"It would be very interesting to be a fly on the wall if a young man called one of the supposedly confidential phone numbers because they were getting weird vibes days, weeks, months after they had sex "
The lawyer in me wants to scream and grab the phone out of that boy’s hands…
“Imagine what I go through on my campus when the university releases data saying that nearly 1 in 3 women on campus have been victims of sexual misconduct. Those are real fears that should be addressed.”
We do no one any good when we throw unwanted kiss or proposition on the dance floor in the same category with real assault.
Innocent touching of his SISTERS?? That wasn’t innocent touching. He wasn’t 4. That ship had already sailed.
I hope you get explicit verbal permission every time you take a guy’s hand or touch his arm or his chest. Otherwise, according to your logic, you’re guilty of misconduct and on the road to becoming a rapist.
In the real world, when a girl is, say, kissing a guy in the corner at a party, if he puts his hand somewhere she doesn’t want it she removes it and says or indicates “no.” If he persists, she walks away and doesn’t have anything further to do with him. She doesn’t run to the college administration and report sexual misconduct. It is her job to manage her social life, not the college’s. Now, if this guy actually tries to overpower her, that’s another matter. That’s physical assault and it should be reported.
An unwanted proposition is not an assault. Most unwanted touches do not rise to the level of assault. Probably the majority of people, male and female, do not follow these elaborate verbal consent rules, and they are fine. It is not a question of downplaying actual misconduct.
The reason Josh Duggar is inapposite to what we’re talking about: he KNEW the touching was unwelcome. He wasn’t hoping to persuade anyone to enjoy sex with him. He was hoping they would never realize it happened, because he KNEW they would be horrified, disgusted, and hurt. That’s different from an invitation that turns out to be unwelcome. As @consolation notes, in the real world, reasonable adults make passes at one another all the time, and rebuff overly intimate ones without incident or injury.
While we’re on the topic, I view molesting your little sisters while they’re sleeping as WAY WAY less innocent than cheating on your wife with another consenting adult. There’s a reason adultery is no longer a crime, but molestation still is.
I think Hanna’s analogy of gum vs the Rolls Royce is spot on. Which is why the cases and punishment should be left to the courts where (hopefully) at least the accused still has protected rights and the right to defend themselves with legal counsel.
I’m dubious of the constant counseling at schools even that of grief counseling. I’m not against counseling and therapy for anyone but there seems sometimes to be an atmosphere of “you need this, you should be traumatized, why aren’t you traumatized, you must be so traumatized you don’t even KNOW you NEED our counseling. What’s the matter with you?”
Q. I was assaulted a year ago and didn’t tell anyone. Is it too late to talk to someone about it?
A. No! You can call any of the resources to talk about your experience and to get support at any time. And, there is no time limit for proceeding with the disciplinary process at the College, so long as the person who committed the assault is still a Williams student.
The above is from the Q&A from Hanna’s link–does this seem right? Sure–go ahead and press charges from a year ago as long as the victimizer is still a student. We can’t wait to nail someone and improve out statistics.
The discussions on all our previous threads did a pretty good job of separating the attempted kiss at the party or a casual arm around the waist from the cases of bona fide sexual assault. Most if not all posters agreed that a male or a female running to report sexual assault under those circumstances is unwarranted. Does it happen? Perhaps, but I am going to bet the vast majority of cases reported are not of that nature.
I also believe that many posters pointed out that surveys including those sorts of things as constituting sexual assault were misleading. This is an area where most of us are in agreement.
“Cases of bona fide sexual assault” should be left to the court system not college administrators.
Well as of right now the DOE does not agree with you. And until we can improve the record of our court system in actually prosecuting these cases, neither do I.
Okay back to topic–what do you tell your sons about consent?
Honestly it never occurred to me before reading this thread. He’s always had a good head on his shoulders and is a nice, caring person who has always maintained long term relationships.
But the Occidental fiasco shows how awry things can go. Sad.
I want to believe and i think I do that young women should know how to handle a come on unless they’ve led an extremely sheltered high school life. I think most of the damaging incidents come with young men and women who perhaps enter college inexperienced about sex and with freedoms they never had when living at home like access to alcohol and perhaps attention from the opposite sex they really never had practice with. That can be a pretty “heady” feeling to young people and then they end up in a situation where neither really has control of the situation. The other thing I’ve observed is that kids in high school have for the most part grown up with a group of kids of both sexes. They really know each other in all kinds of situations. When they get to a campus it’s a whole new crew and they don’t know each other very well so can get into situations that can turn out badly for both.
Pretend that the Occidental woman had never brought her accusation to the college. Would the Oxy scenario, where two exceedingly drunk kids had sex, be something we’d want our sons to be involved in, or would we counsel our sons against it?
For my part, I say I advise my son not to do it. A stand-up guy does not sex with a woman as drunk as she was, whether it is adjudged illegal or not. He gives her a chance to say yes while she has judgement.
