@CaliDad2020 thank you for your contributions to this discussion. The men in my life, many of my male colleagues as well as men in my social circle hold similar sentiments to what you have expressed above. I am happy to see that those views are held by men beyond my own “bubble.” The support is appreciated – women need all the help we can get right now.
I read someplace that Harvard’s T9 office employs 55 people. But even with all of that, Harvard is still on the bad list at USDOE!! Harvard, at least, has the money to pay for all that.
I wonder what the studies/data are on some non-prosecution measures that schools have been trying recently. Like hard alcohol bans. Or undercutting frats with residential colleges.
If I were a college president, I’d be tempted to go old school and try the “Full Notre Dame”: no frats, no hard alcohol, single sex dorms and parietals. The Domers definitely party hard, but I wonder if all that adds up to partying more safely?
Calidad you are probably a really nice person…most everybody on these forums but I have to say you don’t seem to realize that people and especially young people actually do end up having sex with people they may not know well and may have zero intention of ever having sex with again… but people will handle those instances in very different and frame it however they want to and that is men and women. The beer googles term is as old as the hills and refers to how handsome or beautiful someone is after you’ve had a few adult beverages.
While there are certainly cases of murky, misunderstood, or unclear consent / non-consent (possibly with alcohol or other drugs mixed in), isn’t there also another class of sexual assault, which is that committed by actual sexual predators who repeatedly look for victims and intentionally act knowing that the victims would not (or would not be able to) consent (e.g. intentionally getting the victim passed out drunk, possibly with the assistance of date-rape drugs)?
No it is not legally ambiguous. Not even in the slightest.
http://time.com/3211938/campus-sexual-assault-consent-california/
Thank you both, CaliDad2020 and ucbalumnus.
Also, Hanna, again I am sorry that I did not initially clarify what I meant by not being able to rely on your statement that a woman’s emotional response in the aftermath would be sufficient evidence of an assault. If only that were so! But clearly with people who hold the same viewpoint as momofthreeboys (and there are some), that would not be convincing evidence–so in that sense one cannot rely on it.
“No it is not legally ambiguous. Not even in the slightest.”
The statute books and student conduct handbooks are plenty clear. But that’s not the problem.
Unfortunately the kids don’t have the handbooks handy late on Saturday night when these decisions are being made. And even if they did, their legal analysis skills at that moment are going to be significantly sub-optimal with all the alcohol and hormones running through their bloodstreams.
Look at the Brock Turner case as an example. He’s blacked out with a 0.17 BAC. Nine beers plus chugging Fireball out of the bottle. She’s blacked out with a 0.24 BAC which then turns to unconsciousness – god knows what/how much drinking produced that BAC.
A disaster waiting to happen. A recipe for soooo many bad things to happen, with rape being just one of many awful possibilities.
Highly doubtful that he becomes a sex offender and she becomes a victim if you dial back those BACs by 25-50%.
@HarvestMoon1 Thanks for the note, but really, I’m just a pretty regular guy and most of my dad (and mom) friends feel the same way.
“Calidad you are probably a really nice person…most everybody on these forums but I have to say you don’t seem to realize that people and especially young people actually do end up having sex with people they may not know well and may have zero intention of ever having sex with again… but people will handle those instances in very different and frame it however they want to and that is men and women. The beer googles term is as old as the hills and refers to how handsome or beautiful someone is after you’ve had a few adult beverages.”
@momofthreeboys I am going to try to give it one last shot. You don’t even seem to understand the underlying question, and that really concerns me. You keep writing as though it is common for students to have a sexual encounter, wake up, regret it, not wish “to see the person again”, have “zero intention of every having sex with again…” and therefore go through all the hassle of filing a false sexual assault/rape accusation?
So you believe a large number of students, after finding out that in their drunken stupor they had sex with someone they don’t really like, instead of just ghosting them, or slinking out before the roommate notices… goes to the hospital, undergoes a sexual assault interview and examination, risks public confirmation and scrutiny of their night’s actions, calls to their parents, questions about their drinking and drug use, potential questions about their sexual history…
You believe a student will put themselves through all that because they woke up with someone they now feel embarrassed about?
I’m sorry, but that just seems insane.
Is it possible that some tiny fraction of students does that, for reasons of vengance, or some other motive? Of course, and there should be safeguards to protect due process in those cases.
