Students leveling accusations of assault are automatically described as “survivors” or “victims” (not alleged victims or complaining witnesses), implying that their accusations are true.Much more at the link. There's also "The White House Flunks a Test on Sexual Assault/An administration task force ignores the rights of the accused," by Matt Kaiser and Justin Dillon in The Wall Street Journal, which is written in blander terms. ("Being a victim of a sexual assault is a horrible, life-altering thing. So, too, is being falsely found to have committed a sexual assault. Schools need processes that are fair to both accusers and the accused.") In less bland terms, there's KC Johnson's "The White House Joins the War on Men."
When you categorically presume the good faith, infallible memories and entirely objective perspectives of self-identified victims, you dispense with the need for cumbersome judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings and an adversary model of justice. Thus the task force effectively prohibits cross-examination of complaining witnesses: “The parties should not be allowed to cross-examine each other,” the report advises, denying the fundamental right to confront your accuser.
May 6, 2014
The White House task force report on campus sexual assaults "reflects a presumption of guilt in sexual assault cases that practically obliterates the due process rights of the accused."
Writes Wendy Kaminer, noting that the report titled "Not Alone" would be more aptly named "Believe the Victim":
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My son goes to college next year. This should be required reading.
Judicious culture in examination of sexual assault, if it ever arrives (which I doubt), will be at least one more generation away. Too many myths, and too much victimological politics.
Not just women, but altar boys and priests and soldiers and students of both genders are wrapped up in this. It's a new religion, captured by politics.
And I'm sure men -- white men, especially -- who complain about this on Campus will be told to 'Check their privilege'
If someone is a victim, we SHOULD believe them.
It is people who are NOT victims that we should not believe. I understand the intent; to protect victims from being victimized again. But, the accused deserves a right to some defense. Part of that right is confronting your accuser; how is any judgment against someone legitimate if he or she can't stand in front of the person accusing them and ask questions like: "Are you sure it was me? Have we met before?"
I worked as an RA; rape accusations were taken seriously at my campus. And, at least from what I saw, people were treated fairly on both sides.
Want to know the best way to remove a lot of false accusations of rape?
Pass a law: Any rape reported to a university must be reported to the police, who will handle the investigation. Anyone who does not is culpable of whatever crime we see fit.
Let's take away the extra judicial power we've given to campuses to act as investigators and jurors over their own little fiefdoms. Rape is a serious enough crime that the real police need to be involved; this isn't mild hooliganism or a late night party.
These cases will be decided by credentialed experts, people who have read and in some cases even written books. So don't worry about a thing. Its all good.
"Here's one line from the Task Force Report: "Victims who want their school to fully investigate an incident must be taken seriously - and know where to report." - See more at: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2014/04/the_white_house_joins_the_war_.html#sthash.FJQ3EwY2.dpuf"
-- The right place to report is the police, not the university. The university has a conflict of interest. If a landlord had 20% of its female tenants being raped annually, we'd have a serious problem.
One way to reduce rape at colleges would be to get rid of the dorm system entirely.
I would have sexually assaulted many more women in college but there really wasn't the time, what with the commuting, and the two jobs, and the studying and all.
Bob Ellison said...
Judicious culture in examination of sexual assault, if it ever arrives (which I doubt), will be at least one more generation away. Too many myths, and too much victimological politics.
Not just women, but altar boys and priests and soldiers and students of both genders are wrapped up in this.
I'm a veteran, as was my father, brother, and both of my stepsons. Most of my coworkers are also veterans. None of us are going to encourage our children or grandchildren to join the military. Quite the opposite, actually, and for this very reason. One of my coworkers is a Colonel in the reserves. He listed the "political officers" that he's required to have in his unit that report directly above him in the chain of command. It's similar to the hated political officers in the old Red Army.
I don't think I'll be encouraging my grandsons to attend a university, either. They already are attending schools where boys are considered defective girls. Let them learn a trade away from the maddening PC crowds that are running colleges today.
When it comes to thought, the opposite of diversity is university.
What further need have we of witnesses?!?!
This horror show will go on until someone has the time, money and fortitude to launch and carry forward a billion-dollar lawsuit against a university for ruining a young man's life without due process. Sexual assault is a crime and needs to be dealt with in the criminal justice system, not in a one-sided show trial with guilty verdicts practically required.
This interferes with the free exercise of religion. It's difficult to understand how you can kidnap college students and sell them as sex slaves under these regulations. The DOJ in response to CAIR protests is rewriting the rules.
Note how the White House defines sexual assault to include "alcohol-facilitated" intercourse and attempted "alcohol-facilitated" intercourse (except intercourse is referred to as "penetration," which sounds more rapey). See FN 1.
