Steubenville

Parent Cafe
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<p>This statement is grossly misleading, to say the least. As the parent of a Dartmouth grad, who happens to be a thoughtful individual who both feels affection for his school and sees its flaws, I am fairly certain that while this “culture” is present, it is not PREVALENT. I’m sure that the same thing is true of many other schools. Because Amherst did not deal well with students who were sexually assaulted or raped does not mean that rape culture is <em>prevalent</em> on that campus, either. </p>

<p>Let’s not paint all, or even the majority of guys with the “rapist wannabee” brush, please. To do so is to diminish the culpability of those who commit these crimes. This is NOT a matter of “boys will be boys.” The majority of young men would never THINK of doing these things.</p>

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<p>Consolation, I guess “prevalent” is subjective. I would say the culture is more present at Dartmouth than at campuses less socially dominated by privileged men (and “privilege” can mean many things, not just wealth–being part of an esteemed sports team, being a member of the most popular fraternity, etc.) Is it the worst one? Not necessarily. But the Dartmouth culture does give parents and prospective students pause (see the cited thread, to which you contributed a few years ago). I would have equal concerns about Amherst, where a party was advertised last year with t-shirts and posters of a woman roasting on a spit, dressed only in her bra and underwear, while a pig stands contentedly smoking a cigar. The caption was something like “Roasting Fat Ones Since 1847.”</p>

<p>You are right–not all young men are “rapist wannabes.” But I would not want my daughter–or, for that matter, my son–in an environment where people with any sort of social clout think belittling women is funny or in any way acceptable…and where others apparently turn a blind eye to it.</p>

<p>[TheDartmouth.com:</a> Would I Let My Child Go to Dartmouth?](<a href=“http://thedartmouth.com/2012/05/04/mirror/mychild]TheDartmouth.com:”>http://thedartmouth.com/2012/05/04/mirror/mychild)</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/846794-women-sometimes-degraded-dartmouth.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/846794-women-sometimes-degraded-dartmouth.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>[Amherst</a> College: ?Roasting Fat Ones Since 1847? | AC VOICE](<a href=“http://acvoice.com/2012/10/08/amherst-college-roasting-fat-ones-since-1847/]Amherst”>http://acvoice.com/2012/10/08/amherst-college-roasting-fat-ones-since-1847/)</p>

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<p>UNC-CH is being investigated for this same rape issue by the DOJ, as is occidental, as is Yale. I don’t think this is an issue that is confined to a few campuses, and I don’t think it is fair to label Dartmouth and Amherst and Williams and whatnot. (I say this as a tarheel, so like Mini, I’m not only not afraid to call out my own, but I’m furious about it.)</p>

<p>Look, the problem stems from the institutionalized protecting of the criminals. We see this in this case. The adults and coach and powers that be immediately closed ranks to protect the boys. Fully 16 minors were allowed by their parents to refuse to talk to the police. Now, I would have wanted my kid to have an attorney, but she would have been cooperating with the investigation.</p>

<p>This rape culture comes from the top, from the attitude of, “Well, we don’t want to ruin the boys lives.” </p>

<p>I think, for a long time, we didn’t have any real narrative of what this kind of thing actually looks like, but now, because of social media we have a context and a story, and it is chilling, and I think it sets a new tone, less, “Let’s not ruin the boys lives over this” and more, “What the hell has happened to our young men?”</p>

<p>Well, what’s happened to this particular subset of young “men” on many, many campuses, is that they have been protected from the consequences of their actions. And, no, this girl should not have gotten that drunk, If she was not ruffied, which she may well have been ruffied based on her behavior, but the fact that the boys carried her out of the second party asleep? That’s a sick, sick thing.</p>

<p>And, now we SEE it. It’s good we see it. We’ve needed to see it for a very, very long time, now. We’ve needed to see the damage it does to these young “men” to continue to protect them from the smaller consequences of their actions, to not hold them accountable. They are not the first priveledged ones to end in prison, but I highly doubt this is the very first degrading incident they had with women.</p>

