In terms of costs, there have been studies showing that athletics bring money and prestige to colleges. Sports, even non revenue sports, generate revenue indirectly by virtue of making colleges desirable to applicants (“school spirit”), providing a reason for alumni to return to campus, and attracting alumni donations. Cutting athletics is not a measure that is likely to help the college budget in the short or long term; it is more likely that such a measure would ultimately hurt the school from both in revenue and prestige.
But, this discussion is getting a little far afield.
I don’t see how these college pseudo-tribunals are protecting our sons and daughters. As you point out, sometimes the perpetrator can avoid punishment altogether if the victim does not report him to the real authorities.
I think its far more likely our kids will be protected if they file real police reports and go through a true evidentiary procedure, with due process in place to protect all sides, like Labrie’s accuser did.
@cardinal fang, I am not saying being falsely accused of financial fraud is better or worse than being falsely accused of rape and evicted from campus. I’m saying that there is a remedy available to the former that can make him more whole than the remedy that is available to the latter.
That turns out to be no protection at all. Labrie, you will recall, was not convicted of the rape charge. He was convicted of having sex with an underage girl. College women are not underage, so they cannot accuse their rapists of having sex with underage girls. They can try to accuse their rapists of rape, but the police will blow them off, or the prosecutors will decline to prosecute.
How many women get raped by acquaintances? How many men get convicted of acquaintance rape? The first number is at least two orders of magnitude bigger (100x) than the second number.
Saying that a woman raped by an acquaintance has no recourse except to go to the police and file a complaint is the same as saying she has no recourse at all.
“Our kids” will not be protected by elimination of college tribunals unless we happen to be the mothers and fathers of rapists. Eliminating college tribunals is a way to protect rapists.
@prospect1 Yeah, sure. The accuser in the Labrie case said she now understood why victims didn’t come forward. Are you aware that during the trial there were at least 4 separate occasions when live streams of the trial included the victim’s name?
Maybe I shoudn’t post this, but…in the sentencing proceeding, Carney gave a smile—to me, a smirk–and said he would refer to the accuser by her initials. So, just in case anyone doubted that (s)he had put together the pieces of the puzzle correctly to arrive at the accuser’s ID, well, now Carney let us know we had.
Know what? The same thing happened in the Steubenviille case. I read “responsible” media. But, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the NY Times, while protecting the privacy of the victim…yeah right…gave so many hints that this not so internet savvy grandma figured out the victim’s identity in less than half an hour. The hacker group Anoymous confirmed her name for me—because nobody should be ashamed of having been sexually assaulted.
In his victim’s impact statement in the Labrie case, her dad said photos of her 9 year old sister were posted on line. I saw posts with her address and photos of her home. I saw photos of her sister with vile comments about her posted on line. Yes, this family is wealthy. Do you think most families are wealthy enough to hire security to protect them?
Well, @cardinal fang, I think we have to presume that the jury got it right with Labrie, and that he did not deserve to be convicted of felony rape after hearing and seeing all of the evidence, which you and I were not privy to.
Actually, the Labrie case is a good example of police and prosecutors NOT blowing the girl off, even where the evidence ultimately WASN’T enough to gain a conviction on felony rape. She was taken very seriously, and I don’t think it’s only because she was underage. The prosecutors pushed the felony rape charges very hard, which had nothing to do with her being underage.
I don’t know if our police departments are that terrible. They weren’t for Labrie’s accuser. If they are that bad, then let’s work on fixing our police departments. Also, let’s remember that the vast majority of young women in this country are not on a college campus and face acquaintance rape all the time, and don’t have access to college tribunals. Aren’t our resources best spent beefing up public police departments which are available to all of our young people?
You are presuming that college tribunals overwhelmingly protect the accusers. Someone up above commented that they more frequently protect the wealthy white males. I don’t think they protect anybody. There was an interesting documentary produced a few years ago about an entire movement of young women protesting how these college tribunals paid little or no attention to their complaints. Fact is, I think these educators have better things to do with their training and have little interest/no experience/no qualifications in dealing with these complaints, and therefore they end up being lousy at this.
@jonri, the Labrie case was a terrible thing for that victim; I don’t think (I HOPE) that anybody here wishes she did not have to go through with this ordeal. I still don’t see how this discussion of college tribunals would have helped her; the Columbia mattress girl got no better treatment from Columbia.
Because it is very, very rare for acquaintance rape cases to be criminally prosecuted because of the difficulty of convincing a jury beyond a reasonable doubt in a he said/ she said situation, for one. Prosecutors wisely exercise prosecutorial discretion and decline to file charges when they know they can’t get a conviction.
And, even if a defendant is acquitted, that does not resolve the administrative issue of whether he should be expelled from school, especially where a lower standard of proof applies.
