That applies to ANY violent crime. Go to the -real- police and let them try to make a proper case of it, have it be on an official record and investigated outside the institution. Colleges are historically bad at this.
Just because there is an internal administrative sanction process that does not require the same standards of evidence as criminal court to act against the accused, does not mean that it will automatically be weighted to favor the accuser(*). People not wanting to get involved in the whole rigor of the actual criminal process is one of the things that offenders count on.
(*and that it may not deliver the result the accuser seeks does NOT mean it’s not serious or that it’s pointless or that it’s a sham)
Who would want to touch an old mattress that had been dragged around a college campus for a few days, let alone a few years. There isn’t enough Purell in the world to make seem like a rational action.
For what it’s worth there hasn’t been any trial involving Nungasser, and there have been three administrative “investigations”:
*Complaint 1, that he groped a woman at a party
*Complaint 2, that he repeatedly committed acts of “intimate partner violence”
*Complaint 3, that he raped Sulkowicz.
When the university investigated Complaint 1, they found against Nungasser and sentenced him to disciplinary probation. He appealed, but by the time the appeal was dealt with, the accuser had graduated and refused to have anything to do with it. Similarly, the investigation into Complaint 2 was dropped after the accuser refused to participate. When Sulkowicz did eventually go to the NYPD, nearly two years after the alleged assault, she then declined to participate in that investigation because she found it to “draining”.
A good, early summary of events can be found here.
I have very mixed feelings regarding what, if any, obligation people have to report crimes to the police. I bring up the above simply because one of my biggest questions with the Sulkowicz matter has been what she wants. She waited just about the full academic year before making a report to the university. After that, she went to the police apparently because she was upset with how long the university’s investigation was taking – then she refused to participate in the police investigation because it was taking too long.
Well, things take a long time. You can’t have instant justice, and the more time between a crime and the investigation, the muddier everything gets. I can’t help but feel like she wanted to snap her fingers and have the university jump to do her bidding without any sort of due process, which does make me wonder as to her motives.
It’s the fact that she’s willing to do her art project but not willing to allow the investigations that gets me. If it’s really rape, let them prove it, then that would actually maybe cause something to happen.
She’s a college graduate. Surely she can figure that out.
same reason Penn State did nothing about Jerry Sandusky. And why some archdioceses of the Catholic Church kept a lid on some priests’ shenanigans. And why Jim Bob Duggar did nothing. And why high schools cover up their football players’ misbehavior.
Well, hang on. They were asked to pursue the case involving Sulkowicz, and they DID pursue the case. Yes, it took a long time; seeking justice often does. I kind of suspect that many of the victims of the Catholic Church pedophilia scandals would have been delighted if it had taken a whole year for their complaints to be heard.
And they DID allow the mattress, even giving her credit for it, and of course that was a constant reminder to everyone on campus that sexual assault is an issue at Columbia. We might try to imagine someone carrying a…I don’t know, a shower head…around State College back before that story broke, explaining to everyone he met that it represents the time that Joe Paterno’s good buddy Jerry raped him…I don’t think that would’ve gone over well with school authorities.
There’s a lot you can complain about wrt Columbia’s actions, but unlike in these other examples, they clearly did not ignore the whole thing. As someone stated above, the fact that the investigation did not turn out the way Sulkowicz wanted it to does not imply that the deck was stacked against her or that administration was never going to rule in her favor no matter what. Fundamentally, she was heard…in ways that the victims of some HS football players, for example, can only dream about.
This story reminds me of the Sign Lady who roamed the campus of East Carolina University around the turn of the century. We’d see her stalking from class to class, dragging a rolling suitcase and carrying a sign with weird sayings. (I wish I could remember them, but it’s been a long fifteen years.) One of my male friends got on an elevator with her once and immediately got a face full of sign. Rumor had it she did it because she had been raped, but you know how much rumor is worth.
It wasn’t an art project or anything like that. It was just annoying.
That’s her claim, but some watching the video said it looked like she didn’t give him time to do so and more snubbed them. Anyone have a link to the video so we can see for ourselves?
I really love me some Patricia Routledge, but I think what was really needed here was a little Hetty Wainthropp, not so much Hyacinth Bucket… eh Bouquet.
Exactly. The media is determined to pursue the threat of uncaring administrators who try to silence rape victims. The actual facts don’t show it. In this case it looks like the accusation is false, but even if it were true, it doesn’t support the idea that the administration is silencing accusers. Quite the opposite, in fact: they trumpeted her claim from the rooftop. There’s a reason Nungasser is suing Columbia, while Sulkowitz isn’t.
One writer crusading against campus rape wrote, “to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.” Looks like others have taken that advice to heart.
In the latest bizarre development, Emma has just released a hardcore porno “art film” in which she enacts something similar to her alleged rape, but “not a reenactment.” The title is “Ceci N’est Pas Un Viol”, I’m not gonna link to it.
Any chance her real mission is to support the traditional Muslim view of women? (That problems will inevitably result if they are allowed to make decisions for themselves, and thus they should always be under the close control of either a father or a husband.)
