"“we’re talking about a college campus … a private one at that.”
A conservative Christian one at that."
what is that suppose to mean?
"Do you think there is any college in the US (or the world) that doesn’t have people who have been convicted of crimes attending? That there aren’t people at Harvard or Stanford or Smith or BYU who are dangerous, who do drugs, who think they are better than others and exert power? Would you send your daughter to a military academy where there are often cases of rape and cruelty to the female cadets? I would (and almost did) but I’d make sure she was prepared.
I prefer to teach my daughter how to be careful, to travel in groups, to watch their drinks at parties. I’m not going to rely on a school to control their teams, although I do expect them to do that."
@twoinanddone , I think you missed entirely the point of my reply. But we don’t need to belabor that point.
To answer your questions, no, I don’t think there is any such college. To be honest, a few years ago I would have thought more than twice before sending her to the Air Force Academy, where the issue was particularly pronounced and egregious. I am not aware of it being a wide spread issue at West Point or Annapolis, but if it were, especially given some of the other characteristics of the academies, then, no, I wouldn’t. There are too many good places to attend school. She was, btw, recruited by Air Force and the Citadel to play soccer, but had no interest.
We all think it makes sense to teach our Ds the things you reference. That’s entirely beside the point too.
"You don’t need to avoid them on campus. You just need to avoid going into their apartments to feel physically safe, assuming these allegations turn out to be substantiated. "
Whew! Thanks @roethlisburger. I feel a lot better now.
I am totally missing your point MiddleburyDad2. What is is? Where are you sending your daughters that are so safe that you don’t have to worry?
It couldn’t be more clear if it fell out of the sky, hit you in the face and started to wiggle.
We’re talking about (or at least trying, albeit amidst a steadfast barrage of deflecting posts that would make Sean Spicer proud) a series of events, allegations, firings, hirings, official responses, lack thereof, etc. etc. that points to an institutional tolerance, or negligent handling, of repeated sexual assaults by a particular sub-set of the student population.
Yes, for the obtuse among us, it happens everywhere. Yes, before we get sidetracked on it, men get raped too. Yes, non-athletes rape too. Yes, there is due process in the U.S. No, to my knowledge, there are no convictions. Yes, we know that everyone thinks rape is bad. Yes, there are probably ways to keep oneself relatively safe on a campus where rape is prevalent.
The point, which eludes so many, is that when this kind of violation becomes a pattern, it is most relevant to look into organizational culture and “tone at the top.” No, it doesn’t solve all the world’s problems, but it does start the process to solve THAT problem at THAT place. Until you change the culture, it will continue to be a problem.
CEOs go down over things like this. Boards fire CEOs for the wrongdoings of mid to low-level employees all the time. When the cultural tone of a place is rotten, you cut it off at the head. That’s what works. That’s what we’re talking about here. Not some senator who was a Rhodes Scholar at Stanford. Cheese and Rice.
That all of this sh*t is happening at an expensive, conservative and religious campus is not really a surprise to most of us. But it should be a surprise to some, and it does point to a rich hypocrisy of sorts.
LOL
This thread is proof that people hear and see what they want to hear and see. If direct contradictory evidence is presented it will be ignored unless it supports one’s position in the first place. That is, unless, one is open minded and able to see the other side of the issue which applies to maybe 10% of the people on this thread.
I read about a study a few years ago that found a link between incarcerated men and men with high testosterone levels. So hopefully you can keep your daughters away from men like that not just the jocks if that is your plan to keep them safe.
Most D1 athletic departments, at least the ones in the P5, the ones swimming in cash from TV contracts, are working very hard to change the jock stereotypical culture and it starts well before the prospective athletes even get on campus. In the old days, who got recruited was based strictly on athletic ability. But after years and years of getting burned most schools nowadays check out character issues before they let the athlete get the scholly. Smart. Self serving but also smart. The NFL, as I mentioned earlier, is also weeding out bad apples once they screw up.
But don’t blame the NFL for guys screwing up. They deserve an opportunity to play their sport and/or engage in their career. If they screw up blame the responsible party. Personal accountability still matters. Honesty and fairness are not gender specific. You either are honest or you are not. The only reason Baylor is on the hook is because they tried to cover it up.
“I am totally missing your point MiddleburyDad2. What is is? Where are you sending your daughters that are so safe that you don’t have to worry?”