Moreover, the Title IX policies at most schools are broader than the criminal rape laws. The elements of the offenses are different. There are a zillion reasons that schools need to hold administrative disciplinary hearings for sexual misconduct and can’t just rely on the criminal justice system to resolve the issues.
You are not seriously suggesting that the only students who should be expelled, suspended or otherwise disciplined by schools for sexual misconduct offenses are those who have bern criminally convicted, are you?
(Also, after giving it two minutes more thought, I don’t think a federal agency should be adjudicating these displinary issues either. But I do like the idea of a college and university funded third party provider whom the schools could hire to investigate and adjudicate these matters.)
Re momofthreeboys #1298: This post asks why we need anything in addition to the police and the criminal courts, to handle cases of rape on campus. The answer, as I see it, is that in the criminal courts, one must adhere to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This needs to be kept unchanged. It is part of the foundation of our justice system, as you and others have noted. I have been unwavering in my support of it.’
The issue that troubles me deeply is that there are cases in which the man and woman know each other, and the act takes place in private. Although one could establish that intercourse occurred (with a rape kit), I do not see any way that the standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” can be overcome, particularly if the victim is in shock after the attack. In my experience, these cases rarely lead to prosecution. It is rare for a college victim to be underage.
I don’t know whether a TRO can bar a student from a class in which he is enrolled and for which he has paid, if the two happen to be in some of the same classes. Perhaps one of the lawyers could clarify?
Finally, with regard to the university as a locale for complaints: It is my opinion that experienced faculty members might be better judges of whether someone is telling the truth than people who don’t work in a university might think. It is true that this is limited to academic matters (missing an exam, needing a postponement of an exam, missing problem sets, needing to reschedule the final . . . ), and perhaps it is not generalizable.
I don’t have any idea whether the reporting today on Canon City High School is accurate, but investigators are encouraging students to turn over cell phones while prosecutors are saying convictions will be for a class c felony and may necessitate registering as a sex offender. Police are saying hundreds of students might be involved. College counselors at Canon City HS are going to have their hands full.
Where’s the beef with the Canon City story? The article I read said that students were sending other students unsolicited nude photos, and asking other students to send nude photos, and making collections of nude photos. That seems creepy, but I haven’t yet seen any allegations that any student had a photo that the pictured student didn’t want them to have.
I’m opposed to sex offender registries in general, but in this particular case, I’m not even seeing why prosecutors would want to accuse these students of crimes.
If students are circulating nude pictures of their exes or others, without permission, that’s a different story. So far I’ve not seen allegations of that.
The issue is kiddie porn. Sharing nude pics of minors can very easily run afoul of distribution of child porn laws. It’s also more problematic if some students were adults i.e. over the age of 18 and in possession of and distribution of child porn to others. Of course not all nude pics are porn but it becomes a legal battle.
Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and the prosecutor won’t try to over prosecute youthful indiscretions but get the point across that the law protects minors even from themselves.
I may be completely wrong but as I understand it pictures of any nude parts of children under 18 constitutes child pornography whether or not participants are “willingly” engaged, and likewise using computers/hand held devices to send/receive the pornographic images opens up additional charges (circulating child pornography via the internet).
"I don’t know whether a TRO can bar a student from a class in which he is enrolled and for which he has paid, if the two happen to be in some of the same classes. Perhaps one of the lawyers could clarify?
Yes, either a university or government TRO can do this.
Yeah, it’s technically child pornography, but usually the authorities use this law to go after someone that they think has done something wrong. So far I haven’t seen any stories from some kid saying, “So-and-so had a naked picture of me on his phone, and I didn’t want him to have it.” I guess those stories will happen, but I’m surprised that so far there haven’t been any alleged victims.
I am having a hard time seeing how the sex offender registry applies here as well. So if a minor willingly sends a nude photo of themselves to another person without that person soliciting it from them, the person receiving it can be accused of being a sex offender? Or of being in possession of underage pornography?
As long as that transmission was autonomous and unsolicited I don’t see how the recipient can be accused of being a sex offender. I think that the authorities are going to focus in on whether or not there was in fact “solicitation.” My best bet is that this was something a group of students were doing, it spread like wildfire around the school and students did it to be “included.”
Sending someone a-- how are we allowed to describe this here?-- an unsolicited picture of your male organ is creepy and disgusting, but I don’t see that child pornography laws are the way to attack that. Harassment seems like the applicable law in such cases.
I can see a potential problem if an 18 year old senior was actually soliciting middle schoolers or other minors to send him/her nude pictures of themselves.
Here’s the problem with just brushing it all under the rug. If this had just been a couple kids then they would have gotten punished with something. Just because it’s a lot of kids doesn’t mean that they are all “innocent” and none of them should be punished. Sure I can see not punishing the 12 year old kids . But hey by the time you are 16-18 then you know better.
There have been kids here that have been punished for sending nude pictures to their GF/BF’s the parent find out and then yep they end up with a record. So even if they ask for pictures to be sent they shouldn’t do it.