If we are going to charge people with the consequence of their statements, then we should hold them to what they actually said.
There is a prosecuter in Missoula who said she won 99 percent of the time. What she doesn’t mention is she didn’t pursue 90 percent of the cases.
It’s great that the prosecuter won 99 percent of her cases but if she threw 90 percent of the cases in the garbage…
Because Jameis Winston was in the news, there was a story in the NY Times about Florida State and Tallahasse. There were 56 women who went to the police and prosecuters prosecuted 2 cases. 2 out of 56. If the prosecuters won one case, they are successful 50 percent of the time.
I am over age 53 so I am past my peak. I may be slightly off on these numbers. Doesn’t matter. I will give Tallahasse prosecuters the benefit of the doubt. I will say they won both cases and instead of 56 cases, there were 50. So 4 percent of the women win.
Women are often discouraged from seeking criminal charges by attorneys. We can see why. We can see why women don’t go to the police.
Pressing criminal charges is a terrible ordeal and the odds of winning are low. The odds of winning a case are not 50 percent.
If there was a confession or a video, I can see going through the criminal court system.
Just speaking about Missioula… I think the police are going to do a better job going forward. That reasonable doubt barrier is tough. I am not so sure about this prosecuter.
@Ohiodad51 but we know the charge in the Heyman case was actually a rape allegation. She claims a confession was made and because of the nature of the proceeding the boy was free to return to classes with just an apology. My point with the video was to portray an actual deans “take” on how remorse/apology should be weighed. Pretty heavily with that one particular dean in view of the fact that there has NEVER been an expulsion for sexual misconduct on that particular campus. And she acknowledges she has heard admissions of guilt in the informal proceedings. So it is not all that surprising or shocking that a similar view might be held on other campuses around the country.
I will go back and view the video again but my recollection is that the interviewer on numerous occasions uses the term “sexual assault” so we know the context in which they are speaking.
Even I don’t win 99% of the time, hard as it is to believe.
The stats are what the stats are. They will get worse if people get the impression that there is no point in going to the cops. That is why I hate stories that what you are referring to with the Tallahassee police. If the NYT wants to use statistics, use the real numbers. If they want to make a point, hire people who can write well enough to make the point without sensationalizing it with useless stats.
And UVA apparently chose not to kick out students who admitted to violations of the Sexual Misconduct policy. But that is clearly different than saying UVA did not kick out rapists, or people guilty of Sexual Assault. I hate to be picayune, but I really think the problem of how to deal with sexual assault on campus or anywhere else will get dealt with is if we all agree to look at the actual problem head on with as little bias as we can muster.