@twoinanddone , setting aside your rhetorical question for the moment, the issue at play here is whether we have an institution of higher learning that has been taking seriously the issue of sexual assault and female student safety. Within even the most generous timeframe I’ve read, 52 allegations of rape, and 5 gang rapes, is an astonishing number of allegations. If even a fraction of that turns out be true, what you have here is a negligence claim.
Tone at the top. Tone at the top. I keep saying it. The answer is not, “well, don’t go to parties where the football players are known to frequent.” That falls into the “she was wearing a tight skirt” and “she was asking for it” category of non-sense. The answer, instead, is that the culture at Baylor probably needs a thorough review and likely a housecleaning at the senior leadership level. If this has been going on as reported, heads need to roll. That’s how you fix things at the organizational level. Not by telling the potential victims to avoid a particular group of students who are there with the school’s sponsorship. It’s not like saying “don’t go to that neighborhood.” The school can’t usually fix a bad neighborhood, and the campus is where it is. But when there is a particular sub-set of the student population who is not only there, but is cultivated and recruited to be there, then that is another matter altogether.
It boggles my mind that any of this needs pointing out.
My one and only daughter is attending no such place because it doesn’t exist. Your hyperbole and rhetoric made no point.
“Do you think there is any college in the US (or the world) that doesn’t have people who have been convicted of crimes attending?”
Of course, every school has them, no college is immune. The difference is how the school, administration, athletic dep’t responds. What type of culture do they foster?
Baylor seems to have done a poor job with response - hopefully things are changing now.
^Exactly.
The victim in the Stamford swim team rape was attacked behind a dumpster. Are you honestly going to tell your daughters to make sure not go near any dumpsters during her four years of college?
“If direct contradictory evidence is presented it will be ignored unless it supports one’s position in the first place.”
And you’re getting this from where exactly? How many times do you need to see the word “if” before you understand it?
And I’m guessing that if your brother had a history of stealing, and 52 people came forward to tell you they’d been victimized by him over the last few years, you’d stand firm on due process and wouldn’t suspect a thing. Right?
Something’s rotten in Waco. I’ve seen this before. The process will play out, and the innocent, if any, will be vindicated. Injustice happens; but we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
“Most D1 athletic departments, at least the ones in the P5, the ones swimming in cash from TV contracts, are working very hard to change the jock stereotypical culture …”
Apparently Baylor didn’t get the memo.
Why don’t we just keep the focus on Baylor here; before too, long we’ll wind up arguing about foreign policy in the Middle East.
“The only reason Baylor is on the hook is because they tried to cover it up.”
Well, that, and the fact that, if the allegations are even partially accurate, a truly remarkable number of sexual assaults were committed by a distinct subset of the population. You may want to silo the responsibility for this on a player-by-player basis and stop thinking right then and there, but most of your countrymen are actually interested in why this kind of thing happens and would like to look into what could be done to prevent it from happening in the future, at least at such a high rate of incidence. It’s not a statistically normal distribution. Maybe one place to start is to wonder whether the very culture that would encourage a cover-up in the first place is at least partially to blame for it happening in the first place.
85 scholarship players, call it 120 men total. Fifty two allegations of rape. Think about that for just a minute.
And isn’t that what happened? Didn’t the football coach get fired? Didn’t the President of the college get fired? Didn’t the players directly accused and arrested get removed from the team/school? Aren’t they continuing to clean up by getting rid of any coach that has bad behavior immediately? What is it that you want this ‘corporation’ to do that it isn’t doing?
I do not agree with the Dear Colleague letter requiring schools to discipline students (and non students) for off campus activities. Call the police if a crime happens off campus. Hire lawyers. Use the system, not a panel of 3 art professors and 2 sophomores majoring in criminal justice to decide crimes.
The victim in the Stanford (not Stamford - different school) swim team case was off campus. I tell my kids not to be alone, not to be drunk, not to put themselves in unsafe places. Do they listen? I hope so (and they are rather boring kids anyway). I know that when DD#1 left an event with her sorority on campus, when she hadn’t been drinking, she had to be escorted home to her dorm which was like 5 blocks away. No special risks, she just needed to leave an event as she was feeling sick, and she wasn’t allowed to leave alone. Could she have left a class alone? The library alone? The dining hall (even going through tunnels alone)? Sure, but the Greeks are wearing belts and suspenders, double safe, because they are always accused of dangerous behavior. Daughter felt it was overkill, I thought it was good, and hope she’ll remember it if she has to make the same decision in the future.
Of course they can be assaulted by their own boyfriends or boyfriends of roommates or someone else studying in the library. At any school. Even near a dumpster. But there are ways to reduce that possibility, and I think that happens by teaching safety tips, traveling in groups, not getting pass-out drunk, looking for exits, choosing friends wisely.
