…yes, but the flipside of that argument is that a private educational institution has the right to control the level of interaction on its campus in service to its academic mission, that it has a right to demand a standard of conduct that is higher than merely “non-criminal,” and that the institution has the right to punish non-criminal behavior and cull its community accordingly.
Do I think that the Yale, Columbia, Harvard Law, and Stanford cases are positive examples of this flipside? No. But that doesn’t mean that the argument is as meritless as you present it to be.
Yes, but if you are going to set yourself up as a defacto court and grant yourself the power to levy life crushing penalties based on scenarios where there is often zero evidence of the assault, other than the accused and accusers claims, and the standard for deliberation is utterly opaque then you had best expect to get sued again and again by punished parties who feel the deliberation was unjust. Creating an extra-judicial structure with real power to punish because the victims are uncomfortable with normal law enforcement and prosecutorial procedures is going to blow up in your face at some point. The solution is to make law enforcement better educated and more responsive to dealing with sexual assault allegations not pushing the job onto college administrators.
Ah, the pieces start to fit together, then. Assuming that the woman did not actually say “no”, or take clear actions to the same effect, then what she did probably constituted implied consent, which would mean that an accusation of rape wouldn’t stand up. However, if she also did not actually say “yes”, then she did not give affirmative consent, hence the school’s description of the event as “unconsented to sex”. One must wonder, though, if that’s the standard: Did the man ever give affirmative consent? Could he turn around and bring the same claim against her?
But, the question is, how does she or he prove a negative?
Does she have to prove she didn’t affirmatively consent? Does he have to prove she did? What happens if neither can do so, and there is no other evidence?
These are the questions that worry me from a procedural standpoint.
In the case of the Yale scenario, if the accused lawyer’s timeline scenario is accurate it would be interesting to see how the Yale tribunal members are defining “preponderance of evidence”. If there is literally nothing more to this than “he said - she said” as the basis for decision they are potentially in for a huge whipping by the kid’s attorney.
He’s not entirely wrong, inartfully though he may have presented it.
There is a strong, and openly acknowledged, general trend in discipline in academia, particularly with regard to sexual conduct, toward simpler elements of the offense and a lower threshold of proof.
I, and many others, am dismayed by this. The accused has rights, and is entitled to a fair process to adjudicate an issue, particularly when the punishment- expulsion, social stigma, monetary loss, loss of time, emotional distress- are so significant.
It’s ok to say that the situation (women being assaulted) needs a remedy while still decrying the remedy that has been instituted.
Here’s a link to the transcript from a skit on SNL about a new policy at Antioch College in Ohio. They’re parodying the requirement to seek consent for each further step in intimacy. The skit is over 22 years old, so schools have been dealing with this issue for a long time.
If “you shouldn’t have been alone with a guy you barely knew” amounts to blaming a woman for being raped, then “you could try only having sex with people you trust” is surely also a blatant case of blaming a man for being falsely accused of rape.
Either victim-blaming is OK regardless of gender, or it’s not OK regardless of gender. Which way do you want to go on this?
That’s an interesting point. Maybe she raped him, and he never reported it because of the uphill battle he would face trying to convince the authorities, and the public shaming he would face where people blamed the victim.
It’s not so much a trend as a response to a Federal mandate. For example, the preponderance of evidence standard is part of the Dept. of Educations Title IX guidelines.
He’s wrong that schools have taken the power to punish upon themselves “because the victims are uncomfortable with normal law enforcement and prosecutorial procedures.” It’s not like schools have just now started expelling rapists.
I have to agree that is true, which, unfortunately, is the case in most rapes. However, perhaps other points came up in the testimony that we don’t know about.
The fact that she waited a year before coming forward makes me more inclined to believe her. If she was just trying to seek revenge for some reason she would have done so at the time.
People don’t just make up rape accusations for fun. The victims who come forward go through hell. I mean, look at this thread. All kinds of irrelevant information was brought up in an effort to discredit the accuser- her sexual history (irrelevant), what she was wearing at the time (irrelevant), what she was doing at the time (irrelevant). The only thing that is relevant is did a sex act occur (if the guy was in another state at the time, he’s off the hook) and did both parties give consent?
Yes- however, he (inartfully) touches upon a very important point, that is, that significant consequences are being handed down without the sort of due process, transparency, and evidentiary standards that typically accompany such consequences.
People don’t make up rape accusations for fun, but they do make them up.
And, in cases like this, when you cannot know whether a sex act occurred, and whether it was consented to by both parties, the other things you listed, like sexual history (with the other party), what she was wearing, and what she was doing, are quite relevant, because they shed light on what may have happened.
Except, not. “Positive consent” generally includes non-verbal consent. The scenario being addressed is “Well, she was laying stock still with a look of terror on her face and crying…but she didn’t say ‘no’ so I figured it was okay”.
I thought the scenario being addressed was that she got into bed naked with someone she had previously had sex with. So she wasn’t exactly stock still before they had sex, and I am not aware of any evidence of the expression on her face.
This situation addressed by positive consent policies. None of us have any particular information of value on this incident.
Life is complicated, people experiencing trauma often don’t react in purely rational ways, and stories on paper don’t always explain everything.
I was in a situation once where I got into a man’s vehicle. He drove me to a a dense urban residential street and stopped the vehicle, after which he began to touch me in a way I found threatening. I did not leave the vehicle or call anyone. Instead, I went with him to a third location, where I exited the vehicle. Then I returned to the vehicle, asked him to come with me towards the place I was staying, and asked him touch me in a way that involved my entire body. I did not report him. The event was so traumatizing I suspect I showed symptoms of mild PTSD for years afterward.
Crazy? Asking for it? Lying? Exaggerating? If you read that, it may look like that.
The full story is that I had been badly injured, the man was a taxi driver taking me to help, and that help was behind a six foot high wall that I had no choice but to ask him to help me climb. There were so many messed up things about that night that it took me months to realize how scary that part had been, but through whatever alchemy of trauma, that part took the longest to heal.
Assault is not always neat and clean, and doesn’t always make a neatly packaged story.
Don’t we already have a system in place for this sort of thing? The criminal justice system? Why are Universities even involved in these sorts of things? The proper authorities should be contacted right away and it should proceed from there.