<p><a href=“Survivors Share Some Of The Hidden Costs Of Sexual Assault In College | HuffPost College”>Survivors Share Some Of The Hidden Costs Of Sexual Assault In College | HuffPost College;
<p>The RS piece dramatizes something many of us know to be true. There are rapists being protected on our college campuses. Weather or not Jackie turns out to be real, which I think she is, we have a UVA administrator on film admitting that confessed rapists were not expelled. It’s not like they didn’t say it themselves. Confessed rapists were not taken to police with their confession. Really?!</p>
<p>There seems to be an interest in focusing on Jackie. </p>
<p>The logic, if we can call this logic because it isn’t, is if Jackie is discredited, than the rape issue has been overblown.
Therefore, a lot of changes are not necessary.</p>
<p>The problem with this thinking is if Jackie disappeared tomorrow the problem of the rape culture still exists and needs to be changed.</p>
<p>So I find this interest in attacking Jackie very interesting because the rape issue isn’t really about Jackie. </p>
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Let us imagine that I am a faculty member at UVA and, being part of the ongoing internal investigation, that I know some details not revealed in the Rolling Stone article. Do you honestly think I’d be posting this information on the forum?</p>
<p>I love the “or that I’m probably wrong” as a conclusion to that paragraph, though. (#456)</p>
<p>The troubling issue here is the University response, not the rape. Crimes happen that is nothing new. The lack of response by those charged with oversight of students on campus is the issue. Since the administrators and board have admitted it themselves, there really in no question about it. </p>
<p>To me, the truth of Jackie’s story is incidental. What I care about is what is going to be done to get campus culture under control at UVA and other college campuses to provide a safe environment for students. UVA administrators admit they have not done a good job of it, and most other colleges aren’t either. That needs to change whether Jackie’s story is true or not. </p>
<p>dstark I think because the story is emblematic. Even the author sets it up that way by saying she was searching for something to represent her underlying story premise. It hits all the hot buttons and then some…not just rape it is reported to be gang rape, she/Jackie didn’t go to the police, she/Jackie had friends that “talked her out:” of going to the police, it happened at a fraternity, she reported it to the college and they did not act on her story except within the tightly held administration, the author picked a college that had never expelled someone for sexual misconduct let alone rape. It hit all kind of hot buttons and the “story” becomes the nucleus of the arguments. Women and men, women and colleges/universities, criminal vs. honor code. I don’t believe in “rape culture” as you put it, but if “Jackie” turns out to be not as presented it doesn’t change the issue, just obfuscates it more than it already is and that is sad and plays directly into the hands of people who don’t believe there is an issue or that the issue is not as presented.</p>
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<p>I do not believe that UVa calls the police if the person reporting the sexual misconduct requests confidentiality. I happen to agree that colleges and universities should be required to call the police. </p>
<p>Momofthreeboys, I disagree with you…</p>
<p>Post #481 explains things well.</p>
<p>The Jackie story was just a trigger to wake people up. There is a lot more to the story. If Jackie did not exist, all the other issues you wrote in post #485 about are still true.</p>
<p>Sorry! Too much information…</p>
<p>I believed Jackie’s story in the article (although I did wonder about the part where she ran into Drew at the lifeguard job and he told her he wanted to thank her and that he had had a great time with her on that night; that seemed excessively cruel, even by this guy). While I agree that the goal of the article was to point out that the UVA administration did not respond appropriately, if it turns out that Jackie’s story was embellished to make it more horrifying and was not what was told to the dean, it would negate some of the outrage. Reading that the author went looking for a story at a number of colleges and settled on this one, seems to suggest that the other stories were not as dramatic. Although I hope for Jackie’s sake that what happened to her was not as bad as portrayed, I equally hope that the author did not change the details. </p>
<p>But Jackie herself has said that the Dean at UVa responded appropriately , that Jackie herself did not want to report it to the police when she came forward, I don’t think we’re going to know exactly the extent of what was initially reported to the Dean unless Jackie comes forward, I do think there may have to be some mechanism for a school to report an alleged gang rape, even if not giving out the name of whoever is making that allegation, if reported to them, even if a student does not want to report,. That is a broader public safety issue .</p>