Can’t Baylor girls do that? Yes, I would send my daughters to Baylor if that’s where they wanted to go.
They fired President of the school, head coach of football team and every one else who tried to protect players. They are re-hauling whole athletic department and whole title lX department. What else do you expect, firing chemistry professors and finance directors? Rest of the school had nothing to do with it.
“what is that suppose to mean?”
It’s supposed to mean that you shouldn’t have to avoid any group of fellow students in order to be physically safe.
192 and #193,
Totally agree. Yet some folks are going to pontificate that “if” changes don’t get made blah blah blah. Wow. Just wow. And I’ve said virtually the same thing upthread.
And when I pointed out Baylor is an outlier and that most athletic’s department people don’t allow the jocks to assault attack and maim at will and challenged others to give examples of what happened at Baylor happening anywhere else and the only thing I got was #166 which cited ALLEGATIONS at Colorado in 2004. One example. 13 years ago. Not even proven. What? I thought our D’s were not safe because this is happening all over the country???
Like I said Baylor is an outlier. In fairness, I think what happened at the AF Academy was similar but to suggest or claim that jocks get away with rape at multiple schools and everyone looks the other way to win games is BS.
@GoNoles85 , [sigh]:
The “if” has been used consistently in this thread, mostly by me, to appease you and your point concerning the possibility that this is all just a big, made-up affair and that the boys are due their day in court. More succinctly, the “if” is for you. It has nothing to do with the “changes need to be made” point.
@SugarlessCandy and @twoinanddone , re #192 and #193, yes. And? Perhaps you’ve missed the one or two posts in this thread vociferously advocating a “wait and see” and “it happens everywhere” and “punish the guilty; no more need be done” approach.
My posts merely support the dismissal of the senior administrators and anyone else running the school who was either complicit or negligent in their part of all this.
I don’t think anyone advocates the tarring and feathering of innocent faculty and students. That’s more ‘water is wet’ advice. Their football team might not be competitive for a while. If that’s the punishment you’re worried about, sorry, I can’t go there with you.
The on and off campus point is a slightly different point and, in some contexts, a more subtle one. But it should go without saying that the location of the act is not always dispositive. But we’re not really talking about that - the deflectors in the thread are talking about that.
Here, we are trying to discuss the general point of a bunch of athletes who’ve allegedly run amok on their campus. Whether the alleged acts were committed on or off campus, in this case, would be determinative of nothing. The issue is whether you have institutional complicity, implied or otherwise, in the criminality of a subset of students who were not only admitted to the school, but recruited to be there and, allegedly, protected by the school. All of this focus on the practical ways a person can keep themselves safe is interesting, but it’s another topic for another thread - that is, unless you think the safety-related choices of the young women involved somehow mitigates something. If that’s your point, then I’m all ears. Otherwise, I don’t understand why you bring it up.
I’m sorry that this point is going over so many heads. Before the election, I would have been surprised. Now, very little surprises me.
On a side note, two PSU administrators who covered up the Sandusky affair plead guilty recently. I wonder if you will be seeing something similar from the Baylor case in a few years.
@GoNoles85 , well, if the Baylor matter stands as alleged, I sure as hell hope it’s an outlier.
But if you don’t realize that babysitting division 1 football and men’s basketball programs is a full-time job across the nation, then I can’t help you.
No, to dispose of the obvious, not all, or even most, division 1 football players are rapists or thugs or bad kids.
Is Baylor an outlier w/ 52 and 5? Again, hopefully. Those are big numbers for that kind of serious crime. Are sexual assaults on women, and physical assaults on men and women, by football players and, less often, basketball players, a rare occurrence on college campuses? I don’t think so.
There was some kind of crap involving a football player at my alma mater every year I was there. Not like this, no, but then again, that was Stanford, which filters a lot more than any other D1 program outside of the Ivy League, Duke and the Service Academies.
@GoNoles85 - If I understand what you are saying, and I have been trying, its that you think they have fixed the issues and everything is fine there now. I am not sure if you agree that any further punishment from the NCAA is warranted, but you appear comfortable not waiting to see what the NCAA says.
I think where we differ is that I guess I am not so forgiving, especially given the magnitude of the problem and the coverup. I am not convinced they have overhauled the athletic dept and gotten rid of all the bad apples. I don’t think I will be convinced until at the very least the NCAA hands down some severe punishment.