I suspect that part of the reason that men can more easily shrug off drunk sex (i.e. now rape) is due to anatomy. During rape, a woman is violated internally, whereas a man is not. Most men will shrug it off as due to beer goggles even if he was wasted and the woman was the aggressor.
But the new rules just created a prisoner’s dilemma. The man is best off complaining rather than take the chance the woman will complain first. The system encorages an escalation of potentially ruinous charges.
I suspect that part of the reason that men can more easily shrug off drunk sex (i.e. now rape) is due to anatomy. During rape, a woman is violated internally, whereas a man is not. Most men will shrug it off as due to beer goggles even if he was wasted and the woman was the aggressor.
But the new rules just created a prisoner’s dilemma. It is best if nobody complains, but otherwise the man is best off complaining first rather than take the chance the woman will complain first. The system encorages an escalation of potentially ruinous charges.
Given your work in this area, surely you have an opinion.
What wake-up call are you referring to @momofthreeboys? You have been saying this for as long as I have been on this forum. Colleges will continue to adjudicate sexual assault – that is not going to change. And every time a male student is disciplined you will cry foul.
I think as far as sexual harassment and assault is concerned a literal tidal wave has just hit our social consciousness. I see nothing but support for the women who have spoken out and a lot of these men have issued apologies and/or lost lucrative employment. So yes, it is a real issue on a national level despite your efforts to minimize campus assault as “sex in many flavors.” You are entitled to your standards and other women are entitled to theirs.
ETA: And as an aside you should go back and review your posts on the Boermeester thread. Talk about making accusations with no basis in fact and with little or no information. Isn’t that what you accuse colleges and women of doing?
Hegebege - the Yale data can also be helpful. They break down complainants by gender. While women are in the majority there is no shortage of complaints by male students being processed.
I think they got a wake-up call around process. I still think that the college should back away in the Boermeester case. I don’t think colleges should be able to adjudicate without an accuser and she says he’s not abusing her…so it is my opinion that the college should back off, give him his diploma and let those two sort out their own personal issues. I’m pretty sure I stated all along that the college should back off and if she says nothing happened then they should let it go. If she’s being abused then I hope she wakes up someday and extricates herself, but for the university to interject themselves into the situation and punish him doesn’t fly with me I think Yale is wrong too, adjudicating that case with no accuser. It’s a slippery slope when a third party interjects itself into private sex lives and not one I can get behind outside out legal system. Police answer domestic calls all the time. About as I far as I’m willing to go with personal freedoms is if another party wants to report abuse, then the college should flip that to the police as a mandatory reporter and let the police go do a welfare check which is what should have happened in the Booermeester cae in my opinion, but for a university to dive into two people’s personal lives and then withhold a diploma…I just can’t go there.
^The Yale data shows about 5-6% of complaints involving male complainants and female respondents.
“Not sure how posters can contend the rules are applied unevenly without at least some evidence of that being the case.”
You contend that they are applied evenly without any evidence. But I am not contending that they are applied unevenly; I’m contending that we don’t know.
It’s a small percentage but after 7 years, but not a surprise to me that there are some. I should have mentioned responding to Harvestmoon that it’s obviously no secret that I’m pretty much a textbook libertarian.
momofthreeboys, have you read USC’s filing in response to the Boermeester lawsuit? It is not so easy to find among the news reports, but here is the link:
http://www.ocregister.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/boermeester-aa1.pdf
When one person pushes another person’s head against a concrete wall, that is not just rough-housing. That’s not a “personal issue” for two people to sort out. You should especially read pages 3 to 5 of USC’s statement about what happened, and the background of earlier concerns about “Jane Roe’s” safety. But you should read the whole thing, to see what procedures were actually followed and what the evidence was. This case was misrepresented in the early press on it, in my opinion.
My evidence is that there are male complainants who have had their complaints processed. In the case we discussed on this forum the woman was then expelled. I have read of no instances where men were turned away from Title IX offices. And in this environment that would be splashed crossed the press in a nano second.
So to those posters who contend the schools are not processing complaints when men report they are too drunk to consent can you cite examples of these cases?
@momofthreeboys if you do not understand why colleges have to respond to cases like Boermeester, I can’t help you. And by the way the college was not interjecting itself into their sex lives, this man was beating up on this woman. You can call the shots on who enters your home and interacts with your family, but you don’t get to do that outside your own environment. You don’t get to make that call when it affects other peoples’ family members who are attending that college.
I
Here are a few cases I found where a man filed a title ix case against a woman:
Woman admits in the college hearing an attempted sexual act on the man without his expressed consent; Drake declines to investigate.
The woman claims assault, the school finds in the man’s favor, the woman puts him on a list of rapists, the man files a Title IX harassment complaint which is not heard.
Man and woman accuse each other of assault within a week of the incident. Both say there was drinking and no consent. Man was found guilty and suspended. “The panel slapped on a second guilty finding against Doe. It found that the male student accused the female student of sexual assault as “a tactical maneuver and in bad faith.” The panel said the male student, in claiming that Roe had initiated sex without his affirmative consent, had put Roe “through the proverbial wringer” and that it constituted retaliation, prohibited by Cornell policy. Doe said he filed the allegedly retaliatory complaint on the advice of his lawyer after he discovered Cornell’s definition of sexual assault.”
Note: I am not here putting forth whether the accused are guilty or not, or whether these cases have merit-- merely posting because there was some discussion of what happens when a man files a title ix complaint against a woman.
