<p>I have a hard time believing they didn’t think it was wrong. I’m more inclined to think they enjoy the idea that it is wrong and they can get away with it anyhow. To me, the subsequent behavior of the ringleader seems consistent with that idea. </p>
<p>I agree. They did it simply because they “could.” There hadn’t been any consequences in the past so why not? Another notch in their bedpost so to speak. These are severely misguided “boys” in every sense of the word. They haven’t the slightest idea of how real men treat women. </p>
<p>They are not misguided, they are animals. They are criminal sex offenders and they belong in prison for the rest of their lives. They have nothing to offer society that can make up for what they did that night. Not a single valuable thing. </p>
<p>And I had really rather they not reproduce. </p>
<p>Yes, poetgrl, they are animals. Jackie’s story is not really that far off from the Delhi rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey <a href=“2012 Delhi gang rape and murder - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape</a>, except that Jyoti died. </p>
<p>I really hope that “Drew” is quaking in his boots right about now.</p>
<p>Yes. Exactly </p>
<p>I really hope somebody comes forward. A lot of somebody’s in fact. </p>
<p>Actually he will have to live in fear for a long long time because even if nobody comes forward now? Someone will over time. We get older. We want to change our mistakes. Jackie’s “friends” will come forward at some point. </p>
<p>My grandmother used to say “the mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.” I believe that. I have to in order to make sense of the world today.</p>
<p>@poetgrl …“he will have to live in fear for a long long time …”</p>
<p>Correct! VA does not have a statute of limitations on rape. I’m wondering how festive the Thanksgiving dinner of some of these rapists will be. I suppose they’re asking their parents to hire attorneys for them. If the C-ville police have any competence they know some names by now.</p>
<p>Hmmm…I wonder if Bill Cosby did any of his dirty deeds here? I know he’s visited some local movie studios quite a few times and had his picture in the local paper.</p>
<p>They are probably drunk. The one at the end is for sure haunted. I hope none of them ever sleep well again. </p>
<p><a href=“San Diego State fraternities halt parties after anti-rape march fracas”>San Diego State fraternities halt parties after anti-rape march fracas;
<p>Really piling on the fraternities here. I bet these frat guys just got back from a building project for Habitat for Humanity. I mean frats are so misunderstood.</p>
<p>“Aggressive and violent and abusive behavior from fraternity members goes unchecked,” Busse said. “This year there have been 14 sexual assaults at SDSU, five of them at fraternities and not one arrest has been made.”</p>
<p>Yup SM74, really a pile on. If the frats don’t want the bad publicity, then stop assaulting women. It’s kind of simple logic.</p>
<p>You’ve got to figure that a lot of alcohol was involved in the sterling decision of members of the two frats to throw eggs and wave sex toys at students at an anti-rape demonstration. Perhaps the sex toys were meant to represent the frat members’ opinions about women.</p>
<p>They should be kicked out of school for being too damn stupid to deserve a degree. I mean really? </p>
<p>Not to give frat guys ANY slack but --</p>
<p>According to that Rolling Stones article, the victim’s own close friends questioned whether she should report the crime because it would “kill her reputation.” </p>
<p>She was gang raped. And her 21-st century friends’ initial reaction is to hide it to maintain her status – and allow THEM entrance into other frat parties. </p>
<p>I’m aghast. These kids act as if this were medieval India. They have no clue about women’s rights or what constitutes a crime against women. </p>
<p>We haven’t just gone wrong with how we’ve raised our boys. We’ve gone wrong with how we’ve raised our children. </p>
<p>UV – and all schools – should have a mandatory sexual awareness/harrassment classes, and an honor code that includes dismissal the moment they’re found guilty of sexual assault. </p>
<p>I agree @katliamom. But, I think it is important to understand how malleable the traits we think of as defining personality and how situation-specific our responses are. Several striking experiments were the Stanford Prison experiments in which students quickly embraced abusive guard roles, the Milgrom experiments on authority, and Darley and Batson’s wonderful experiment on the Good Samaritans. See <a href=“http://www.sociallypsyched.org/item/good-samaritan”>http://www.sociallypsyched.org/item/good-samaritan</a>. Interestingly, this site (which I just found to give a summary of the Good Samaritan experiment) explains a number of interesting experiments including these three. In more recent experiments, students in groups of three who are told (at random) that they are the leaders of the group for a task which is interrupted when four cookies are brought in and unilaterally take the fourth and eat it conspicuously. </p>