<p>I also want to say that one of the reasons there was so much social media around this is because, whether they realize it or not, they are ALL traumatized by this. They are slightly hysterical because it is not okay with them, in many ways, and they are trying to make it “okay” the way the mind does. That boy who is shown laughing is as upset as he is because he is upset. he just doesn’t even know that this is what he is feeling.</p>

<p>They are like soldiers in a war zone, trying to make it all right in their minds when it isn’t working for them. This is what trauma can look like, too.</p>

<p>In the end, though, whether it’s the young woman who was killed by her lacrosse boyfriend or this incident, in each of these cases we see a group of people in power attempting to protect the criminals until it is too late and they are beyond repair. and somebody, usually a young woman, but sometimes a hazed pledge, loses far more than an eye.</p>

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<p>Also, and I know I’ve gone on far too long, but we ask, “Where were the courageous bystanders?”</p>

<p>Well, based on the entire authority response, it was unspoken that the bystanders were not “allowed” to act. It’s easy to look at these kids and say, “Why did no one step up?”</p>

<p>But the answer to that question rests in the response of the coach and the school and the local police. I doubt, based on how open the kids were about this, that this was first thing. I’m positive they were all conditioned to keep their mouths shut when it was a football player. We see this in countries full of adults. They’ve been socialized this way.</p>

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<p>Eloquent post, poetgrl (#163). And I agree that there might be some of the “Kitty Genovese” effect happening when people observe something they know is wrong but become paralyzed by inaction. I do think there are differences, though, in TOLERANCE of generally offensive behavior, such as the Amherst t-shirts and speech/attitudes that degrade women (or minorities, or…). This is why the social order of campuses is something I pay a lot of attention to. I don’t think it does any good to say the same behavior “happens equally everywhere” when that’s not the case. All that does is lead to continued excuse-making such as you have described above. There needs to be social STIGMA attached to this kind of behavior, not passive acceptance of it.</p>

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<p>I also think there is an element of entitlement among the boys. “If I want something I should have it” even if what they want is to assault another human being.This culture of entitlement and me first leads to all sorts of trouble.</p>

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<p>But if you had hired an attorney, it’s probable that his/her advice would be not to co-operate. We can see the wisdom of that advice in the fact that 3 young men who committed crimes were given immunity to testify. (Based on what I know about the case, the prosecutor made the right decision in granting it.) </p>

<p>It’s probable that a lot of people committed crimes. It’s virtually certain that the underage kids were drinking; that’s a crime. None of them tried to help her. That may be a crime under Ohio law. It’s obvious–at least to me–that at least the head coach was aware of the rape and did not report it; that’s probably a crime. People are probably reluctant to have their kids testify against him because (a) they think he meant well–I don’t, but they probably do-- and (b) they fear retaliation and harassment if they do. </p>

<p>The adults who purchased the booze for the kids almost certainly broke the law; I doubt they are going to co-operate. </p>

<p>The kids who circulated nude photos of the girl almost certainly broke the law. They aren’t going to co-operate because they now know they can be prosecuted for that. The kids who viewed the pictures may have broken the law–I don’t know. It’s possible because (a) they all knew the girl was a minor and (b)they were minors themselves. </p>

<p>If I had a kid who’d done something illegal, e.g., maybe looking at the nude photos even though he didn’t go to the party, I’d probably hire an attorney and suspect that attorney would tell him to keep his mouth shut UNLESS he was granted immunity. </p>

<p>On top of all this, I think some of the parents genuinely feared what would happen to their kids if they “snitched” on the football players. And they also feared what Anonymous would do to them if their involvement became known. (Anonymous “cleared” some of the boys it originally named as involved in the rape.)</p>

<p>BTW, Anonymous claims that the case was only made because one boy’s parents found out some of what had happened and marched their son into the police station WITHOUT seeing an attorney and told him he would have to face the consequences. I don’t know if that’s true, but the boy named was one of the 3 granted immunity.</p>

