<p>The schools are not mandatory reporters, but they can, at their discretion, investigate complaints. The complaint process does not have to be confidential in all cases. If, for example, a student said she was raped at gunpoint by another student, but she didn’t want to instigate a formal accusation, the college could (and probably would) do their own investigation, and they might call the police.</p>
<p>Right, and for all we know they may have done that. The fact checking that led nowhere here was pretty elementary.</p>
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<p>The plaintiff’s bar goes crazy with festive joy of the season. Visions of sugar plums, vacations in Aruba and second homes in Nantucket dance in their heads.</p>
<p>Yeah…well… Hopefully we will find out how much UVA investigated. I don’t think the not mandatory defense is going to fly with a jury.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/16/us-says-records-athlete-accused-assault-should-not-be-released”>https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/16/us-says-records-athlete-accused-assault-should-not-be-released</a></p>
<p>The athetic department can deal with sexual assaults? </p>
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<p>The part I haven’t quite got figured out is why the deans employee referred Jackie to RS unless they were so naïve as to think they were going to get a campus rape story that portrayed them in a positive light as to how nicely they provide support to victims. But, it’s a little hard to believe anyone is that stupid. The dean is beloved by the victim group, though.</p>
<p>By the dean’s employee, I assume you are referring to Emily Renda. She had already told Jackie’s story to a Congressional committee, but she called Jackie ‘Jenna’ in that account. </p>
<p>What the inside office politics of the UVa administration are is anyone’s guess. </p>
<p>Some fact checking is a good thing. We can practice it on this thread, too. Some need to go for a little more than what you read in the media or heard. r what you think should happen. (But that’s my same old soapbox.)</p>
<p>Dstark, technically, the athletic dept is supposed to report it to the Title IX folks at the school. Apparently didn’t happen in FL. </p>
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<p>Just another in a long line of bizarre elements to this story. :)</p>
<p>Re #2 by Northwesty: You cannot look at the penalties associated with these cases without acknowledging that they are described as “sexual assault,” not as “rape.” Some of the cases that resulted in suspension, for example, may well not have involved accusations of actual rape. It might include unwanted fondling/groping. You just can’t tell from the posted information.</p>
<p>Also, these are the actual enrollment stats. You were lumping the undergrads in with the graduate students. Undergrad is 50/50 M/F but graduate students are not.</p>
<p>Enrollment (Fall 2013)
Undergraduate: 4,276
Graduate/professional: 2,066
Total enrollment head count: 6,342 (3,378 men, 2,964 women)</p>
<p>So the number of undergraduate women is closer to 2,150. I do not know whether the quoted figures for cases aply only to undergrads, or to all students.</p>
<p>Charlottesville police are declining to comment about the case, except to say they are investigating the woman’s accusations and other activities that have occurred since.</p>
<p>This is the statement from the Charlottesville police from today’s Washington Times story. </p>
<p>I wonder what they mean by ‘the other activities that have occurred since’. The brick throwing through the fraternity’s windows? Criminal defamation? Jackie’s lawyer declined any comment to this newest story which deals largely with the catfishing, a new word for me. Apparently, Jackie used the internet to create fake cell phone numbers for her fake boyfriend, who she then said was named ‘Haven’. </p>
<p>(It’s now a bit confusing as to which thread to use to comment on this case). Seems like the other thread is more general and this is going to be more Rolling Stone story related? Am I right?</p>
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<p>Here’s what Dartmouth says about the suspended students:</p>
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<p>Actually you can tell a lot from these descriptions. The last-mentioned case was definitely not rape. Other cases may not have been rape. But even assuming none of these cases were rape, the described offenses were serious. None seem to have been butt-gropes. If a guy bursts into a woman’s room without her permission and begins sexual activity, his offense without rape is already bad enough for expulsion, in my view. If someone is having sexual contact with another person despite the other person saying No, No and pushing their attacker away, that’s already bad enough. If someone takes sexual advantage of an obviously incapacitated person, the defense “But I didn’t rape him/her” would not keep me from expelling the attacker.</p>
<p>At Dartmouth, sexual misconduct is categorized as harassment or assault. But every incident described was an example of sexual assault, not harassment. I would have thought that harassment claims would have made up the bulk of the accusations, but either I’m wrong, or the Dartmouth report, though labelled as a sexual misconduct document, is instead only talking about dispositions of sexual assault.</p>
<p>“I wonder what they mean by ‘the other activities that have occurred since’. The brick throwing through the fraternity’s windows? Criminal defamation? Jackie’s lawyer declined any comment to this newest story which deals largely with the catfishing, a new word for me. Apparently, Jackie used the internet to create fake cell phone numbers for her fake boyfriend, who she then said was named ‘Haven’.”</p>