How much longer are parents going to plunk down $160k+ so their white sons can be told they are unwitting racists and even rapists?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/sexual_assault_report_1-21-14.pdf
From KC Johnson -
"The report opens--in its first sentence--with an unequivocal White House acceptance of a preposterous statistic: "One in five women is sexually assaulted in college." (See Christina Hoff Sommers for a debunking.) Since there are more than 12 million women now on campus, that would mean that up to 2.4 million of them either have been raped on campus, or will be before leaving. So the White house is saying that the nation confronts a public safety problem of enormous proportions: a higher rate of violent crime (sexual assault is, of course, a violent crime) than the most dangerous urban areas in the country."
The bias is implicit. To hype the "crisis" the White House Task force is claiming that the level of violent crime on campuses well exceeded the worst crime-riddled black housing project like Cabrini-Greene...or Detroits worst ghetto.
This suggests that if it is believed, rather than just political BS the White House is dispensing...you need what the PJs tried...
1. Security cameras everywhere.
2. Paid informants that tracked who was friends with who, where they met, and what 'situations' were happening.
3. Friendly judges that issued search warrants daily to search and toss living quarters for contraband.
4. Judges that issued warrants to bug ghetto apartments and tap phones.
5. FBI - local police task forces that would sweep in and make examples through mass arrests..
Should campuses, with what the White House says is the worst violent crime problem in the nation - emulate those tactics?
And why are these assault rates so much higher than with on average less well educated less affluent young men and women in other institutions? US Military? Working at Walmart or Starbucks?
Are blacks, responsible for half of other violent crime in America , also involved in this pandemic of campus sexual assault? Should young black males be isolated from the rest of the campus population? Their movements and where they are allowed to go and stay restricted for the safety of all women??.
Would it be best, if black males are the main source of the Rape Culture...to not be admitted to college in the 1st place??
The problem is keeping the original meaning alive at the same time.
Already it needs sexual assault sexual assault to support it.
Sexual assault is criminal behavior. It should be handled by the criminal justice system. Period.
"I was convicted of sexual assault, but not sexual assault sexual assault."
Every crime should have its name doubled when you mean the real thing.
I read somewhere the colleges should be sued on a Title IX claim of unequal treatment of the sexes.
Women are supposed to like sex now, and pursue it vigorously; unlike in my day, when they were not supposed to like sex, and oppose it vigorously.
All proceeding from the undeniable truth that women never lie.
It's an election year and Obama needs the wing-nuts in his base to be fired up. White men don't support his policies anyway, so it's time to fire up the crazy women and get them to the polls in November. Expect more of these policies.
In an article for Columbia's The Blue and White published in January, student Anna Bahr interviewed three sexual assault survivors, all of whom were assaulted by the same man. All of their cases were mishandled horrifically by Columbia according to the "raped" students. One victim, who was anally raped, was outraged that her testimony was called into question -- that student admits in the article that she had had consensual sex twice before with her "rapist" and the "rape" began as consensual sex.
Back in the day at my all female college, we were taught that getting into bed with a male and initiating sex led to SEX-- not rape.
Two young people at a university get drunk and have sex. Only one of them is responsible for his actions. Which one? To know the correct answer, consult the attorney general. Or your student handbook.
If two young gay men get drunk and have sex, both are responsible.
If two young lesbian women get drunk and have sex, neither is responsible.
Maybe its time to get rid of co-ed universities and colleges. Woman to woman's colleges and men to men's only colleges.
I find it interesting that alcohol has such different affect on men and woman. On woman it completely wipes out their ability to say no or to be capable of consenting but on men it has no such affect. perhaps woman shouldn't be allowed to drink since it affects their abilities to such a large extent.
As noted by another commenter above, why are the colleges involved with the investigation at all? Criminal action has been alleged and the proper party to investigate criminal conduct is the police.
One way to reduce rape at colleges would be to get rid of the dorm system entirely.
We've had dorms for decades. Maybe there is a change in the kids' education about such things?
If someone is a victim, we SHOULD believe them.
I think you're missing the point. by your statement, if someone makes an accusation, they are de facto a victim, implicit in this is that in order to be a victim, there must be an attacker. In short, you've convicted (and found guilty) the other party before any investigation. Way to go matthew! Due process indeed!
No means no. That's not hard to understand.
Unfortunately a lot of other things mean no as well. Including yes under certain circumstance. (What circumstance is still evolving.)
All this because apparently women are too weak, timorous or foolish to say no.
hawkeyedjb said...
Two young people at a university get drunk and have sex. Only one of them is responsible for his actions. Which one? To know the correct answer, consult the attorney general. Or your student handbook.