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<p>Sally, I completely agree with you. I also think we need to understand that the stigma needs to be attached on ALL campuses, that to a lesser or larger degree, most campuses have a protect the criminal thing going on. Some are better than others, but none of them are doing as well at this as they could be. JMO.</p>

<p>Jonri, such an interesting analysis of where the courageous bystanders are. It is interesting how we have set it up so that nobody can report a crime without fearing reprisal of some sort.</p>

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<p>Yes, probably from the first time they socked another kid in the sandbox, then again in elementary school, and on up. Parents don’t want anything on their kid’s “record,” so even if they are guilty of an offense, they will fight tooth and nail to see that it is “erased,” or better yet, never even acknowledged at all. Lessons which could be imparted at home for these small offenses are ignored, perhaps in the “we need to support our kids always, no matter what” vein. Refusing to acknowledge that our kids are not only imperfect, but are in fact sometimes mean little *&%$@ is an attitude which actually only harms them long term and seems not to ever occur to these loving, well meaning, but tragically clueless parents.</p>

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<p>Yes, we see it, but the people who need to see it day in and day out don’t see it until something like this happens, and even then, most of them refuse to see it even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.</p>

<p>I saw some twitter posts from kids who go to this school. It’s disgusting to see the vitriol thrown at this girl (usually from other girls). The prevailing attitude seems to be that she has a history of promiscuity, so naturally is should follow that anything sexually done to her is okay. After all, “she is easy, so she has no right to complain that others helped themselves when she was unconscious. I mean, what did she expect? And now she is ruining these boys’ lives, and dragging the good name of our community in the dirt! How DARE SHE?”</p>

<p>I feel for this girl and her family. What seems so incredibly wrong to us is being VICIOUSLY defended, or at best, excused due to the mitigating circumstances of this girl being of allegedly low character. It’s just despicable how this community has rallied around the predators and attacked the victim and her family.</p>

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<p>This question is only tangential to the ongoing discussion, but is there a website or news story that explains how Anonymous was able to access text messages, videos, photos etc. by hacking? Did the hackers get in to the databases of the major cell phone companies? Just curious.</p>

<p>On a philosophical note, I just watched two movies that were sobering reminders or how nebulous our grip on morality and integrity can be. Both movies were dramatizations of events that actually happened. One was “Compliance”, in which a prank caller directed a fast food manager to strip search a young female employee purportedly because she had stolen from a customer. The prank call lasted more than 3 hours, and ultimately led to the sexual assault of the young girl by the boyfriend of the fast food restaurant manager. It was so disturbing and bizarre I spent a long time reading up on the actual case after watching the movie. I had assumed the movie grossly exaggerated the actual events, but in fact it was almost detail for detail a retelling of what happened. A Youtube clip of the real surveillance video from the manager’s office eerily mirrors the scenes from the movie. </p>

<p>The second movie was called “The Wave (Die Welle)”, a German production loosely based on the Ron Jones Third Wave experiment conducted at a Palo Alto high school in the 60’s. It illustrated that susceptibility to fascism was not unique to certain groups of people, but present in every society. </p>

<p>Both of these themes play off the findings of Stanley Milgram in his famous experiments in which most people were willing to administer shocks to unseen victims if they felt they were acting under the authority of someone else.</p>

<p>I suspect some of these football heros may be perceived as authority figures in their social groups, and that ordinarily ethical peers do unethical things if they feel it is sanctioned by their group leaders.</p>

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<p>Actually, momsquad, I don’t think that is tangential, at all. I think it is completely to the point of what went on, and is still going on in terms of blaming the victim in steubenville, as well as what goes on on college campuses.</p>

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<p>Sometimes I think that not much has changed for the better since the Glen Ridge case more than 20 years ago. (I lived in Glen Ridge at the time, and my son grew up and went to high school there, so it’s been on my mind.) I find that extremely depressing.</p>