As I understand the legal system, the professional responsibility of an attorney is for adversarial advocacy, not for justice. The theory seems to be that truth will emerge from effective advocacy for the opposing sides. Personally, I don’t think this is the best approach that people have for getting at the truth.
But in any event, experience tends to show that hearing from one side’s advocates doesn’t tell you very much. The Boermeester suit is a case in point. Initial press coverage was quite different from what has eventually emerged.
Not saying that the cases mentioned by bearpanther are necessarily just. But findings “in favor” of an accused mean that the burden of proof was not met, and not more than that. The panel in the Doe-Cornell case may have been right in its judgment. We don’t know.
“If she’s being abused then I hope she wakes up someday and extricates herself, but for the university to interject themselves into the situation and punish him doesn’t fly with me”
I didn’t follow the Boermeester thread here on CC so not sure what all was said there but reading the report posted above in #171, I think of the Yeardley Love/George Huguely travesty. How could USC get a report of Boermeester’s aggression and not deal with it like they have? What if things had escalated further? You don’t need a cooperative victim to know what happened was wrong and dangerous. Thank goodness for the “good guys” who do react in these situations, Brock Turner, Boermeester, etc.
I am never going to be a fan of institutional or governmental intervention into personal matters. Heck I chaff at the fact that our local governments determine how far apart the spindles have to be on my deck railings in the house we own on the land we own and force me to comply so you will never get me say that was in the public interest for the uni to insert themselves uninvited.
So why do colleges even want to deal with these issues? Why do they wish to handle them? What is the advantage? It seems to me that the best course of action would be to just call the local police and have them handle it. Why is a college campus different than a housing project? If a criminal act happened then the police should be involved. Why is sex crimes different and carved out for special treatment as opposed to a murder?
Because there are a lot more “sex crimes” and a lot more not-quite-criminal sex incidents than there are murders, because the police, prosecutors, and courts have a terrible record dealing with them, and because they are not equally distributed between men and women. Overwhelmingly, women are the victims, and that demonstrably interferes with their equal access to educational opportunity.
Or so the theory goes. And I believe it, as long as you are dealing with the kind of incidents that constitute victimization of someone. The Boermeester case actually has little or nothing to do with sex. That wasn’t sexual assault; it was assault-assault. That’s the kind of incident that government has always intervened in, at least when the parties weren’t married. (It used to be thought OK for men to beat their wives, so police wouldn’t intervene when that happened. That hasn’t been the case for 40-50 years, though.) I doubt even @momofthreeboys objects to a college expelling a student who doles out beatings to other students. And, by extension, same thing if the student is doling out rapings to other students. As long as you have a clear idea what that means.
Colleges are dealing with this because Title IX (20 USC 1681, et seq) has been interpreted as requiring colleges to provide a non hostile environment for their students. Much of the uproar seen currently is a result of the previous administration’s rather robust reading of what Tile IX requires of schools and the current administration’s decision to roll back some of that guidance and initiate the administrative rule making process to perhaps better define what is required in this context.
The cynic in me says that most college administrators, as distinct from advocates hired by colleges, don’t want to be in the middle of these issues. It is really a no win situation for the schools. First, many of these cases highlight underage drinking/drug taking, which is not a good look for schools generally. Second, and as can be seen from these many threads, there are those who have a high propensity to believe anything said by a woman who feels she was wronged, and are thus likely to believe that what ever is done in this area is insufficient. There are others who feel this is all an example of political correctness gone mad, and are just as likely to disbelieve any findings from the tribunals. Still others believe the system that exists was poorly conceived and designed and that colleges are wholly unsuited for the task itself, making the whole thing is a complete mash up. So whatever the colleges do, everyone who pays them money, whether in tuition or through taxes, is going to be annoyed with the action the school takes. Not a great business plan.
Usually it is referred to as zealous advocacy, but yes a lawyer’s job is to be an advocate for his client within the rules that exist. Our legal system is built on the idea that the best available way to determine facts and reach a just result is through advocates being given the opportunity and the tools to test the evidence and assertions of the other side. This has been a hallmark of the western concept of the legal system for centuries, and the idea that truth is illuminated through questioning goes back to some dudes wearing togas and washing their sandals in the Aegean Sea a very long time ago.
So true. Can you imagine a system where someone accuses you of assaulting them 6 months to a year ago during sex…something, the sex, you both had done together several times…and you have a text message from them that following morning saying “had a great time kiss kiss let’s do it again soon” and that message is ignored by someone judging whether or not what is said about that night is accurate and you are about to be booted out of a college where you were super close to being graduated or you roommate happened to be in the top bunk and says nothing sounded amiss but that gets ignored?.. legal counsel or any sane person would say wait a minute here, what was really going on. To not allow that challenge, to ignore exculpatory evidence is lunacy run amuck The person who is being accused is in shock, in disbelief and probably totally freaked out and probably not in any shape to be mounting their own defense, and even more so when their questions get ignored and they can’t present any defense…the lawyer is there to keep the eye on the ball, and take care of the details. If, and I don’t think unis should be doing this at all, the system is going to stay the way it is with suspension and expulsion as a potential outcome, absolutely there better be zealous advocacy for someone accused. The accuser has the full weight of the uni behind them these days. These cases that actually get to the adjudicative state when they were clearly so grossly unfair are a much smaller portion of total reports, so I have to scratch my head and wonder how sometimes the unis even got themselves in these liability positions but the fact that they could and they did needs to be addressed…and it is thankfully.