5/6/14, 12:22 PM
He has it right, but missed the irony, in attempting to use Title IX against males, they are committing clear, direct Title IX violations by discriminating overtly on the basis of sex (Male).
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
If two students have a drink, then have sexual relations and you punish only one, and you have a pattern of doing that only to males, you are going to lose a suit.
In many of the cases we read about, the "sexual assault" consists of voluntary intercourse by two drunks. Which reminds me:
We watched "High Society" the other night, and there's a scene where Grace Kelly, recovering from her hangover from the night before, asks Frank Sinatra whether "anything happened" when they were together last night. Frank responds that nothing happened, because she was drunk, and "there are certain rules."
Fathers, if you have sons, teach them those rules. Mothers, if you have daughters, teach them that a lot of men don't know those rules.
It's probably good that this is being brought into the open where people who are not aware of the degradation of a college education get a chance to see how students are treated today and can make judgements based on their own experience; i.e. when you get drunk you do stupid things and/or things that you regret shortly afterward.
Young men and women abuse drugs and alcohol. Their judgment is impaired and the normal inhibitions are greatly reduced. They pair up and have sex. The men are guilty of rape.
Thank God my sons are past this. My youngest daughter graduated last year and saw none of this. On her graduation day, she called the cops on a friend who was drunkenly beating up his girlfriend. She screamed at him to stop and when he started for her, she locked herself in her car and called them.
No sexual assaults. She is pretty and social but never saw anything like the stories.
So as I understand this, once you become a Student you sacrifice your Constitutional rights? If there is an assault or rape, why are not the police called? Or does College campuses their own special Countries or something like that?
The solution to the campus situation is obvious - let men and women exchange signed and dated permission slips that they consent to having sex that evening. No "morning after" regrets, no "he said - she said". Show the slip and you can't call foul. I bet we could even have a phone app for it too - "Consent-Away" or something catchy like that.
Sad that it's come to this level.
If a crime has been committed call the cops. Why the need for amateur hour? You can bet your ass Duke university was glad they didn't have their own pretend court to railroad those frat boys (although they tried) Wonder how much money the university had to pay out to the families on that one?
"The solution to the campus situation is obvious - let men and women exchange signed and dated permission slips that they consent to having sex that evening."
What if she says consent was revoked?
...let men and women exchange signed and dated permission slips that they consent to having sex that evening.
And how will the guy prove that the girl was sober when she signed?
I don't really think that it is the coed dorms. We had those when I was an undergrad over 40 years ago. Rather, I would suggest that much of this is a result of binge drinking, esp on the part of the young women. Back in my undergrad days, you just didn't see much in the way of coeds getting totally bombed. Guys? Sure. Esp. freshman year. Was in a fraternity, and most of the guys had their drinking well under control by graduation, and the rest were destined to be alcoholics anyway. And that was very few. Maybe one per class in the house, if that.
But, as I said, the young women then mostly drank responsibly. Not that we didn't try to get them drunk, but they knew what might happen if they did, and so didn't unless in a relationship with a guy.
Now? Very different. Guys may be drinking a bit more, but it is the women who are drinking a lot more, and doing it mostly on or near the weekends. We are talking 4-6-8 shots in a couple of hours. Maybe more. At my kid's small liberal arts college, they would apparently have 1-2 kids a weekend night "transported" (paramedics responding to alcohol OD - with as many, or maybe even more, young women than young men).
Boys and girls get drunk together every Fri and Sat night and s**t happens. And it isn't that the girls don't know what is likely to happen - likely they had lectures about this in HS, and then again as entering freshmen (freshwomen?) they may start the evening with the best of intentions, but it is apparently quite hard to dissuade many young women to not hook up with random guys after they are well liqured up (not limited to college aged women, but worse there). A lot of sororities have "sober sisters" (maybe 1/3 or 1/4 stay sober at an event to prevent this, with the duty rotating) and the sober ones have their work cut out for them.
So, when these young women get drunk, weekend after weekend, and on occasion end up in bed with some guy as a result, who is to blame? The equally drunk guy, doing what they are wired to do? Or the women who know better, but do it anyway?
This may sound harsh, against women. But one thing that must be kept in mind is that promiscuous sex on the part of young women is still considered a character fault. Getting drunk, really, less of one. Sex is, of course, often quite enjoyable. Moreover, young women are often driven to bond with a guy. So, a lot of this is likely the interaction of a lot of these things, with young women getting sex w/o being considered sluts, but rather just drunkards, which isn't as bad.
"I think you're missing the point. by your statement, if someone makes an accusation, they are de facto a victim"
You missed the second part: "It is people who are NOT victims that we should not believe." The point of investigations is to determine whether a person IS or IS NOT actually a victim [followed by finding the guilty party, if relevant.] Accusers may not be victims, and not all victims make accusations.
