I’ve never objected to education?? Must be someone else. I’m ABOUT education before punishment.
Actually I rather like this conclusion of an op-ed piece today:
from
http://www.centredaily.com/2015/06/03/4778207_their-view-justice-on-campus-punished.html?rh=1
Kipnis was misleading. I don’t care about title 9 in her case. She won on that. Fine.
Kipnis was misleading. To me that shows her character. Not good.
I find it interesting when the Rolling Stone article came out people were outraged at the author for writing untruths.
Yet, I don’t see some of the same outrage at Kipnis, Cathy Young, Professor Halley when they write misleading crap. I am still waiting to discover the Oregon school that punishes people for looking like rapists.
I don’t like being mislead or manipulated by anybody. That goes for people I agree with too.
momofthreeboys, in #252
my third paragraph
…
Kipnis: I have no respect for professors unconcerned with their students’ well-being. I would have to put Kipnis in that category based on what I’ve read. She is promoting herself at the expense of students. imho.
crossposted, so adding: I agree with dstark regarding character.
Exactly! I think there are probably tons of males who end up in this situation…accidentally having sex with someone they really don’t like or aren’t truly attracted to, simply because they are too drunk to realize it’s a horrible idea and too drunk to put the brakes on when they should. But how many guys would call this rape and file a complaint? Close to zero, I bet. They are legally incapacitated probably, and it is legally rape I suppose (not sure I even agree with that whole line of reasoning, but it is the law apparently), but the difference comes from male and female attitudes about sexual agency, responsibility, and blame. A guy is more likely to just experience the regret and move on, whereas some females might want to deny any responsibility for the event, due in part probably to the societal stigma and shaming of female sexuality that still exists. (Ask yourself this: do we really think it is ok for a girl to get smashed drunk and have sex with a random guy she hardly knows? Can she do this every weekend with different guys? For many girls they intuitively know that the answer is no, and that they are risking severe social rejection and shaming if they behave that way. But alcohol can make that happen, so placing all the blame fully on someone else would certainly be tempting.) I realize that not all rapes fall into this category and there are certainly sexual predators out there looking for drunk females to assault completely against their will…However I wonder what percentage of total rapes fall into these more fuzzy gray areas. Also, if 87% of campus rapes involve alcohol (I think that is the figure I read earlier in this thread), than that means that eliminating alcohol would reduce the vast majority of rapes. And the remaining rapes (a small percentage of the current number), would be much more clear-cut and easy to prosecute, since sober rapes are mostly going to be obviously pre-meditated and non-consensual events.
That was my typo, that turned the sentence backwards. Giardino, as you say, said his conviction should be overturned because his drunk victim was CAPABLE (not “incapable,” that was a typo) of consent, and therefore the judge should have instructed the jury either that consent was a defense to the crime, or that lack of consent was an element of the crime. The court said the jury didn’t need to be instructed about consent or lack of consent for the crime charged, rape by intoxication, because if a victim can’t legally consent, it doesn’t matter whether they acted like they consented (which the court calls “actual consent.”) In the excerpts I provided, the court said that victims who were physically capable of acting like they consented nevertheless in some cases could not deliver legal consent because they were intoxicated.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/2/8714215/laura-kipnis-northwestern-title-ix
The salon article is written by a professor.
People are responsible for their choices to commit crimes or other offenses. Drunkenness is not a defense to an accusation of committing a offense. If Jane were accused of raping John, drunkenness would not be a defense.
But we are talking about whether he committed an offense, not whether she committed an offense. It doesn’t matter whether she chose to put herself in a position where she might be a victim; that is no defense for him. She does not need a defense for being a victim of an offense. That she chose to put herself in the situation of risking being a victim (by drinking so much) does not excuse him for victimizing her.
He is responsible for what he did-- having sex with someone who could not consent, when he reasonably should have known that she could not consent.
