Post 128–“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.”
So let’s throw out due process because you have strong feelings about this subject? We need to ignore fact finding and proper investigation?
Not signing up. No need to let an ARBITRARY board with obvious bias issues outside the justice system have the ability to adjudicate a criminal offense and impose control over someone’s life (and future livelihood) because the “system” isn’t responding quickly enough. It’s unfortunate but there is a reason the “wheels of justice” move slowly–so the innocent don’t get trampled.
Ok, sure. Let’s wait and see if anybody on here will tell you that their sons should drink and then have sex at college with an inebriated girl, especially in the current hypersensitive environment. I predict crickets.
You seem to want to avoid the central issue of Title IX and the reaction of college administrators. Why? If you can agree that the Occidental decision to expel the boy was really dumb and destructive, then maybe we can find common ground.
Post 141–well, there would be a lot less sex altogether no matter who or what the circumstances. I probably wouldn’t be here to even post on this site.
I’ve never told my boys to “avoid sex after drinking.” That’s an odd thing to tell someone. What does that mean…don’t drink and have sex in college? Don’t drink and then have sex ever? I’ve told them to not drink when they were underage. I’ve told them not to drink and drive ever. I’ve told them not to drink until they puke or are staggering around like an idiot because they could get rolled or worse beaten and robbed which is a worse way to get rolled. I’ve told them never to return a drunk girl to her dorm or home without a few pals with him. And he and his friends have hauled a few home that just couldn’t do it under their own steam and I would hope those girls would return the same favor. But I’ve never told them to not drink before sex.
I meant: don’t drink at college and then have sex with a likewise inebriated girl. College administrators now believe that girls cannot give consent if they have been drinking. Therefore, any sexual contact, when drinking is involved, may be viewed by the administration as assault, or worse, rape. Why open that door?
I tell my son to stay clear of drinking and sex at college. The risks are far too great. Drink at a party with friends? Sure. Have sex with a nice girl that you like? Fine. Just watch out, with extreme prejudice, mixing the two.
Stay far, far away from where any lines could get fuzzy (including, but not limited to, situations involving alcohol). If there is one thing this discussion shows, it is that when a third party gets pulled in to investigate or judge a questionable consent situation, there is a good chance that the third party will get it wrong, which can have ugly consequences for either a victim (when a guilty accused is found not guilty) or an accused (when the accused is innocent but found guilty).
CF–I had to go back and piece together your responses.
Yes, I’d say no sex after drinking which sounds very ignorant taken out of context.
BUT the Occidental case is very relevant. And it can’t be re-litigated because it NEVER was litigated by a court of law. College administrators appear to have ignored common sense and gave punishment in excess of the supposed “crime”. In a case where there was deemed to be NO “crime”. With no satisfactory appeal process.
Under those circumstances it DOESN’T MATTER what you tell your kid or what actions they take.
All you can tell them is respect boundaries, don’t have sex with people you don’t know long term and only with someone you can trust. (Which I’ve already done because it’s always been good advice).
@CaliCash, you are guilty of selective editing for the purpose of distortion.
For example, I made a clear distinction between an unwanted touch that can be easily deflected and a situation where the aggressor tries to overpower the touchee. You so conveniently leave that part out.
You then bring in a completely irrelevant comparison to a teacher touching a student. We were talking about touching between people at a party or on the dance floor or in some other social situation where people may be interested in becoming physically intimate, not touching in a business or classroom setting.
And yes, I think that it is quite possible for a female to run her hand up (or down) a guy’s torso in a manner that is perfectly equivalent to his touching her backside or cupping a breast. (Who said anything a “grabbing” or other rough actions?)
Do I think that a guy who makes a habit of coming on too strong with women should “get away with it”? No, think that he gets a bad reputation and that more and more women avoid him, and decent guys think he’s a jerk. My S’s fraternity kicked out a guy whose behavior towards women they considered obnoxious in that manner.
What really should have happened was that he should have been raised better, to respect women and himself. Unfortunately, not everyone is. How to change the mind of that kind of guy is a huge question. Information about consent might start the process. Being around guys who don’t support that kind of stuff might help. But you can’t discipline him for a crime he hasn’t committed.
