@QuantMech, I am not saying that PTSD is not a “thing”, nor am I passing on the reasons a woman may appear to participate voluntarily in sexual relations when she really has withdrawn her consent. What I am saying is that in the situation under discussion, where an objectively sober, competent female decides to engage in intercourse but at some point during the encounter she “freezes”, there is no conduct undertaken by the male partner that can be prescribed, absent some objective, outward sign that the woman is no longer consenting. Such a scenario would never make it to a courtroom. But it is obviously a type of “assault” discussed on campus. That is the difference between the criminal system and the tribunal system,
And while I agree with @JHS that “yes means yes” is a joke, understand that even a yes means yes policy doesn’t protect a man in the situation this started from. By that I mean if you do not believe the woman bears any responsibility to indicate her withdrawal of consent, then even if the guy has a recording of a clear and unequivocal affirmative response to “can I do this?” who is to say that in the middle of the act for which there was explicit verbal permission the woman didn’t suddenly withdraw her consent?
Are we talking about “objectively sober” women? I was under the impression that in the situations under discussion, in the usual case both parties had been drinking. I’m not offering the incapacitation argument, but there’s a wide gulf between sober and incapacitated, and these cases (I thought) typically fall in it, and more toward the very drunk side.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, and you meant the women are, objectively, not incapacitated by alcohol (though they might have consumed a lot of it). That’s the situation I thought we were discussing.
I was also under the impression that in most cases, the woman had not consented to intercourse. She had consented to something less, and then at some point intercourse, or some kind of penetration, had occurred. You are caricaturing the case by saying that the women said, “Yes I want to have sex,” they began to have intercourse, and then two minutes later unbeknownst to him she withdrew her consent.
I think it’s pretty fair to assume that the “changing of the mind” and the days, months, later “regret sex” arguments are never going to hold up in college or in courtroom challenges regardless of alcohol consumed in the absence of being passed out cold…and it especially won’t hold up if the parties are drinking and can text one another without typos It can get some guy kicked out by a overly zealous university tribunal which is why they need to know to call their lawyer first, but it will never hold up to serious challenge. How could it? Two people don’t end up in bed together that don’t want to end up in bed together absence force or drugging or being passed out." I drank too much probably isn’t going to be a strong enough argument.
I believe that the overwhelming majority of the parents in CC have reared sons who are gentlemen. However, in response to momofthreeboys, I want to remark that being gentlemanly is not universal among college-age men, and force probably happens more often than you would estimate.
I would not think that the scenario mentioned by Ohiodad51 in #220, where the woman suddenly “freezes” after consenting, happens very often (unless perhaps it is the woman’s first experience).
I wish @hanna would come back and give us a description of the actual offenses her clients had been expelled for, and the alleged circumstances. I’d like to get a feeling for what offenses turn out to be expulsion-worthy in the real world. And I’d like to get a feeling for the range of these offenses: some colleges may suspend for offenses we think are not very serious, but what offenses does the typical college suspend for? Maybe Hanna can’t even tell us this, because necessarily her clientele are typically students expelled from the colleges with the most severe expulsion policies.
@“Cardinal Fang”, I am speaking specifically about the digression that started with my interpretation of @hanna’s point and @quantmech’s comment re PTSD. As far as whether women can be incapacitated, I can only say that I have been married a long time to a woman who just occasionally has been known to enjoy “mental health margaritas” with her bestie. Generally speaking, I think you know that I agree that the devil is in the details of all of these cases, and that it is a bad idea to build policy based on the situations at either end of the spectrum.
@calicash, would that things were so simple. I doubt that anyone would argue that proceeding with intimate contact after someone verbalized a negative response is assault. The issue is what happens if there is an affirmative response to the question but then at some point the woman changes her mind. What burden does the woman bear to verbalize or otherwise indicate that withdrawal of consent? I am saying that practically in that specific circumstance the law imposes a pretty clear burden. Based solely on what has been written about these cases and the policies on campuses, it seems like the tribunals do not impose such a burden.
We have the Yale data through June of 2015. While it does not go into the specifics of the actual complaints it does give you an idea of the type of offense they are expelling for. And when you review it you see how few expulsions there really are in comparison to the number of complaints filed - at least for this one school. Sure there are others schools that report this data. Reviewing it might inject a does of reality into these threads - I don’t think any of us have the time to assemble it.
For example in the period January 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014 during which I count 20 resolved complaints of sexual assault (non-consensual sex) between Yale students, there were 2 actual expulsions.
I object to this characterization of the situation. Suppose I consent to kiss someone, and we kiss, and then he begins to have intercourse with me. Why are you saying I need to “withdraw” consent for the intercourse? I never GAVE consent for the intercourse in the first place. There is nothing to withdraw. He doesn’t have consent to intercourse and he never had consent to intercourse.