I get what you are saying @chris17mom but shouldn’t we also be asking "do we really think it is ok for a guy to get smashed drunk and have sex with a random girl he hardly knows? Can he do this every weekend with different girls?"Certainly this has bearing on the issue of campus sexual assault. And in the current generation, I would question the truth of the statement that a female faces social rejection and shaming if they have multiple partners. Things have changed – for better or for worse-- but my observation is that this is no longer true. Drinking and hooking up seem to have status today.
I think a lot of the rapes that we discuss on these threads and that are being adjudicated in the Title IX hearings do fall into that fuzzy, gray area where issues of incapacitation and consent are clouded by alcohol. But we aren’t going to make any headway on reducing the number of these incidents by focusing on only what the girls do and how they feel afterward. Unless of course you believe that the majority of these cases involve women who just wake up and are regretful and want some sort of revenge. I do not believe that is the case and think it is an easy and very surface explanation for those who want to avoid placing any responsibility on males.
I think it is pretty clear that on college campuses today both males and females risk a LOT by coupling a random sexual encounter with intoxication. It’s going to take a while for the new paradigm to sink in but I know I am starting to educate my own 16 year old son now.
CF: you made that very clear. Can you do the same thing with professor/student sexual relationships? Is there a parallel? That fact someone is a position of lesser power makes themselves vulnerable doesn’t excuse the person in the position of power from taking advantage of that vulnerability? Or is it completely different?
I just learned yesterday—and given how much I’ve read on the case, I can’t believe I somehow glossed over this earlier—that the Rolling Stone case wasn’t just a false report, it was badly done plagiarism. The reporter took bits from actual cases, changed the names and locations, and in fact lifted chunks verbatim (except the names and such) from previously published sources (including TV scripts!). It wasn’t so much a false report as it was a deliberate provocation, it seems.
I think it is pretty clear that on college campuses today both males and females risk a LOT by coupling a random sexual encounter with intoxication.* It’s going to take a while for the new paradigm to sink in** but I know I am starting to educate my own 16 year old son now*
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
I explained part of this earlier. Yes, colleges can do more, but their hands are tied in many cases by external forces beyond their collective control.
Interesting questions, alh, #1168. In my opinion, it is relatively easy for a professor to awe an academically oriented student, with how much the professor knows and has done. In many cases, developing the knowledge and capability is just a matter of time. Also, there might be some transference going on. Thoughtful and experienced faculty members often realize this.
But there have been many successful and long-lasting faculty/student marriages.
Personally, I support chastity before marriage. This eliminates a lot of the complications.
I’m not sure that professor-student sexual relationships belong in this discussion, but…
For professor-student sexual relationships, there are a couple of issues of concern. First, how should we think about “consent” in the case of the student, who might feel that the professor would retaliate if the student refused consent? That’s the power differential: even though the professor does not explicitly threaten the student, the student always knows that the professor could punish them for refusal. That’s one reason to prohibit sexual relationships where one person has power over the other.
Secondly, and this to me is an important issue, what about everyone else? If I’m another student, I’m going to think that the professor’s boyfriend or girlfriend will be getting special treatment unavailable to me: better grades, plum research assignments that I wanted. IMO, the university should prohibit sexual relationships between professors and the students in their classes or under their supervision for this reason if no other.
This is largely correct, although the distinction is a little finer. The court specified that rape statutes fall into two categories: rape because of lack of consent and rape because of lack of capacity to consent. Rape by intoxication fell in the latter camp. Therefore, consent is irrelevant because it is not an element.
It is also not necessarily the case that drunkenness is not a defense to a sex crime. First, California allows reasonable mistake to be a defense. I’m not sure if that is subjective or objective reasonableness (I may have a chance to take a look later in the day), but if it’s subjective then being too drunk to tell could be a defense. Second, intoxication is a defense to crimes that require people to specifically intend to do the given action (like attempted rape, for example).
