Well I made my boys wait until Christmas morning to unwrap their packages, but that’s about as far as I got with impulse control.
@momofhreeboys,
I think your boys have more fun.
Have any of you read this story about an alleged affair and rape at the US Naval Academy? The accusers were female midshipman. The accused was a rifle instructor. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/marine/
It’s a story about a court-martial. The military jurors found him guilty. He went to a military prison. Then he went through a separate process as to whether he should be kicked out of the military. 2-1 the reviewing panel refused to kick him out and said that after reviewing the transcript, they were convinced he was not guilty. The higher ups get annoyed. Guilt is not to be reconsidered.
He contacts the Washington Post wanting publicity for his side of the story. He got more than he bargained for.
Fascinating reading…
It illustrates just how hard it is to investigate these cases.
I want you to be honest with me. I am going to be honest with you.
You have made some remarks in the past about politics being involved in the sexual assault issues.
I had no idea, when I started looking at sexual assaults in schools, this was a political issue. I am amazed this is a political issue. I guess I was a little naive. I first started reading about sexual assaults in schools because a daughter of a friend of mine was raped, as a freshman, at a college. By the way, nothing happened to the guy. My guess is he has done this more than once.
This is a political issue for you, isn’t it?
The choices you gave me in post 226 are your choices. They aren’t the choices. I can’t decide by your posts if I would hire you or not. 
I am amazed when new programs start and they have bugs in them, and people say, “That’s it. We have to shut the program down”.
I worked with a small start up high frequency trading company, There were a lot of bugs in the programs. Nobody said, “That’s it. Better shut down”. And we got rid of bugs and new ones popped up. New bugs were always popping up.
My daughter fixes problems all day long at a billion dollar plus company. The company is not shutting its doors because there are problems.
My wife fixes problems for a living.
The schools are going to have problems with sexual assault issues. It’s going to be 1 1/4 steps forward and 1 step back. (It’s not going to be that linear). It may take 20 years to get something very good. Things take time.
There isn’t going to be perfection. Robots aren’t even perfect.
You made another comment on a healthcare issue. Another issue that has problems. You do realize that the percentage of people with health insurance in this country is at the highest level ever. And no, the federal budget wasn’t busted.
I was a professional gambler. Ok…I was a trader so it sounds better, but I was a professional gambler.
So…
I am 100 percent sure, 100 percent, that if the sexual assault cases in colleges have to go to the criminal court system, this is going to be bad for the victims.
You are right about “Voluntary”. I was just repeating what Yale wrote. You are right. Your post was funny. I like it.
I didn’t write about these sexual assault issue in schools for over 2 months. 3 months. 4 months. I don’t know why I started posting again here. Mental illness? I would prefer to write and read about Steph Curry but there isn’t much interest on this BB about Steph Curry.
Ok @dstark, I will treat your post as serious. The issue of sexual assault is a societal issue. The issue of how to address sexual assault is manifestly a political issue, just like every issue where the question is the exertion of government power to effect behavior.
Certainly the decision to set Title IX policy via a letter rather than through the administrative rule making process was a political act. How could it not be? This was, in my opinion, a mistake. Had the OCR approached its desire to insert itself in this issue through the normal rule making process, yes, the issue would have involved politics (they all do) and yes the policies would not likely be as victim friendly as they are now. On the other hand, there would have been hearings, and fact finding, a record, and actual rules that would make the 'tweaking" most of us seem to agree is necessary. Instead, we have arguments at the margins, because the “big” issues, whether OCR should be involved at all, what we should be asking the colleges to do, etc were never addressed in an open forum. Until that happens, arguments will always devolve to the lowest common denominator. This makes it much harder to actually get things done. That is really my issue. Understand that at base I am a technician, and still think of myself as a nuts and bolts trial guy.
I would think the analogy to the ACA is obvious. Whether the ACA is a net positive or negative is immaterial to the fact that the administration has been very loath to involve Congress in any of the tweaks that are necessary to implement it, so instead we get great uncertainty in which provisions will be suspended, how others will be interpreted, etc. Blame overreaching democrats or obstructionist republicans, I don’t care. The problem exists.
That’s a great link.
Didn’t Groucho Marx say military justice is a contradiction in terms? Or was it Military music?
Very complicated story. Maybe we should get rid of the military justice system.
It is not immaterial whether ACA is a positive or a negative.
Politics can get in the way of forward progress.
I am more interested in things working.
I can joke and be serious. Sometimes at the same time.
I do appreciate your post #244.
@dstark, if the $90 million crime you wrote about was the one in which you suffered a $35K loss, well, I certainly care, but I had no idea from your posts that it was a crime of that size.
@Consolation, Yes it is true.
$90 million. I was a very small player. No criminal action.
