The proceedings by Yale were closed and are (apparently) protected by privacy laws. There’s just so many things wrong with this situation:
We don’t even know what he is accused of. His lawyers say it wasn’t rape but rather “unconsented to sex”. I haven’t the foggiest idea what the difference between rape and “unconsented to sex” might be, but apparently there is one and according to his lawyers that matters.
The accusation wasn’t made until more than a year after the incident
The formal complaint was filed by a Title IX coordinator and not the victim
It’s a he said/she said situation and I don’t think people can reliably determine when someone is lying in the absence of other evidence
We don’t even really know if it is just he said/she said because we only get one side of the story
His teammates stuck up for him and they were branded as apologists perpetuating a rape culture.
Yale’s not an impartial judge here. Finding him not responsible brings the possibility of million dollar lawsuits and Federal enforcement action. Finding him responsible brings a chance for a lawsuit as well, but I’m not aware of any big settlements or judgement.
I don’t know if he’s guilty or innocent. Nor do I know that he didn’t receive a fair shake. But I know what justice looks like and it doesn’t look like this. His life has been irreparably altered by what looks to be little more than a kangaroo court. I’m not sure if the situation at Yale is better than what was before, or what a better solution is. I’m just glad it’s not me in his shoes.
You don’t seem to know a whole lot about it, about Title IX, or about how universities operate in general. But you seem to know how you feel about it, so that’s good.
universities can expel anyone for any reason. It’s not a court of law.
Just speculating, since most universities have been covering up rape for decades, the fact that he’s being expelled suggests he did something really atrociously bad and he’s lucky to have had university court and not a real court date.
The kid’s life is ruined because of something he chose to do. What, we don’t know.
University tribunals have a much lower standard of proof, much fewer procedural protections for the accused, no requirement of transparency, and much greater incentive to place blame on the accused.
Whether this particular individual committed a crime will never be known. But the fact that a university tribunal found against him is indicative of absolutely nothing.
Let’s not forget the disturbing trend of such tribunals and their proceedings being eviscerated in real courts.
Again, this has nothing to do with what may be a very real, very raw experience for his accuser; but whatever he got doesn’t appear to remotely resemble due process.
Looking at the timeline (if correct) unless there’s some unrevealed smoking gun in the woodpile it’s pretty much a straight “he said - she said” so Yale’s ruling based the “preponderance of the evidence” statement is interesting.
The boy and his father are going to war with Yale over this and assumedly have the resources to do so, it’ll be interesting to see if their case has traction and how Yale’s deliberative process in expelling him worked.
This was explored in depth this thread linked below. Most college tribunals do not rule on the rape as a matter of law but as an internal administrative discipline matter. Some say this differential procedure is necessary and desirable vs pursuing it as criminal matter as police are sometimes unsympathetic and insensitive to the claims of rape victims.
Plus there’s this federal policy re the NYT story below which (it is claimed) is what is *really *pushing Yale to be fairly aggressive in this matter re booting him.
the culture surrounding high school and college sports is rotten to the core. Coaches and administrators do their damndest to make sure players can more or less get away with murder, all to protect the program.
the whole thing needs to be excised like the cancer it is.
It’ll probably take a bunch of lawsuits before colleges and universities stop investigating crimes with the aid of “five trained members of the (campus) community”*, and turn over all such cases to outside professional sex crimes investigators, with the penalty for conviction not being expulsion from school, but jail time.
*when I read this phrase, I get an image of seals on platforms, barking in unison.
I just read an article in the NYTimes where the player’s lawyer is asserting that the player and woman in question had had sex 3 times previously. The 4th time she claims she said No, he says it was consensual, and that she left but came back to spend the night with him, then reported a Title IX violation a year later.
I have no dog in this hunt and if a woman is claiming nonconsenual sex she must be respected and the incident investigated. Within that context, if some of the stuff stated above it true, it seems to portray the situation as more gray vs. black and white.
It is an outrage that univerisities are expected to exercise administrative discipline over a criminal justice matter. This is not the university’s problem. If a woman has been raped, she can go to the police. That’s the entire reason we have a criminal justice system.
Not necessarily. Several universities are being investigated for exactly the opposite - expelling students based on little more than an allegation of misconduct. One example.
It’s a very difficult situation. Letting the police handle the investigation sounds good, as does due process, but that can take months (or longer). How do we balance the rights of the accused and accuser in the interim?
This link includes more information about what happened (from the defense’s POV). Importantly for this type of thing, it claims that the assertions about having sex on diff occasions, etc., are all corroborated by the woman’s statement.
It sounds like you don’t think he received a fair shake, given this statement, “I know what justice looks like and it doesn’t look like this. His life has been irreparably altered by what looks to be little more than a kangaroo court.”
No, it’s not. Colleges do not have “jurisdiction over” felonies. They have the authority to enforce their own codes of conduct. The expulsion has no effect on any parallel criminal proceeding.
Some colleges have been accused of failing to report crimes to law enforcement, which is something that should absolutely happen. But that’s an entirely different issue.