But the landscape for a student to even bring up a charge of sexual assault and/or rape is so fraught on a campus, it defies logic that any student would subject themselves to that simply because they “never wanted to have sex” with or “see the person” again. It just does not make sense.
Again, I completely agree that the clearest process we can put in place that protects the accused rights and the accuser’s rights, as well as the student population (and general population) is what we should aim for. But to ignore college and criminal justice’s long history of ignoring, discounting, hiding and/or sidelining rape and sexual molestation accusations is simply dishonest. We have to go forward. Not backward.
And now I really will try to step away. Best to all.
I don’t think anyone is advocating going backward. What is happening on some campuses is really awful and it impacts the professional staff in subtle and really eyebrow raising ways as well as students…this is bigger than student sex lives although that is touchstone.
@CaliDad2020 Perfectly said! Thank you!
Brock Turner ran away. I believe he said he was scared of the Swedish bicyclists. He left a young woman, with whom he was in a very intimate situation, half naked on the ground behind a dumpster while he attempted to escape the situation. Maybe he was blacked out, but his actions indicate he knew he was in the wrong… at least in my mind.
If we take him at his word, he was escaping what he imagined to be a dangerous situation with no regard for her safety.
There were good men on the scene that night: the two Swedes on bicycles who stopped to check out the situation, and other men helping the woman who had been assaulted after the Swedes intervened. We had a thread about this and my memory is that I counted at least five men who intervened in a very positive manner that night.
^oh yeah, now I remember…
a couple of the young men who helped her were reported to be intoxicated themselves and didn’t stick around once the police arrived. So a couple male students behaved very honorably in that situation, even though they might have gotten in trouble for drinking. Not everyone drunk takes advantage of others.
And what does Brock Turner have to do with Title IX? His story keeps coming up in this thread about the Atlantic analysis of Title IX and universities and his case went straight to criminal trial.
I’m responding to northwesty who seemed to me to frame the rape as an alcohol abuse problem.
And earlier you wrote: #164
and beer goggles
If alcohol is the problem, I guess we need to address it. imho.
I’m happy to go back to theTitle IX discussion because I’ve learned a whole lot from HarvestMoon and Hanna about the process.
The wikipedia article on People v. Turner says that Turner withdrew from Stanford, rather than face Stanford disciplinary hearings. That’s one way to evade Title IX.
As an update to that:
The assault took place on January 18, 2015.
Turner was arrested that day.
Stanford banned Turner from the campus on January 20, 2105. There does not appear to have been a Title IX hearing leading to this.
Turner was not indicted until January 28, 2105.
The trial did not begin until March 14, 2016.
The trial did not end until March 30, 2016.
Sentencing did not take place until June 2, 2016.
(All dates from the wikipedia article.)
The mills of justice grind slowly.
Well Brock Turner didn’t even get justice according to a lot of people out here, who thought six months was light. I just did some research, and apparently this case is used in some case law course on rape, when he was actually convicted of sexual assault. I do recall someone coming on CNN I think, when this case was decided and she said, referring to him getting expelled but only six months in jail, he got justice but not from the justice dept.
"No it is not legally ambiguous. Not even in the slightest.
http://time.com/3211938/campus-sexual-assault-consent-california/
And I don’t know what the legal for term for drunk is (intoxicated?), but if you’re drunk in California you can’t give consent, as I think any lawyer will tell you out here. Not sure about other states though.
Turner was initially charged with subsections of CPC 261 (“rape”) and 289 (“sexual penetration”). Note that both carry the same nominal penalties (3, 6, or 8 years in state prison), and both are what most people (and the DoJ at the time) would call “rape”, but are slightly different in technicalities of their definitions. He was convicted of the subsections of CPC 289, due to those technicalities.
Yes, as I mentioned up thread it does impact not only students, but administrators and professors as well as the potential for continuing state conflicts. Here’s an interesting view on the legal issues. I doubt California will change their laws again, but not changing the law would make criminal channels perhaps more attractive to accusers which I’ve always felt should be primary since the burden of proof “could” potentially be lower. But who knows. I’m not sure if the California law has been around enough to stand the legal tests.
The most recent (2013) changes in California law regarding the crimes of rape (AB65) and sexual penetration (SB59) were to address a type of rape by impersonation that caused a recent previous conviction to be overturned.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/09/local/la-me-brown-bills-20130910
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/justice/california-1872-rape-law/index.html
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB59
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB65