Assault claimed at Naval Academy

Colleges and Universities A-Z Naval Academy - Annapolis
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<p>"Some parts of my character weren't what you'd call presedential"</p>

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<p>Who said that?</p>

<p>I make no secrets it would definitely apply to me. Sadly, it has also applied to more than one recent occupant of the White House, and several occupant wanna-be's. :(</p>

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<p>Quote from Zaphod in Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy.</p>

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<p>LOL. I'd forgotten that. :o</p>

<p>Been ages since I've read the book. ;)</p>

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<p>OMG, Bearbit! BZ. I sure hope this is not a time when CC quotes find their way into other blogs or mainstream media.</p>

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<p>My previous comments may lead one to think that I do not take the current sexual assault issue seriously. That is far from true. It is troubling to me that nearly 14% of our "best and brightest" female mids reported in a study carried out by the DoD IG that they had experienced some form of sexual assault - not harrassment, assault between 1999 and 2004, of which 3.4% experienced rape. If interested, see: <a href="http://www.dodig.mil/occl/pdfs/ExecSumFinal.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dodig.mil/occl/pdfs/ExecSumFinal.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Is that better or worse than a civilian college? That's very hard to tell. Although colleges are required by the Clery Act to report violent crimes, including sexual crimes, annually, it is thought that only about 5% of the actual sexual assault crimes are ever reported by the victim, making it likely that Clery reports drastically understate the problem. If interested, you can find Clery reports for many colleges (although some, like Yale, only began reporting after being found in violation of the law). The 5% rate of reporting comes from a Dept of Justice study. If interested, see:
<a href="http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/182369.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/182369.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here's a comparison:
The SA IG report shows 302 incidents with 1906 female victims in 6 years. That averages out to ~26 incidents/1000 students/year. </p>

<p>Harvard (6715 undergrads, ~50% female) reported an average of 14.3 incidents per year from 2004-2006, or ~4.3 incidents/1000 students/year. Is the difference real, or is it just that the Harvard data underestimates their problem, while the IG report accurately reflects the situation at the SAs? What about other schools? </p>

<p>Cornell (13,562 undergrads, 49% female) reported an average of 7.67 incidents per year from 2003-2005. That works out to 1.15/1000 students/year. Even if you assume only 5% reporting, they're still slightly better than the SA data (23 incidents/1000 female students/year).</p>

<p>What about a big, public university in a city?</p>

<p>Ohio State has ~48000 students, roughly 50% female. They reported an average of 33.3 incidents/year, or 1.39/1000 students/year (that's ~27.8/1000/yr if the reported numbers are really only 5% of all incidents).</p>

<p>It's all food for thought, but it's certainly not clear that the situation at the SAs is any better than other colleges, even though the SAs have the best and brightest.</p>

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<p>Do you think the manditory living requirements at the SA might contribute to the problem? Young adulthood, alcohol and close proximity mandatory living conditions are a time bomb. I remember several years ago, when one of the other SAs was having problems, one of the senior administrators, the Supt I think, mentioned that USNA was lucky, that the above combintation made it a matter of not "if" but "when" USNA would experience the same problems.</p>

<p>I still think comparisons are irrelevant. The mandatory living arrangements combined with higher expectations, even of the female midshipmen themselves, make violations more likely to be reported. Also SA midshipmen/cadets spend much more time together in a much more diverse arena. Some of these assauts happen in a training enviornment and are the result of improper overly friendly behavior, normal situations that would not occur at the same frequency at a civilian school. Greater expectations should continue throughout the entire Brigade until no one will tolerate anyone who commits such behavior.</p>

<p>OBTW, I agree with JAMo4, you are attempting to shoot the messenger. It was a fairly unbiased article for BO.</p>

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<p>I think you all have some valid points, but remember that the day the press reports just what we want to hear, or what WE think is "fair", is the day we no longer have a free press.</p>

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<p>I would also like to add something that may, on first glance, ruffle some feathers, but it is something that has to be considered as well, as to do less would be to ignore another factor.</p>

<p>There have been times when mids, caught in inappropriate behavior, have cried foul in order to escape harsher punishment. </p>

<p>Having said that, I am all for eliminating sexual assault on all counts- but working in the business I do, I have seen far too many women come into our emergency department claiming rape, assault, etc..... only to have the accussations prove false. Sad but true. And I would give anything to report that they represent a "small minority," but the reality is that the numbers fall more within the vicinity of 50:50. </p>

<p>I have no doubt actual sexual assault/harrassment takes place- at all levels of our society. If guilty, those at fault need to be held accountable. The difficulty is that it often comes down to he-said-she-said, and even then, getting at what "each" believes to be "true" is difficult at best. Not all cases are cut and dry- those that do comprise a small minority.</p>

<p>I will say one more thing- (and I speak as a parent with both a son and a daughter)-
there are women at the academy, just as there are men, that are overly aggressive when it comes right down to it. That I have witnessed first hand- and I have been shocked on more than one occasssion to hear some of the comments made by some female mids to my own son and others in his company and team.... and, as a New Yorker, I am far from a prude. The lines can get very, very fuzzy as to what is "appropriate" and what is not. </p>

<p>"Steer clear" is the message I give as a result.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
the day the press reports just what we want to hear, or what WE think is "fair", is the day we no longer have a free press.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>We're already there, except it's not a matter of being "free"; it's a matter of being "accurate and unbiased" :mad:</p>