<p>Regardless, we now know, from the mouth of the administration itself, that protected rapists were allowed to stay on campus, admitted men who raped your daughters were allowed to stay on college campus because they “knew they’d done something wrong.” Really? Do you think an admitted mugger who mugged at gun point would be allowed to stay on campus? Admitted plagiarists were expelled. </p>
<p>Honestly. </p>
<p>“Cross my fingers and “hope” someone’s story of being brutally gang raped turns out to be TRUE? I wish it wasn’t true. i was there was no such thing as gang rape. But, gee! thanks.” - poetgrl</p>
<p>This was my thought. I find myself hoping it’s not true. The actual experience would be far worse than dealing with the fallout of being accused of making false rape claims. </p>
<p>Something happened. But, it wasn’t everything in that story and exactly what is and isn’t true is the big unknown at this point. I’m pretty sure we do know this much for certain and a police investigation will fill in the blanks. </p>
<p>I just watched a CNN segment where 2 current UVA students and an alum were interviewed - 2 of the 3 were victims of sexual assault at UVA. While they all are clear about their belief that change is necessary, the current students were also pretty clear about their support for Dean Eramo. I really have a hard time with this and do wonder what is behind the undying support for this woman that is all over social media. </p>
<p>This is a woman who clearly could have made a difference but instead let these boys continue to walk the paths of the university. Perhaps I misunderstand the scope of her job responsibilities, but I would think that ANY college administrator that had knowledge of a rape would have some responsibility to investigate and remove that boy from campus. Failure to do so seems like an egregious abdication of administrative responsibility. </p>
<p>Don’t we as a society remove rapists from the general population by sending them to jail for some period of time?</p>
<p>Are you sure the women weren’t lying about their assaults? If there weren’t any assaults, Dean Eramo probably did a good job. ;)</p>
<p>It’s really not that simple. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/letter-advocating-for-dean-eramo”>LETTER: Advocating for Dean Eramo - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia's Student Newspaper;
<p>“To me, the truth of Jackie’s story is incidental.” Would you feel the same if it were your school or one of your kid’s schools that was being singled out for what has become a hot issue on a national level, across many campuses? The story may or may not be true but has sparked an important debate so that is positive. There are many schools that are being accused of mishandling things. Title IX I believe mandates schools to get involved in this . Many women in college don’t seem to want to go to or report things to the police and that does not seem to be unique to UVa. </p>
<p>There are quite a few UVA rape victims defending Dean Eramo in the article linked in #496. That is damning in itself. How many of those rapes might have been prevented if those boys had been removed from campus? Expulsion sends a strong message to a community. </p>
<p>She may have provided a shoulder to cry on for many very vulnerable and traumatized girls, but that doesn’t suffice when you hold her position. She is an adult with adult responsibilities. There were instances where the girls requested to confront the boy in an informal meeting. The boys acknowledged the assaults and yet were allowed to remain on campus. That is beyond the pale. The message sent to those girls is tragic.</p>
<p>I believe the support for Dean Eramo comes from the fact that she listened to the victims and gave them the power to choose how they wanted to proceed. I have to believe, perhaps naively, that the cases she spoke of where the boy took responsibility but stayed on campus and the girl was satisfied with that (as the girls seem to be) were more of the drunken encounters gone wrong than something like that portrayed in the RS article or by the other article linked to earlier here (where the boy was suspended until the victim graduated). The Dean stated that in many cases the girls did not want the boys to be expelled or harshly punished (yes, that could have been spin but I haven’t read much bashing of the dean by women students). In fact, I heard an interview on NPR with the woman named Emily who was portrayed as a sexual assault survivor at UVA in the RS article who now works at the university who was very supportive of the Dean.</p>
<p>If the victims were unwilling to move forward with a complaint, perhaps this was a way to at least have the boy acknowledge what he did and learn from it. Maybe it is not always about punishment but about being heard and supported. However, if the Dean actively discouraged the victims from bringing the boys to justice, or coerced girls into accepting an apology rather than an expulsion, that is a different story. But from the support she is getting, it appears she really was on the side of the victims. </p>
<p>That being said, if the story Jackie told to the Dean was substantially that reported in RS, some action should have been taken, if only to ensure that this did not happen again. How could there have been no investigation of the fraternity and discussions with other first year women about these parties? There certainly could have been action taken that did not name Jackie as the accuser (especially since it had been many months since this happened).</p>