Well, I don’t think it’s really relevant to the subject at hand, but there’s something to be said for the discontentment bred by having too many options. We can see this in basic market research, where having too many products available to buy can result in paralysis, but I think I’ve felt it in my own life with regards the concept of career/family balance. Fear of making the wrong choice, multiplying the opportunities for regret, constant comparisons to others who have made other choices… yeah, I can see how that would breed a different sort of freedom-related discontent.
Agreed.
Human beings, in general, don’t always seem to know what we really want or need. Then again, having others choose for us is often worse. Having government or some external authority choose doesn’t seem to lead to good results either.
And they don’t say “ignorance is bliss” for nothing.
But the point iiiandyiii (I think it was?) has been making (and I agree) is that this just amounts to an argument that happiness (as self-report of satisfaction) isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and is not what people actually want, and is not how we should measure well-being. Above I tried to motivate the view that, in fact, given the choice, we’d prefer a state in which we have had the chance to suffer important regrets to a state in which we feel pretty happy about things in general, if given the choice.
ETA I should note I don’t know whether you’d agree or disagree with what I just wrote, I’m just adding it to the conversation to highlight the idea.
You don’t think houses that consistently host unsupervised parties with alcohol and often other drugs might have a higher incidence of rape? I mean, at my college, you couldn’t even have the opposite sex in your dorm past 11:00.
I’m not saying college rape statistics are not higher than the base population, but it just seems like frat parties would magnify all the risk factors.
But it’s not as though college parties that aren’t hosted by frats are supervised or more likely to be drug/alcohol free. (Who would “supervise” a college party, anyway?)
When was this? I’ve never heard of a college in modern times having that kind of policy about who can visit (except at maybe a very conservative/religious institution), and I didn’t think you were old enough for the days when that kind of policy was the norm…
As late as the late 1980s my state university still had strict “visitation” rules in dorms.
1996, UNT, no opposite-sex visitors after 2AM. (I just confirmed the accuracy of this with my wife, who lived in the same dorm building.)
Which is a ridiculously late time, of course, and AFAIK the rule was never enforced. But it existed and we all knew about it.
Yeah, might as well just wait a few hours till dawn if you’re bringing someone home for a hookup and you don’t make the 2 AM call. 
Well, my ignorance was fought! At my college, guests who didn’t belong to the college had to be signed in (so technically, all guys did end up getting signed in, since even if they went to the university but a different college, they needed to be signed in), but you were allowed to have any guests, male or female, visit at any time (this was b/w 2002 and 2006). Guests staying for several days was a different policy, but there were no official barriers to hooking up or anything.
I didn’t live in the dorms at UCF but no “outside” visitors were allowed in the dorm rooms after midnight (that is, people who didn’t live in that particular building.) No men were allowed on the female-only floors after 10 or 11. This was in the early 2000s.
AIUI, back before the drinking age was raised to 21, it was common to hire an off-duty cop to hang out and be a bouncer. Many (most?) fraternaties have paid staffers onsite: “resident advisors” or even just the cook/housekeeper.
The higher drinking age means no adult can hang around to keep an eye on things, lest they be guilty themselves.
Rolling Stone retracts the story with apology.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/12/05/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-story/19954293/
I actually ended up looking for stats on this, and yes, houses and parties with alcohol and large amounts of people increase the risk of rape… but this is not limited to frat parties.
So one of the years I was in college, I lived in a big house off-campus with 5 men, my current husband included. A few of the men were not the most respectful or responsible sort, and had a tendency to just decide to throw big, destructive, drunken parties without the consent of all the housemates (namely: my husband and I.)
So every so often, about 100 people we didn’t know would show up at our house and trash the place. This happened at least twice that I recall. After the first time we just left the house and didn’t return until after cleanup. Those parties were completely out of control, and resulted in binge drinking, drug use, property destruction and random assholes puking in the house and sleeping on the front porch. I have no doubt that the overall risk of rape at that house was roughly the same as it would be at any frat house. Some of the guys I knew in college had terrible attitudes toward women but I don’t think they would commit rape. However, that doesn’t mean their friends of friends of friends wouldn’t commit rape. And one of the guys who did live in my house once got drunk enough to scream, ‘‘I wanna rape you!’’ at some random woman in the street (to his genuine, immediate shame.)
So I think I have a fair idea of what non-frat house parties look like, the sorts of attitudes and cultural norms that are associated with them, and I see them as essentially no different than fraternities.
Yikes.
Not all men are rapists, and they shouldn’t all be blamed as if they were. Not all frat members are rapists, and they shouldn’t be blamed as if they were. Not all women who allege rape are lying, and they shouldn’t be blamed as if they were.
Regards,
Shodan
Not all journalists are horrible fact checkers, and they shouldn’t be blamed as if they were.
Any other group that needs covering?
Nobody ever says all journalists are bad fact-checkers, but people do seem to say the other stuff.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, if I could go back and edit the OP, I might be pitting the Rolling Stone for bad journalism.
The privacy rights of students would probably have prevented them from confirming the rape allegations with the University, but they almost certainly could have checked the party dates at the frat house and probably the membership of the named “rapists”.
Stuff like this is why the NY Times has added their ombudsman position.
I won’t say that Rolling Stone wouldn’t deserve such a Pitting, but has the information you quoted in the OP been challenged? The only factual errors I’ve heard about are related to Jackie’s story, not the way UVA handles rape complaints. The university really is under Title IX investigation. I haven’t heard that they’ve denied the RS claim that they haven’t expelled anyone for sexual assault in the past 16 years, not even students who admitted to it. Regardless of the problems with the RS story, it sounds like there really are serious problems at UVA.
It boggles the mind that they did not attempt to contact the alleged rapist to get his side of the story, instead acceding to the accusers request that they not do so. What sort of journalist does that?
Wow.