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<p>
[quote]
We're already there, except it's not a matter of being "free"; it's a matter of being "accurate and unbiased"

[/quote]
</p>

<p>To put it another way, "report the news...don't try and interpret it for me" </p>

<p>
[quote]
Do you think the manditory living requirements at the SA might contribute to the problem?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You mean like Co-ed dorms? Co-ed floors? Co-ed suites? sorta like they have at most every college/university in the country? </p>

<p>I think the one legitimate distinction is the fundamental difference in mission and objective for the SA's; they are there to train leaders, and educate them along the way. With that comes the lessons of authority, it's use and potential abuse. The system is designed to drive interaction and some associated stress. A senior at an Ivy has no authority over a freshman, interaction will be for the most part at a social level, if it occurs at all. The same cannot be said for the SA's; young men and women are put in positions of leadership with the authority to control and impact the lives of those under them. In many ways it's a wonder there aren't many more problems than we now see.</p>

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<p>


</p>

<p>You mean the ones where they are not allowed to lock their doors and, no matter how much they have recently been drinking, have a mandatory time to be back in the dorm?</p>

<p>Cannot think of any myself. Perhaps you will enlighten me.</p>

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<p>"Do you think the manditory living requirements at the SA might contribute to the problem?"</p>

<p>The living conditions are definitely different at the SAs, including the no locked doors rule. How are we to know how often a locked door might be all that's needed to keep a drunken person from committing such an assault?</p>

<p>I do not believe that the studies show that the SAs are significantly more dangerous than standard colleges, although I do believe that the numbers would be portayed as such in the mainstream media. Why is that? I believe that the numbers in the IG report (re: the SAs) are probably a much more accurate reflection of the real situation. The numbers are high because the respondents, being anonymous, felt safe to report things that simply don't usually get reported. It is possible that the numbers in the IG report are inflated, but what would be the motivation for that in a circumstance in which no names are named?</p>

<p>When I looked at the Clery reports from various colleges, I simply could not believe some of the numbers I was seeing. In our state, there are two large, urban universities, and many smaller colleges in small towns. I simply do not believe that the rates of sexual assaults are higher in the small college, small town schools. What I can believe is that the rate of reporting depends not only on the rate of the assaults, but on other factors, such as whether students know how and where to make a report, and whether their report will be kept confidential. It is also clear that some universities do not report with as much diligence as others. Again, several small "safe" schools actually had similar numbers of reports than larger schools, because their reports included off-campus incidents that should be reported by all schools, but are not reported. </p>

<p>The studies of sexual assault that I listed in my earlier post showed that alcohol is a critical factor. Also, fully three-fourths of victims KNEW their attacker. Whatever we can do as a society to try to establish responsible behavior, especially responsible use of alcohol, is bound to help on any campus, including the SAs.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Perhaps you will enlighten me

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You suggested that mandatory living requirements contributed to the problem, I don't disagree, but that does not in any way make the living situation at the SA's in any way unique, nor does the locked or unlocked status of their door. Last I knew rooms were occupied by more than one Mid, pushing your way into a room full of Mids wouldn't get you very far. I also think if you looked at most cases of sexual miconduct on campuses you would find the agressor and victim knew each other, in many cases well enough to open a locked door. They use trust as a tool to set the stage for their crime.
What a mandatory time to be back in the dorm has to do with sexual harassment is beyond me. </p>

<p>Once again if you read the entire post you may have understood my point.</p>

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<p>I completely dismiss any notion that unlockable doors, campus size, availability of alcohol, or even potential media coverage bear any responsibility for this or any other assault.</p>

<p>The responsibility lies with one or more INDIVIDUALS who did not behave in a manner befitting their status as adults or (in the case of the SA's) as Cadets or Midshipmen. Rather than trying to find some other cause for the crime, I point the finger at the people who committed it. PERIOD.</p>

<p>No one forced them to get drunk, or get horny, or get stupid. They made their choices, and now they need to live with them. Welcome to Adulthood! </p>

<p>So, rather than debating the lockability of doors, or the sleeping arrangements in the dormitory, or any such nonsense, let's just hope that the FACTS are quickly and accurately found out, and that the guilty parties (if any) are propmptly and publicly tossed out of the place with appropriate criminal charges heaped on top of them.</p>

<p>We can hope, anyway....</p>

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<p>Responsibility ALWAYS lies with the individual. Period. </p>

<p>My previous posts were not meant to "blame" the open door policy, or any other policy. They were meant to point out that, in our society as a whole, and specifically on our college campuses, we have a problem with sexual assaults of various types. That problem exists at the SAs, probably to about the same extent as on any other campus. </p>

<p>It is an unfortunate truth that even the "best and brightest" don't act that way after irresponsible use of alcohol. Yes, they all make their choices, and they absolutely must live with the ramifications of those choices.</p>

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<p>I completely agree w/ Zaphod. Still, I certainly hated the co-ed living arrangements during my college years. (and we shared bathrooms @ Santa Cruz w/ just scimpy showercurtains.)</p>

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<p>^^^^^
They don't have that problem at USNA. There are separate heads in Bancroft Hall and each room has its own shower and lavatory.</p>

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<p>and mids are advised to lock their doors on certain occasions such as service selection night.</p>

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<p>


This is a recurring theme of yours. Allow me to assure you that it is not true. There are many other reasons that are more applicable as to why I ignore much of your posts.</p>