<p>Generally, we are pretty susceptible to the role suggestions and hierarchy that we step into. So if the young women who step into the social structure with frats at the top as the only real place to party (with free alcohol) as sororities are free and it is a dry town (Is this actually true?), then many will quickly adopt behavior such as urging Jackie not to report as they will kill their status and ability to get into frat parties (and be vulnerable to rape themselves – I guess they are not thinking too hard here). I suspect that kids with a strong sense of self can trade off social status for what seems right, but my guess is that this is a lot harder for most. </p>
<p>I haven’t read Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners but I gather he argued rather convincingly (in a way that made lots of people mad) that many ordinary Germans chose to act knowingly in ways that lead to the deaths of many Jews. It requires a lot less of a stretch for some frat boys to acquiesce to, accept and even participate in what becomes normal even if it is rape (relative to extermination of a people) and for female students to again accept and participate in the social structure even though they know that some rapes will happen (and it could be them next time).</p>
<p>I think schools like UVa and probably most others have such a long way to go before they get it right – and until last year or this, it hasn’t been in their interests to get it right. In part, we have the Title IX to thank for the change in attitude and the willingness of young women to speak out. They deserve a lot of credit. I do think the Obamanauts got it right by pursuing the Title IX suits but have overdone it in defining consent to be impossible any situation in which alcohol is ingested. Before adopting mandatory expulsion, you probably need to think about the current standard for sexual assault. My guess is that more than half of all consensual sex on campus takes place after both kids have alcohol in their blood system. Are both kids guilty of raping each other? Should that be the standard for sexual assault that you are referring to when you think of mandatory expulsion, @katliamom? It would seem that it would be impossible to grant consent when the person is incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol and that this should trigger mandatory expulsion. If a couple has a couple of glasses of wine before sex, not so much. However, the situation is now so bad that I am generally in favor of pushing for much more aggressive stances to get institutions to step up to their responsibilities to their female students.</p>
<p>Shawbridge, why are you blaming “Obamanauts” for the idea that a person can’t consent if they have ingested alcohol? I can’t find that standard on anything from the Department of Education. Can you? I found this:
<a href=“http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/qa-201404-title-ix.pdf”>http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/qa-201404-title-ix.pdf</a></p>
<p>I’m not for mandatory expulsion except in cases of forcible rape or rape of someone passed out or totally incapacitated. Suspension, expulsion, mediation…all those things can fit the variety of cases that exist, but no to mandatory with the exceptions I noted. I’m also not for saying no more frats, because that is only one microcosm of segregated housing one finds. There are plenty of fraternities and sororities that are wonderful, there are special interest houses, and colleges organized around residential houses. How can one say all frats are bad, when living in groups single sex or mixed sex is ingrained for some sophomore, juniors and seniors. If you say frats (because it is a group of men living together) how can you allow any other kind of single sex special interest housing? One of mine went to college and the ‘ruby house’ was the wild house. Wasn’t Greek, wasn’t on school property, housed a bunch of rugby players. i fail to see the difference between a “frat” and any house organized around an interest. I could see have a code of conduct that says no freshman (male or female) can attend parties in frats, sororities, residential houses, special interest houses or to make those sorts of houses available only to juniors and seniors.</p>
<p>Whenever we hear a tragic, shocking story the instant gut reaction is to fix it with a big gigantic hammer, but generally over time you begin to see the forest through the trees. </p>
<p>Eh. Some of us have been hearing stories like this for years. It’s also not one story. It’s not even the start of these stories, just another story, unfortunately, of the criminals we like to keep on campus. </p>