The basic problem with putting all of the responsibility for consensual sex with the guys is that it contravenes human nature. Human nature is that males will mostly breed with whatever breeding partners are available. Like males in many species, they don't contribute much in terms of actual resources to the creation of the next generation. A couple of minutes maybe, and a quarter spoonful of replaceable sperm. Females, on the other hand, provide the womb, a rare egg, and 9 months of their lives as the dedicated womb-bearer. Plus a number of years as a parent.
So, the natural urge of males, strongest, of course in college aged men, is to procreate at every opportunity. That traditionally resulted in the most offspring, and most genetic success, which is why the drive is so high.
So, somehow, young males, often as drunk as the females they are with, are supposed to override many millions of years of evolutionary imperatives, while the females are not held to any responsibility for their actions. As with a lot of progressive doctrine - you can't fool Mother Nature. It will fail because it runs counter to human (and animal) nature.
Note that I am not absolving males of responsibility or culpability. But rather pointing out that a double standard, where society requires more, and often much more, than mere acceptance by females, of male advances, to legitimize sex, esp when their judgement is impaired by alcohol (and their youth), is only going to create or worsen the environment they live in. Why are there now more women in college than men? One reason is that it is rapidly becoming a very hostile environment for males.
So, if you have a he says/she says situation, whom should you believe?
Statistically, I might believe the guy. Of course he might be lying to stay in college... But I would suggest that females are typically the more dishonest when it comes to sex. Why? Because of the conflicting nature of human females' evolutionary sexual strategies. Shared with most animals is the drive for superior genes. But unique maybe for human females is the need for a mate to help raise their offspring. These are mostly betas, since by necessity most guys are betas. But, in order for them to commit scarce resources to raising kids, they need assurances that those are their kids, because spending those resources raising someone else's kids is a losing sexual strategy. Those genes will quickly die out. So, the optimal sexual strategies for many women is to get sperm from an alpha male, and then convince her beta mate that they kids are his. And hence a good part of the reason that women cheating on men is usually considered much worse than the opposite, that women have at times been treated as little more than chattel, etc.
Many think that we, as a species, should be beyond this. But watching the raft of mid-day reality shows contradicts that. Central to many of the screaming disputes is paternity. Lie detector and DNA tests are staples of these shows, with actual paternity of a woman's kid or kids often being used as the hook to keep people watching over commercial breaks. Surprising number of times, the mothers are caught lying about this critical fact.
One English term for a laison between a married woman and a man not her husband is cuckhold. I recently found though that Judaism had Mamzer, where this disability was apparently inheritable. In any case, a woman cuckholding her husband, and then deceiving him as to paternity was long considered a capital crime. And, hence, I think, much of what many of us see as much of Islam's War on Women.
A long way of saying that reconciling the demands of the two conflicting sexual strategies of human females may cause females of our species to be less honest, and more devious, about sexual matters than males.
The handling of sexual assault cases by a college has been litigated as a Title IX issue. The result: Two student who have been drinking have sex. The guy gets expelled.
She gets a redo of a regrettable event, and he got laid. What's fairer than that?
The Holy Cross Bleiler case was a nightmare example of the procedural unfairness that is baked into the system. The wording of the definition of sexual misconduct is heavily pro-female. There may be two involved, but 'penetration' is what divides the respective liabilities.
http://offices.holycross.edu/generalcounsel/policies-procedures/sapolicy
It's worth repeating that libruls are, essentially, nasty little pricks. They penetrate our sanity and squirt their noxious seed.
- Krumhorn
I read somewhere the colleges should be sued on a Title IX claim of unequal treatment of the sexes.
I read that also and it made sense. If both parties are drunk, why is it always the man who raped the woman and never vice versa?
I'd love to see a male student make that claim. Just once. Just say "She raped me" and see how long it takes for this to unravel.
In an article for Columbia's The Blue and White published in January, student Anna Bahr interviewed three sexual assault survivors, all of whom were assaulted by the same man. All of their cases were mishandled horrifically by Columbia according to the "raped" students. One victim, who was anally raped, was outraged that her testimony was called into question -- that student admits in the article that she had had consensual sex twice before with her "rapist" and the "rape" began as consensual sex.
Apparently, they feel that they can say no at any point --- including after the start of intercourse.
Remember, the same people running colleges now fought hard against loco parentis rules in college when they attended, only to enforce FAR MORE DRACONIAN rules.
Simple solution: Any sexual assault accusation goes straight to the local police and DA, leaving the university free to continue doing whatever they were doing before the accusation.
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