I think perhaps all the crime shows on television have given people an unrealistic idea of how the criminal justice process works. Would I encourage my daughter to go to the local police if she experienced a sexual assault? Absolutely. But even if she does, do I believe that absolves the school that she attends from addressing whether to allow her alleged attacker to remain a student on campus where he could assault others and/or make her relive the experience every time she sees him? No.
It takes a long time for charges to get investigated, filed, and then eventually tried (if a prosecutor elects to take the case to trial). Sexual assault cases are hard to win and for that reason, among others, are not necessarily always taken to trial because prosecutors, especially in certain areas, like to keep their records strong. In the meantime, I think that a university once it is on notice that one of their students is accused of sexual assault should definitely investigate the allegations and have a process for assessing the likelihood of that accusation being truthful and the consequences that should happen if the accusation proves well-founded. I may disagree with the process at certain schools and find them unfair to either side, ineffective, etc., but that means that they should enhance the process, not dismantle it. It won’t be perfect. No system is. We have executed innocent people in this country so our criminal justice system is certainly not perfect either. But we entrust our children to a university and they have to attempt to address this issue.
And, yes, for a host of reasons, I do advise my son not to mix sex outside of a relationship with alcohol.
“…more and more women avoid him, and decent guys think he’s a jerk. My S’s fraternity kicked out a guy whose behavior towards women they considered obnoxious in that manner… Being around guys who don’t support that kind of stuff might help…”
There was also a thread about the Rolling Stone article about UVa.
Many of the people participating in this thread also participated in the other threads. We’ve gone around and around and around. There’s nothing more for us to say. If you want to know my opinions, you can easily find them by reading those threads.
Well no, not any more than we should dismantle a system because you happen to have such strong feelings about it.
On the subject of due process I would urge you to actually read the Dear Colleague Letter so that you can be relieved of idea that it is totally absent from the process. Here’s a few things off the top of my head that the DCL mandates:
Impartial investigation of the complaint and equal opportunity for both parties to present witnesses and evidence.
DCL does not prohibit attorneys at the hearings - it is up to the individual schools. The ability to have representation must be applied equally.
Evidentiary standard of preponderance of the evidence.
Both parties must have equal access to info/documents used at hearing
Ability to present character witnesses must be equally applied to both parties.
Appeals process can be individually designed by the schools but must be applied equally to both parties.
Re #153, Cardinal Fang, more obfuscation. It should be easy for you to express in this thread whether you agree with the Occidental decision to expel the boy. (You were the one that brought up the Occidental incident in this thread, btw.) Why not just say so now? Why should we have to wade through past threads to ferret out your logic? Just be honest and declare your opinion in the thread. It’s a yes or no question. I say “no”. You say …?
Harvestmoon- “-Appeals process can be individually designed by the schools but must be applied equally to both parties”
The lack of a decent appeal process is a problem whether it is equally applied or not because the loser is the only one in need of it.
in answer to the specific question, there really is no advice to give sons about consent. Telling him he should not have sex after he drinks is immaterial, because whether he drinks or not is not dispositive in the cases we see. What is dispositive is if the girl says she drank at some point. Seriously, what would you tell your son about alcohol in an environment where testimony by the accuser’s own associates indicate she was not impaired, or th definition of impairment says that even if every objective sign of competency can be explained away as part of a black out state? Similarly, why bother to talk to your son about trying to get a written record of consent? Not only is California (I believe) trying to make recording consent illegal, but we all have seen several cases where contemporaneous text messages were explained away for one reason or another. And yes, the dear colleague letter may leave it up to the schools whether to permit lawyers, or make noises about both sides being able to introduce evidence. But no one believes that to be the case. We can all see that civil rights investigations begin and end based on college’s rate of convictions, or their adherence to certain flavor of the month concepts to make the system easier for accusers. Certainly what we see occurring in the reported cases is nothing like an adjudicatory process any of us are familiar with.
So in my personal opinion, there is no real advice to give sons. Currently, all of the decisions are being made by the female partner. So you better be very sure you absolutely trust any female you are alone with at any point on campus. Not because every woman you meet is going to accuse you of rape, but because every woman can, and the system is obviously and grossly rigged against guys.
Quite honestly, it is the same advice I give my daughter. Don’t put yourself in a position where you are dependent on the good faith of another, unless you are sure of that person.