<p>My position on that case is that while the filed lawsuit is only explaining one side of the dispute, there’s enough serious allegations about the college’s lack of procedural due process, conflict of interest among those sitting in judgment at the judicial panel because the accuser’s father is a longtime faculty member, charges the judicial panel/procedures violated the college’s own bylaws, his being given very little time to prepare/conduct any defense…especially considering it is alleged in the filed suit the entire process from filing of charges within the college to trial to expulsion took just around 2 weeks, and more that it’s extremely troubling.</p>
<p>Troubling enough that while one shouldn’t take the plaintiff’s words at face value, one also cannot take the college’s word that everything they’re doing is “legally sound” is entirely/totally valid either. </p>
<p>Granted, my take on it is colored by the fact I have seen university faculty/admins screw up…as my HS friend’s experience with that math professor nearly 20 years ago indicates. </p>
<p>As with everyone else, being in a position of power at an institution like an elite college does not impart immunity from making serious mistakes…whether it’s that math Prof of my HS friend or more notorious cases in the news.</p>
<p>Dont know yet whether there is or is not merit to the case. People file lawsuits for all sorts of reasons, and of course put all their claims/accusations into the suit. Many may be skewed, exaggerated or completely without merit. One must wait and see. </p>
<p>Does not matter a whit what you have or have not seen second, third or umpteenth hand two decades ago. Your perspective is irrelevant to the litigation. To me, the bigger mistake that has gone on for years is the minimization of sexual assault and the demeaning way many women were treated. </p>
<p>However, there has to be a better way of solving those issues without undermining due process rights of the accused or employing procedures which won’t pass the conflict of interest test in an actual US court…like the faculty sitting in judgment considering the father of the accuser is a fellow faculty member himself and considering the size of the faculty/roles in college governance, is likely to have known them*. </p>
<ul>
<li>Judges who are found to even have passing acquaintance with one or both parties involved in a case before his/her court are usually expected to recuse themselves from the case to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest or bias in favor of one side or another. While some refuse, failure to do so gives the party disfavored by that conflict/bias strong grounds for appeal and possibly even bringing said judge up on ethics charges.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>As is yours. </p>
<p>My main point in citing my perspective and case is to illustrate that like the plaintiff, the college’s own story of their procedures/actions being “legally strong” may not be all it’s cracked up to be when subjected to scrutiny…especially if the judge(s) find there’s enough in the allegations to put those procedures/actions under close examination.</p>
<p>Hard for an entire faculty of a small college to recuse themselves in an internal institutional investigation where the parent of the victim happens to be a faculty member. Judges recusing themselves is only tangentially related. Again-- the facts of the case will come out later. Your personal opinion is irrelevant.</p>
<p>As irrelevant as your opinion here “Doubt Vassar would have kicked out a student without some reason to do so.”. </p>
<p>An opinion which presupposes that the college as an institution or its faculty/administration are immune from making mistakes or worse, making decisions on the basis of animus or for the sake of institutional expediency.</p>
<p>Read their policies and procedures. If they expelled a student they would have procedures to follow. Whether they followed them fairly or not remains to be seen. No one said they are immune form error. This remains to be seen.</p>
<p>That is one of the key questions. Especially considering the lawsuit alleges that the college and the faculty judicial panel violated some of those very procedures/bylaws.</p>
<p>Does not matter what the lawsuit alleges. If it is ultimately determined that they were not just, that will be sad. But one of us is unwilling to try them in the court of public opinion.</p>
<p>And it’s not me considering I have been showing skepticism of both sides since I started conversing on this relevant tangent posted by Beliavsky. </p>
<p>While I may not agree with him on a lot of things, this case has enough troubling allegations that I’m not willing to give the college an automatic assumption of good faith as you seem to be doing. </p>
<p>At this point, both sides are suspicious in light of the allegations and lack of transparent responses so far. This is one reason why it is better to try such cases in courts with third parties with ideally no interest/acquaintance with either or both sides.</p>
<p>But that isn’t how life works. What are you envisioning? “Sweetie, I love you and given our ages, education, and how long we have dated, our anticipated chance of divorce is only 10%. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I had two partners in serious relationships before I met you, which ups our anticipated chance of divorce to 15%. Still game?”</p>
<p>Only someone who isn’t right in the head would approach romance like this.</p>
<p>I have to agree with jym, but the caveat being that is why I do not think for one second these types of “judgement” calls belong with school administrators. </p>
<p>Coolweather, there are “bad” men and there are “bad” women. To say that the only “bad” people are men is missing the fact that there are women who do use the power they have, and I do believe women have power, to hurt men.</p>
<p>Some posters have asked why are all the articles always about the female’s behavior. Seems a legit question. I keep noticing the number of these articles that are written by females. I guess that articles about males don’t “sell” like those about females.</p>
<p>I think that the use of law suits against the colleges like the Vassar suit will become a significant way in which males can get a chance to shine the light on any procedures that are a railroad job. </p>
<p>I assume that everyone who wants the female to report to the police and the school when she views what happened as rape (or non-consensul sex) would be on board with the male who is not prosecuted, but is expelled, suing the school/girl when he feels that the school got it wrong. It would provide a check and balance where school administrators are making the decisions.</p>
<p>From a university too, a reknowned party school! </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So… doing the math, a woman has a 1 in 6 chance of being raped. A man has between a 1 in 100 to a 1 in 500 chance of being falsely accused of rape. Of course there should be a fair procedure for all sides but lets not lose sight of the forest for the trees.</p>
<p>eta: I’ve left a lot out of what was on that WVU page. It is very good and talks about many issues including “the red zone” which is the time between September and Thanksgiving when most of the rapes occur.</p>
<p>^^ Yes 07Dad, I agree. Be careful what you wish for would be my message to men and women. And yes, I assert that females should and have a right to report to the police and I also assume that a male has a right to representation or vice versa. I vociferously agree that if the courts are not involved and it’s college administrator making life changing judgements then it is foolish not to hire a lawyer whether you are male or female.</p>
<p>I did read carefully. I wasn’t sure whether you were willing to wait until the facts come out when you made statements like:</p>
<p>
in post #265</p>
<p>or </p>
<p>
in post #298.</p>
<p>Both of those statements could cause a reasonable person to assume you’re automatically assuming the veracity of the college’s account of things when there isn’t enough information at this point to establish the veracity of either side at this point. </p>
<p>No we haven’t gotten that cleared up.You seem to want to put words in my mouth that are incorrect. I do not think the school would take such a strong step, based on their policies and procedures, to expel a student without reasonable cause. But we will need to wait until the facts come out.</p>
<p>I also agree with momofthreeboys. There can be “bad” folks on both the accuser and the accused side. Whoever serves on the grievance/adjudication committees of colleges and universities have probably heard both sides more than once. Hopefully they carefully consider the allegations and other presenting information. And hopefully the school’s counsel is involve in some aspect of this process. That would seem appropriate.</p>
<p>If the entire process from the filing of grievance with the committee to the decision to expel took place within 2 weeks as alleged in the lawsuit, it begs the question as to how thorough and impartial the judicial committee were…especially considering there are also allegations the accused had exceedingly little time to prepare a defense and whatever evidence/information was presented was disregarded/disallowed by the committee. Not to mention the lawsuit alleges the accused wasn’t allowed to retain a representative/attorney for the defense. </p>
<p>Moreover, I wouldn’t be surprised that if this does go to trial, the plaintiff’s attorney and the judge end up asking the question “Why such a rush to expel in two weeks? Why not a suspension first with a possible expulsion later?”</p>