There are things they CAN do where there hands aren’t tied dfbdfb. One example where one of my sons attended ( a small, rural notoriously heavy drinking school.) The college got a grant from the state to work on the problem. One of the first things they did was assign (co-ed) housing by AGE so if you were under 21 you had a limited choice of housing and they required all incoming student to live on campus 2 years. They prohibited any alcohol in those dorms and on campus which they later amended so they could serve alcohol at faculty events. Alcohol was allowed in the privacy of rooms of any students 21 years of age or older AND living in those campuses locations that allowed 21 years and up. If a student was caught with even one empty in their room, in their trash, on their person they were cited, fined and their parents were notified. It was a civil infraction in the town to underage drink and the college worked with the local police to crack down and cite kids wandering around drunk off campus and off campus large parties. They worked with the bar owners to help them learn how to identify fake IDs. The kids still drank, but it was a lot more controlled and not so crazy according to my son than his freshman year before the crack down. It was pretty darn effective and they have now continued many aspects of that program and town/gown relations that were always good improved even more because locals didn’t have kids peeing in their buses and dropping cans on their lawns. I don’t “buy” the theory that colleges hands are tied. There are things they can do, the question is do colleges have the fortitude to do it since the concept of party hearty has become ingrained in some of these kids as a “reason” to pick one college over another.
Attempted rape is a specific intent crime? I didn’t know that. Actual rape is a general intent crime: the defendant has to intend to have sex, and to not have legal consent. They don’t have to intend to rape. I thought the same would apply for attempted rape: the defendant just has to intend to try to have sex, and to not have legal consent.
There’s a case on point about this, but I can’t now find it. I seem to recall that Rose Bird wrote the opinion. Anyway, it deals with whether a drunken misapprehension of the victim’s consent would suffice as a defense, and concludes it wouldn’t. I’ll try to find it. However, [People v. Williams](People v. Williams - 4 Cal.4th 354 S022660 - Mon, 12/21/1992 | California Supreme Court Resources)is relevant:
A Mayberry instruction is the instruction from the court that a reasonable belief in the person’s consent is a defense to rape. In California, this defense has two parts: the defendant has to actually believe that the person consented, and that belief has to be reasonable.
Trying to step back from this (and many similar) discussion, I note, as others have, that we always end up discussing, at great length, “gray area” cases. It seems to me that there are fundamental differences in perspective about how wide the band of gray area cases is in reality. This is probably behind the disagreements about what the statistics mean (and which ones are most persuasive), as well as some of the disagreements about what should be done.
Here’s where it gets difficult. How often does it happen that people have sex while one or both is too drunk to consent (under whatever legal standard you apply), and neither of the parties believes, after the fact, that no wrong of any kind has been done? Do you think this never happens, rarely happens, or often happens? And if it does happen, do you believe that those people should be educated to understand that this is, in fact, rape?
And how in the world is a jury supposed to decide just where the line is between drunk, but able to consent, but too drunk to consent? You’re going to give them a bunch of factors (on the one hand, she could text, but on the other hand, she threw up) and ask them to make this kind of evaluation? It’s just awfully mushy. As I’ve said before, it makes me worry that unattractive and unappealing defendants will get convicted, while unattractive and unappealing complainants won’t get justice. Not long ago, that sentence could have referred to black defendants–and this may still be true in some places.
@momofthreeboys, did you read the Chronicle series that I linked to upthread? Yes, there are things colleges (especially private colleges) can do, but there’s a lot of stuff (even some stuff that’s easy and obvious) that they’re quite simply forbidden from doing.
Yes, I contemplated this earlier when we were talking about the Stanford case. “Attempt” crimes require intent, if I recall correctly (I do not claim to be a criminal law expert and much of my knowledge in that area comes from law school courses combined with snippet internet research and general legal training). The perp was drinking that night, and he is likely to use his own intoxication as a defense to the charge of attempted rape, or even assault with the intent to rape. He already made the statement that he did not intend to rape her, and he would likely claim that his level of intoxication prevented him from forming the requisite intent required by law.
If, without anything more than a police report, we are going to give the victim the benefit of the doubt that she was incapacitated/unconscious/highly intoxicated and therefore unable to give consent, then why should we not also give the perpetrator the same benefit of the doubt that he was intoxicated enough to prevent him from forming intent to commit attempted rape or assault with intent to commit rape. I don’t see any of the charges in that case as a slam-dunk unless the rape kit is damning.