Because @calicash posited that someone should ask “do you want to have sex?”, which is what I referred to in the first sentence of the paragraph you pulled that quote from.
OK, I see your point. You were talking about the case where someone is asked “Do you want to have sex?”, they said yes, intercourse began, and then they decided they no longer consented but said nothing.
Why are we talking about this scenario? Are guys being thrown out of college because of this scenario? Does Hanna say that her clients are being thrown out of school because their accuser clearly consented *to intercourse/i and then supposedly withdrew her consent in the middle of the intercourse but didn’t say anything? This looks to me like the strawiest of strawmen. And that is why I’d like to have a better understanding of exactly what is happening in the real world.
If you can convince me that the representative case of a student being expelled from college is the case where the accuser verbally consented to intercourse, then silently withdrew consent in the middle, then I will agree that college sex tribunals have gone amok.
Drew Sterrett UofM. Roommate was in the upper bunk texted them and told them they were being anoyingly noisy. Drew Sterrett got expelled and had to sue. And he got rescinded when he was accepted at another college. She climbed into bed with him and asked him if he had a condom. The university recently settled with him but he’s been SOL for a number of years because of this. Sterrett didn’t invite her into his dorm room and neither of them were drunk.
It is my opinion if there is one there are more. Not all parents have the financial pockets to defend a student accused of something that did not happen the way the accuser tells the story. Of course it cuts both ways, however, the accuser has the full weight of the law behind them if they report to the police as does the accuser.
@HarvestMoon1 , I looked at the last year of the Yale data. If you look at complaints against students that actually went to the committee and got resolved, in which the committee found reason to believe the complainant, 8 of 15 cases resulted in suspension or expulsion. Obviously, the decisions were nuanced – there were cases where the committee found sufficient evidence of sexual intercourse without consent, yet imposed only probation, counseling and contact restrictions, and there was one case that did not involve intercourse at all that resulted in expulsion. The facts are very opaque, but the decisions do not seem to follow Yale’s guidance from 2014 (IIRC) as to what types of offenses would justify suspension or expulsion. In about a third of the cases, the committee found there was not sufficient evidence to support the complaint (not counting retaliation complaints, where the target of a prior compliant filed a complaint against the person who complained first, where the committee generally dismissed the complaint without investigation).
I’m sure they’re trying to do a good job of adjudicating these cases, and maybe even succeeding at it. They are completely failing to communicate what it is they consider moderately culpable vs. expulsion-worthy. I could argue that’s not their mandate, but I can’t see how they are advancing educational opportunity unless they do a better job of educating students about what’s right, what’s wrong, and what gets you no second chance.
@momofthreeboys - I suggest you take a look at the Yale data. I know it’s just one school and I only looked at the most recent year, but at least at Yale, the data suggests a lenient response to sexual misconduct. In one instance, for example, the school found sufficient evidence of unwanted sexual penetration and the student was still not suspended or expelled.
I think you will find many more of the “Sterrett like” cases in our criminal justice system. The cases of the wrongly accused and recently released Richard Williams and Hannah Overton come to mind. Except in those cases they spent 19 years and 7 years incarcerated.
No one likes these kinds of cases in any system, but they occur in all. What I really object to are these constant claims that the college tribunals are systematically churning out expulsions of men, and that they are intentionally rigged that way. The Yale data does not support an “off the rails” tribunal system. To the contrary, there are many, many cases where the tribunals find “insufficient evidence to support the allegations” - basically a total defeat for the accuser. And there are cases where they** do** find sufficient evidence to support the allegation of non-consensual sex and yet the penalty is “written reprimand with sexual consent training” (presumably this must have been agreed to by the accuser.)
I would like to see posters stop making blanket statements without support for them.
@JHS my recollection is that the one case of expulsion that did not involve intercourse was one that involved voyeurism which I think may be classified as a “psychosexual” disorder. I don’t know the details but my suspicion is that it must have been serious or involved some sort of video taping or other technical recording of the complainant.
I’m actually not sure that there are a lot of Sterrett like cases in the criminal justice system. Certainly, there are a high number of falsely convicted people in our prisons. Tragically high. However, research has shown that these cases predominantly result from: confessions (yes, innocent people do confess, particularly those who are under 18 and/or of lesser intelligence); guilty pleas (yes, innocent people do plead guilty); witness identification (this is in the context of a crime committed by a stranger and so not applicable in acquaintance rape/sexual assault cases - people think they recognize their assailant, but they don’t); and bad forensics (bite analysis, hair comparison (not DNA - just by looking at strands under microscope, etc.).