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<p>Wow that Amherst tshirt is very disturbing and especially that there was no punishment or sanction for it. The links on Dartmouth are also troubling. I know my kids feel that football players especially at their U and other jocks to a lesser degree are very entitled so my kids do their best to steer clear of all of them. Greek life is rather prevalent on their campus but because it such a large campus it can be avoided as well.</p>

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<p>From what I’ve read, nothing at all close to that degree of sophistication.</p>

<p>The real heroine of this story is blogger Alexandra Goddard. She is originally from the Steubenville area. Within a couple of days of the rape, she somehow tripped over some of the twitter posts about the rapes on the internet. These were public. She was appalled and realized that there had been a rape. She also realized these kids would take down the posts at some point. So, she found the football roster online and then searched to find twitter accounts and facebook pages of team members and their girlfriends. She took screen shots. No hacking needed. She stayed up all night, documenting as much as she could. About a week–I may be wrong about the timeline–later, she found the awful “Nodi” video on youtube. Yep, the genius who made it posted it to youtube. She made a copy. </p>

<p>She started writing about the rape. The parents of one of the boys named in her blog–not one of the defendants–sued her. (Ultimately the case was settled without her paying a cent.) It was quite obviously a move to silence her.</p>

<p>Anonymous got involved at that point. Your guess is as good as mine as to why. There’s a football team supporter who maintains a private website for the team and supporters. Anonymous hacked it by guessing the password, which was something idiotic like “rollbigred”–the team slogan. Allegedly, there were posts by people involved about the incident and Anonymous started downloading and reading them. It also hacked the guy’s private email account. It downloaded his messages and made the file available. (I’m not saying allegedly because the guy says his email account was hacked and Anonymous says it did the hacking.)</p>

<p>It created a website detailing the “crime” and pointing out what it said was a cover up. I read the website months ago. One thing Anonymous said was that were were other rapes. IIRC correctly, it said this was one of 3 known rapes. Unfortunately, it looks like there may have been at least one more in addition to the one that lead to yesterday’s convictions. So, Anonymous may have it right.</p>

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<p>The way the boys seemed to find the behavior of the time in question out of the ordinary is what I find so scary and it truly makes you wonder how many other people they have subjected to their brutality over what time period. Bravo to the blogger. For a change an glad Anonymous seems to be helping though I generally am somewhat sceptical of their action</p>

<p>Hope funds will appear soon for the families of victims so they can get fresh lives as it seems they are being vilified and it will likely worsen as more are called to account, especially adults who did not report.</p>

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<p>I, too, am appalled at how the community is largely rallying around the boys. I don’t care if they are good athletes or good students, they are criminals! I am only sorry the punishment is so short. How terrible that the girl is being further victimized. No wonder so many young women keep quiet! Sexual assault is pandemic. Too many high schools and colleges sweep this stuff under the rug. Too many high schools and colleges have a separate set of rules for athletes.</p>

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<p>You’re right. Athletes are the only ones to get in trouble for drinking alcohol! They get suspended from games. But non-athletes get ZERO penalty…</p>

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<p>Not true on either count. Or at least a gross, gross over-generalization.</p>

<p>I knew plenty of varsity athletes in hs who hadMIPs and other offenses-never miss a game. I’m not generalizing that, I’m just giving my experience as an athlete in hs.</p>

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<p>Well I had typed it and then deleted… oops…</p>

<p>This applies at my school. We’ve had it happen a handful of times this year already…</p>

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<p>The situation is appalling on many levels, and the lack of conscience on the part of not only the boys but so many adults is scary. Parents failed big time to supervise and discipline their children. That said, as a parent of 2 girls, I do place some blame squarely on the girl’s shoulders–for underage drinking and very foolish decision-making. When in the last 30 years of American cultural history was it EVER a good idea for a girl to get drunk around a bunch of football players, much less go off alone with some? Sorry, and no offense to the many upstanding boys who play football, but that was really, really stupid. Not saying she deserved to be abused, but there’s plenty of blame to go around.</p>