February 4, 2012

The NYT "pounced on a murky tale about a star athlete" instead of "the erosion of due process at Yale and throughout American higher education."

Writes Peter Berkowitz in the Wall Street Journal:
The [sexual assault] complaint lodged against [quarterback Patrick] Witt was part of a new system for dealing with sexual-assault accusations at Yale. The school put the system in place at least partly in response to an investigation by the Department of Education stemming from allegations in early 2011 that Yale maintains a campus atmosphere hostile to women. Under the new system, the Times reported, Mr. Witt's accuser chose to file an informal complaint, which does not involve a full investigation or a finding of guilt or innocence....

26 comments:

Palladian said...

I was very hostile to women when I was at Yale, but not for sexual reasons.

Insufficiently Sensitive said...

Due process? We're Yale, we don't need no steenkin' due process.

We don't know anything about civil rights, but we know justice when we invent it.

Bender said...

an informal complaint, which does not involve a full investigation or a finding of guilt or innocence

What a load of crap. Of course it involves a finding of guilt. There is a finding of guilt merely because a complaint is lodged. Accusation = guilt. That's how it's done these days.

Too damn bad for the guy who is factually innocent.

edutcher said...

A little like the Komen-Himmler's Penpal thing. To actually go into why it all went so wrong would be to question and, dare I say, criticize feminism.

And PC.

What, you expect the Gray Lady to violate the principles of Leftism?

mariner said...

Yale maintains an environment very hostile to freedom.

That's a real shame for America's third-oldest university.

William said...

It doesn't mention the race of the athlete involved. If he's black, it's another example of the racial paranoia that black people in this country are subject to. If he's white, it's another example of how arrogant, overbearing jocks, especially those from elite schools, feel entitled to inflict themselves on women. I sincerely hope that the disciplinary authorities have not muddled their stereotypes.

Mark O said...

Remember this immutable truth, women don't lie about sex---except maybe to their boyfriends.

This is an interesting country we've got now. Mostly privileges without rights.

Submit.

dbp said...

Yale and the New York Times are on the same page: They are utterly committed to "fairness" and have abandoned the concept which actually produces fairness--Justice.

Automatic_Wing said...

Looks like New Englanders still need their witch hunts after all these years. Maybe they'll take this guy and dunk him in a tank of water to see if he's really a rapist or not.

Moose said...

Is there something surprising about this? I'm confused...

X said...

Witt should add Mark Fabiani to his team. He's got experience dealing with leaks.

Paddy O said...

It's her body, she should be able to claim harassment without any man daring to tell her otherwise.

Who does Witt think he is, anyhow? It's double harassment because he's sexually harassing her by trying to dominate her personal narrative by denying the first instance of harassment.

DADvocate said...

Due process is an inconvenient obstacle to leftist goals. Women executing their husbands for supposedly being abuseers, no problem, no due process for the dead guy. Yale, Duke, everywhere.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

This is of a piece with the little boy who gets expelled from school for making a gun barrel of his finger and going "bang". Our society is being feminized, to the great detriment of all the things that men excel in, things that are necessary for a successful society.

edutcher said...

That's a slur on most women.

This is about the Left putting themselves in a position where they can dictate every facet of your life and you don't dare object.

foxlets14 said...

"In fairness to Yale, they are giving male students adequate warning that Yale is a hostile
environment to men. Any prospective male student that voluntarily chooses Yale, by default, acknowledges the risk of such an occurrence and should accept the destructive outcome as an appropriate element of their experience at Yale."
http://tinyurl.com/74qp383

Lyssa said...

It seems like I'm constantly hearing stories and complaints about communities/schools/whatevers that are clearly liberal, enlightened, well-educated, east coasters who certainly pride themselves on being far more progressive than flyover country being hostile to women in ways that are completely unfamiliar to me in my buckle of the bible belt red state.

YoungHegelian said...

Where is Yale's board of governors in all this mess? Who exactly is running the show at Yale that lets something like this happen with no further review?

In terms of corporate PR, Yale seems to rank up there with other PR giants like the Susan G. Kommen foundation.

I can't believe that Yale isn't getting donations rescinded even as we speak. And if you were some wealthy legacy, would you send your son knowing that one pissed-off girlfriend could wreck his career?

Big Mike said...

I don't much care for Kathleen Parker's choice of Republican presidential candidates, but her takedown of the the Times' story on Patrick Witt is just about perfect.

Yes, Patrick Witt is a white man. You don't think the Times would run a story like this about an African-American athlete, do you? I mean, it's the Times for Pete's sake.

Phil 314 said...

What is this "due process " of which you speak?

(PS Pictures, please!)

mccullough said...

Unfortunately this isn't limited just to schools like Duke and Yale.

Joe said...

Why the hell does Yale even have a football team? College sports are idiotic and getting worse.

raf said...

...would you send your son knowing that one pissed-off girlfriend could wreck his career?


Doesn't even have to be a girlfriend. Could just be a "woman [who feels] scorned."

wv: tippl. Speaks for itself.

Sydney said...

I read that article last week in the Times and thought at the time it was an awful smear job. And I don't even like or follow football, I just happened to see it because it was lying in front of me on the kitchen table when I came home. It was all innuendo - no details about the accusation, sly references to his parents' habit of moving him from school to school to improve his footbal career, etc. They made it sound like he lied about his reasons for dropping out of the Rhodes scholar interview. In fact, he said he was going to play in the football game. He wasn't going to his interview. The sports writers at the time all inferred that he dropped the interview because he wanted to play football that day, instead. And horror of horrors - he didn't correct their misperception! (How would he do that after they already printed them? Why would he even bother with all the other mess that's going on around him right now.) If a reporter twists every little detail to seem nefarious, then it's hard to take them seriously about the bigger accusation. The Times really isn't worth the paper it's printed on anymore.

JAL said...

If you follow the links from the pieces by KC Johnson at Durham-in- Wonderland and Minding the Campus you get the picture even better as going to the Yale site link (SHARE) shows you more of the process.

Couple things struck me --

#1 Someone at Yale, or the girl, released confidential information. Civil suit anyone? (I am not a lawyer.)

#2 The "informal" process (which this young woman girl used) results in a conviction simply by her starting the process. There is NO investigation.

#2 NO WHERE is there any information on the Yale site (that I could easily find) for the guy to see what HIS resources would be, what his rights are, and what the procedure for responding is.

NO. WHERE. Nada zip zero.

The informal process can be based on a "worry."

I feel for women who are victims of sexual assault and harrassment.

But somebody has to define these terms reasonably. Soon.

jdgalt said...

When an accusation is as good as a conviction, but only when made by someone in the politically favored group, we're in a Reign of Terror.

Now we know what Obama's "change" was all about -- he is our Robespierre. Now we just need our Napoleon to come along. It's already gotten bad enough that he will be an improvement.