<p>I love how you all of a sudden believe fully stuff you read on the internet. Isn’t it more prudent to wait until all of this shakes out between UVA, the C-ville police department, and any other investigations?</p>
<p>I do not feel able to say what I would have done vis-a-vis punishment without knowing the details of the cases. I cannot speculate, other than to say that it seems clear that the seriousness of the offenses and quite possibly the degree of certainty varied widely, since the suspensions ranged from one term to two full years. (The longer terms quite likely getting the perp off campus until the accuser had graduated.)</p>
<p>The only case of a criminal rape arrest I have heard of at D during that timeframe involved two kids from my area: one a freshman, considered a nice, very mild-mannered kid by everyone I know who knew him, and the other a visiting HS senior. According to local scuttlebutt, there was drinking, the kids apparently had sex, the girl seemed perfectly happy during the whole visit, but several weeks after she got home her mother found out and was furious. The girl told her mother he had taken advantage of her to deflect her anger–remember, this is only scuttlebutt–and the mother insisted on pressing charges. The boy was indicted, and his name spread over the local news, here and there. Subsequently, the charges were dropped. She may have recanted, I don’t know. He never appeared at the school again. I have no idea whether he was suspended or expelled or withdrew, nor has anything been announced in the Parker Gilbert case. It seems that the school does not publicize such decisions in cases involving sexual offences.</p>
<p>What leads me to believe that the suspensions as a group were too light is the report about the three students who were expelled, and the twelve students who were suspended. It’s hard to know about individual cases, but looking at them in aggregate, IMO the bar is too high for expulsion. Nobody was expelled for sexual misconduct where the victim was too incapacitated to resist. Again, it’s impossible to judge individual cases, but I find it suspicious that only students whose victims had resisted were expelled.</p>
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<p>There’s an example where we have no idea what happened. I’d wonder, if the girl were so happy about it, how the mother found out. But I can equally imagine a distraught rape victim finally telling her mother she was raped, and a panicked girl lying to protect herself. Either way, I can’t see the criminal case being pursued, because what evidence would the prosecutor bring? And I wonder why the alleged attacker left Dartmouth.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting example where we can conclude nothing at all.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this has been posted already but this is looking more and more like a total hoax.</p>
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<p><a href=“University Of Virginia Student’s Catfishing Scheme Revealed | The Daily Caller”>http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/16/university-of-virginia-students-catfishing-scheme-revealed/</a></p>
<p>I can imagine that scenario also, but that’s not what I was told. Maybe she was pregnant? Maybe, like the Michigan girl, her mother found her diary. Maybe her mother overheard her talking about her adventures with friends, or saw texts or emails. We don’t know. </p>
<p>The case was prosecuted. They indicted him. They must have had <em>some</em> evidence, although perhaps it was only her word. In which case her recanting would torpedo the case. We have no idea whether there were witnesses, although there must have been some other kids who saw them before and after, since she stayed for a weekend and there was reportedly partying in the dorm amongst the freshmen (for which they got in trouble, btw). Maybe the witnesses didn’t support her story. Maybe they did but she didn’t want to go through with a public trial. Who knows.</p>
<p>Regarding restorative justice, the case recounted in the NYT would seem like an ideal occasion to use it. I bet that much would have been accomplished for both parties if the two had them had sat down with a mediator, and the guy had listened to her talk about how she experienced the event. How it made her regard him. He genuinely did not seem to have any understanding of what it was like for her: that it was a rape. He might have been shocked and sorry. He might have expressed that to her, and behaved much differently with women in the future. A win/win situation.</p>
<p>I would suggest that in MOST of those examples we have no idea what really happened. You don’t even know, in the 12 cases, what the things of a sexual nature were that the guys were found to have done, although it seems fairly clear it didn’t involve penetration. I would venture to guess that the restorative justice approach would work well in cases where the guy burst into someone’s room and did something crass that stopped short of rape or attempted rape. (This does not preclude suspension, or even expulsion, if appropriate.)</p>
<p><a href=“Rolling Stone Source Says Reporter Misrepresented Another Part Of Article | The Daily Caller”>http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/16/rolling-stone-source-says-reporter-misrepresented-another-part-of-article/</a></p>
<p>Since we’re talking about Renda,
<a href=“http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Renda.pdf”>http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Renda.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thank you for the posts dstark and LF. I just want to mention here/remind everyone to keep in mind that Emily Renda is a young girl who only just graduated from UVA in June who was a survivor herself. 
I hope she does not take any heat for any involvement she inadvertently had in this whole affair.</p>