Moreover, it is unwise to have the first sexual encounter with a particular woman be a case when the guy is very very drunk, because very very drunk guys can miss or ignore clear signals of refusal from women, like saying No and pushing him away. Let me be clear: Oxy guy did not miss those signals, because they were not given. But we all know that very drunk guys can have trouble taking no for an answer.
So I say, Don’t have sex when you’re really really drunk. Don’t have sex when she’s really really drunk. Especially don’t do these things if it would be the first time the two of you had sex.
@Pizzagirl And we do no good when we don’t address issues at the lowest levels. If we wait until there a major crimes being committed, by then we have failed and it’s already too late. I also used the phrase “sexual misconduct.” Unaddressed misconduct leads to assault.
^^ Re: occidental: They were both drunk. Drunk people aren’t thinking. Drunk people are often not reasonable. Drunk people do stupid things. They were both drunk. They had sex. Neither one of them was, at the time, thinking whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing to do. They both said they were drunker than they’d ever been in their young lives. That should never have resulted in punishment for either one of them and if I recall in testimony the person who tried to intervene said she was on top plus she asked him if he had a condom in a text so for all practical purposes she was the aggressor. Counseling and alcohol probation for both yes. Expelling him, no and no and no. They both might have gotten through this if Dear Colleague had never happened. Now they are both a mess. What a waste of two young people’s emotional stability for a political agenda.
@Consolation I thought that I had put innocent in quotations. My mistake.
Surely you cannot equate touching someone’s arm to grabbing someone’s butt or touching someone’s breast. You’re being irresponsible.
If a teacher touches someone’s arm to get their attention, that’s fine. If a teacher slaps a kid’s ass to get their attention, that is not right. What is acceptable and unacceptable is obvious.
Well then I suppose if she doesn’t run away or can’t get away, it was her fault. I mean, stupid her for thinking that her “no” was enough.
Who said that an unwanted proposition was an assault? I never said that. I’m not talking about the typical poorly raised Joe who catcalls women. I’m talking about unsolicited touching. I’m gonna go out on a limb (not really) and say that they do know that it is wrong. They simply do not care that it is wrong.
I’m sure there’s a robber out there who loves stealing things, but wouldn’t want someone breaking into their mother’s house.
When you condone smaller actions and dismiss them, predators feel as though they can get away with anything, which leads me to the stat I said earlier.
Less than 10% of men account for more than 90% of the assaults. So what we have is a few men who keep getting away inappropriate behavior.
And I don’t have the stats to prove this, but I’m assuming they didn’t wake up one morning and become a serial rapist. It started off with a lot of small issues that were swept under the rug. So when it comes to teaching consent to men and women, it starts off with teaching your kids that unsolicited touching is unacceptable, along with other forms of assault.
CF, I agree completely that drunk kids in college shouldn’t have sex.
But consider that the Occidental girl texted the guy and asked if he had a condom, and that she then came down to his room for sex. Even if one takes the position that both were drunk and that she consequently didn’t give formal consent, I find it bizarre that reason didn’t prevail in this case and that Occidental ended up expelling the guy.
The issue at hand is how colleges now (over)react because of Title IX and how college boys should prepare themselves to handle false accusations, which may not always occur because of drinking. That should be the focus of this thread IMO.
EDIT: Ach, my post mirrors momofthreeboys. I type too slowly!
I don’t want to re-litigate the Occidental case. That’s not my question. This thread is asking about what we tell our sons. Would you tell your sons to avoid the Occidental scenario where he is extremely drunk and so is she, or would you be just fine with your son involved in that scenario?
That was not my first thought when I read that question. My thought was that of course Williams would want to know of an incident of alleged sexual assault by a current student. They have a vested interest in protecting all their students. If someone believes they were sexually assaulted they have a responsibility to look into it for the safety and well being of everyone. Better they know later rather than never, especially since the student is still on campus.
And you advocate for these cases to be processed in the court system. Well the statute of limitations is certainly longer than one year for a woman to file a sexual assault claim. Do you have an objection to the statute of limitations that currently exists in our court system?
Re #136, I think that everyone here would advise their sons to avoid sex after drinking. But that’s not where it ends. The main issue is the lack of due process by administrators after Title IX and the Dear Colleague letter. What do we tell our sons so that they have proof of consent and can refute false accusations? I don’t have answers to that question. I hope others do.
BTW, the students at Columbia (the mattress girl and the German guy) weren’t drinking, were they?
Often people that are involved in these sorts of things in universities have an agenda, they come in with a particular mindset and sometimes they don’t even have the whole picture because prior to the hearing other people have compiled only a report that may or may not reflect all the actual facts and interviews. Because it is not a true legal process with checks and balances, prosecutors and defenders, a judge and a jury these quasi-judicial groups simply aren’t capable of handling a very delicate and human situation between two people. They may also feel that they “have to” side with one person or another and they may also feel like the onus is on them to dole out the most severe punishment, that the only solution is to separate the two involved by removing one from the situation. They may genuinely think that “expulsion” is no big deal. Even people on this forum have implied that expulsion is not that big of a deal because it’s not a criminal record. And that is what an accused faces in these situations.