I wasn’t joking about that. I wasn’t joking about my friend’s mom’s murder. The DA told the family they would not want to go trial. I wasn’t joking about the rape of my friend’s daughter. I am guessing the rapist has raped more than one person.
@al2simon, re: your #223. Yes I would be reluctant to label the system as “horrible.” These panels are handling everything under the umbrella of “sexual misconduct.” That includes harassment, stalking, groping, intimate partner violence, voyeurism and of course actual sexual assault. That’s a lot of territory and not all of those things warrant an expulsion. When I look at the Yale Complaint Report I see a system that is flexible enough to address all those categories. The outcomes include counseling, no contact restrictions, training on consent, suspension and expulsion. The variation of those outcomes lends support to my view they are not being heavy handed or looking for reasons to expel. A smaller number of expulsions in relationship to other penalties does not necessarily lead me to conclude it is a failed system.
If there is one thing I have gained from the sexual assault threads, it is an understanding of just how differently people think about sexual assault. In a recent thread we talked about waking up finding we were tattooed without our consent versus waking up finding we had sex without our consent. The views were all very different. How women approach the aftermath of a sexual assault is going to vary.
So we have to acknowledge that there will be cases of an alleged sexual assault where I will file a formal complaint looking for a suspension/expulsion, and another woman in the same circumstance might choose an informal route with lesser penalties. For whatever reasons, what she perceives as a just remedy is different than mine. Or perhaps she believes she might be gaining more privacy than she would with filing a formal complaint. So yes, that will result in fewer cases of actual expulsions for sexual assault. But if the complainant is satisfied with a no contact restriction and a housing change/consent training for the accused, that’s her choice. She is pursuing the remedy that she deems appropriate to address the circumstances of her alleged assault. And in my own mind that informal report is better than no report at all. There is some deterrent value with any report, something that has been missing with sexual assault for far too long.
I am still thinking about your comments on the change in the standard of proof. But pre-DCL not all schools were using the “clear and convincing standard” - they were free to choose their standard. I know Stanford and UNC were actually using “beyond a reasonable doubt.” MIT and Dartmouth have always used “preponderance of the evidence”- even before DCL.
@HarvestMoon1, do you have a link or some more info for the MIT and Dartmouth standard of proof? I could have sworn MIT was cooperating with Orinceton and Harvard in fighting the investigations launched to change the standard. But I certainly could be wrong.
I love your post #248. The like isn’t good enough.
Have to say, I find this annoying. When discussing this issue with attorneys and experts, I expect the attorneys and experts experts to get the facts right.
Maybe this is wrong. If so, I take what I just said back.
If not…
This changes the argument about lowering the standard. 70 freaking percent…
I know some posters like FIRE. I have found that site has the facts wrong at times.
I am posting this anyway. 
I find this very interesting.
The following is what counts. I learned this after reading posts on CC, I know there are really only 10 schools worth anything in this country.
That’s it? I thought the world was ending with the switch to the preponderance of evidence standard.
Not much of a switch.
People do feel differently. But that does not mean that if I am robbed and decide that the value of what was taken is not worth the trouble of reporting it to the police and chalk it up as live and learn because i left my door unlocked, that does not mean that my neighborhood or my parent or my minister or anyone else is obligated to report it for me. In this Yale case, it was an administrator that “decided” it warranted an investigation etc. I have a problem with that.
How ironic that KC Johnson posted about this and other things this just days before this case hit the news.
I don’t know, I would consider forty percent (39 out of 100) significant. I would also like to know when and how the remaining 60 percent adopted the preponderance standard. If in fact schools were moving towards preponderance pre 2011 and without being nudged that way, it seems like a heck of a lot of effort to mandate it.
I would like to know when the schools switched also. Still…the majority of schools were using the preponderance of evidence standard before that standard was mandated. 61 percent crushes 39 percent.
If 60 to 70 percent of schools already had the preponderance of evidenance standard, that is the majority of schools. That is quite different than if the preponderance of evidence standard was used in 10 percent of the schools.
And I see you already have an excuse. If 60 to 70 percent of the schools already had the preponderance of evidence standard, why does it have to be mandated?
The real question is, if the preponderance of evidence already existed in 60 to 70 percent of the schools, why all the fuss?
Actually, my question was if the majority of schools were already using the preponderance standard, and the trend was going that way, why would OCR burn the political capital via the Dear Colleague letter? That seems to be precisely the kind of thing that could be done by rule making.
@Ohiodad51, I don’t know why. These days, political capital doesn’t matter. The country is polarized.
How the rules are made is just an excuse not to do something.
I did not know the preponderance of evidence standard was so prevalent. You didn’t either.
That’s ok.
But arguing against the preponderance of evidence standard doesn’t hold much water anymore.
what makes you say that?
Which part of what I wrote?
I wrote what I wrote because I think it is true.