Much – we are talking about different cases.
I’m talking about Brooke, who is in the CNN and NY Times articles. She says her attacker was a BYU student. No mention of what BYU did to that guy by either CNN or NYT. Which seems to be a glaring omission in the reporting.
You are talking about Madi Barney, who is in the Guardian article. Different case. 39 year old non-student attacker.
“She was foolish enough to attend a school with a long history of bigotry and misogyny, and has to accept the consequences of that decision.”
Quite a number of families will only pay for the student to go to college at a byu campus. So she may not have had a choice.
It’s simply a bad idea to have a system in which people can be punished for minor offenses as a result of reporting really serious offenses. It creates terrible incentives. It creates the incentive not to report those serous offenses, and it creates the incentive for would-be rapists to create a situation in which the victim is first encouraged to engage in less serious behavior that violates the honor code, like drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in consensual sexual activity. “If you tell, you’ll be expelled too.”
And, people change. She may have been totally BYU when she applied and first attended, then changed by getting into the wrong crowd.
Many people do not view religious beliefs as “a [legal] system.” Either the vows of the belief are followed or not. That is a distinction that few are taking here.
If you think BYU is strict, I have stories from the Muslim academy in Northern VA, which would make your head spin. And no one is calling them bigots and misogynists, as that academy is left alone to follow its religion to the letter up to separating males and females, females in the back, males rule the roost etc. The academy also does not see is its honor code as “a [legal] system.”
Both religions are equally strong in how they uphold their beliefs, irrespective of other surrounding serious offenses that may have occurred. Sure, it may make for not reporting minor offenses in lieu of serious ones, but the religious take is another’s bad behavior does not mitigate your own bad behavior, which too is against the religion’s code.
I will certainly agree that there can be even more wrong-headed policies than the one BYU seems to be following here, and that private entities are generally free to follow them. But anybody who is trying to achieve goals needs to understand how incentives work.
“It’s simply a bad idea to have a system in which people can be punished for minor offenses as a result of reporting really serious offenses.”
Maybe, maybe not. To draw a conclusion, you’d need to see some data.
A college system that comes down hard and consistently against all drinking, all drug use and all pre-marital sex may turn out to be an extremely protective place for female college students when it comes to sexual assault. With the issues that Hunt raises perhaps being outweighed by the benefits of the overall atmosphere that system creates.
Or maybe it does not work out that way. The data would tell you.
But as I pointed out earlier, what you suggest creates a different perverse incentive: A woman in a sexual relationship can escape punishment by blaming the guy.
I find it disturbing that BYU would even use the information of a police file that was given to them illegally.
"While Jenkins said students “can choose to decline a Title IX investigation,” Barney said she was told that if she didn’t comply, the university was going to forward her case to the Honor Code office.
Barney said she’s now facing backlash from BYU for not answering all its questions. Her attorney told her not to talk about details of her case until after the trial of her alleged rapist this fall. However, the university won’t let her register for future classes until she cooperates with the Honor Code office.".
Here’s what The Guardian wrote about Barney’s case:
"At the advice of her attorney, she refused to take part in the investigation. She has been banned from ever registering for classes at BYU again. After Seidu’s trial, she plans to transfer to another university. BYU officials, she said, told her “they couldn’t give me the services that they would give a rape victim because they couldn’t prove that I was raped. I filed a Title IX complaint against them, like, a week ago.”
Here’s another instance in the CNN case:
“She never told BYU about her rape, but somehow the school found out, Crandall said.”
I watched the video but don’t have time to research. For those of you who have read some other articles, I have some questions. Crandall (the student whose father is a BYU professor) seems to be implying that the school didn’t offer her protection until there had been a conviction (although the ‘protection’ seems to be an opportunity to withdraw and re-enroll). Is this echoed in other media following this? That would imply that the school’s position is that unless an investigation finds a defendant guilty of sexual assault, the sex was consensual? That would be an entirely different matter than disciplining a student for honor code violations that may have contributed to the incident such as drugs, alcohol or participating in an event in which indecent pictures of you were taken such that they would appear on the internet (which is apparently how Crandall’s stalker blackmailed her). That is the implication in stories like this from The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/30/mormon-rape-victims-shame-brigham-young-university
This strikes me as unlikely. Under what circumstances would this happen? If somebody else reports that the two of them had sex, I suppose she could claim that it was rape. That’s presumably true under the current rule. But if somebody else reports them for taking drugs, say, then it wouldn’t help her to report that she was subsequently raped. The evidence of drug use would be from a source other than her report, and in such a case, I see no problem in disciplining her for the drug use. The problem is only when reporting a serious offense creates a risk that the reporter will be punished for a lesser offense.
“To draw a conclusion, you’d need to see some data.”
Under this system, it’s impossible to get any meaningful data, because no one is going to report.
“But as I pointed out earlier, what you suggest creates a different perverse incentive: A woman in a sexual relationship can escape punishment by blaming the guy.”
Most amnesty rules only kick in if the authorities discover the misbehavior as a RESULT of the rape report or 911 call. Amnesty is not a get out of jail free card for you to play after you’ve already been caught breaking the rules.
I tend to think the same as you Hunt. I would suspect as you say, that I student taking drugs voluntarily would not be absolved of the “take no drugs” vow, while a student reporting a rape would be absolved of breaking the chastity vow under certain circumstances but not all circumstances. I doubt that BYU would swing so far as to give sexual abuse claimants carte blanche. This would play into 2collegewego’s comments about consensual vs. non-consensual. I would think a student who was having sex with someone else prior to their complaint of abuse would have a tough time getting total absolution since the consensual sexual encounters were clearly a violation of the vows but the accuser might be absolved of the assault or if there was a claim of an assault but no prior history of breaking vows, the claimant might be absolved. The honor code is quite clear that it expects commitment to chastity.
@awcntdb “the Muslim academy in Northern VA, which would make your head spin. And no one is calling them bigots and misogynists,”
3.Saying someone else is worse than this group does not help them. If you are on trial for murder, and the best defense you can come up with is a list of people who have killed more people than you have, your are in real trouble.
From my perspective, the real issue here is that the school still wants government support. It can be ended by agreeing that the none of my tax money can go to research, tuition or any other form of funding for schools who do not afford equal rights to students, regardless of gender, race, sexual preference or religion. No public schools should participate in sports or other activities with these organizations either. If they are private, not government supported, and following the law, they can be as bigoted and misogynistic as they wish to be.
“Under this system, it’s impossible to get any meaningful data, because no one is going to report.”
Disagree. Many/most incidents go unreported at every school and in every jurisdiction. So BYU, like most schools could do (probably already does) anonymous “climate” surveys about sexual assault. Then just compare the BYU results with other peer schools.
That would tell you whether BYU has a safer environment or not.
My guess (no data so just a guess) is that BYU would be a pretty safe environment given that the school actively polices booze, drugs, consensual sex and even opposite sex folks being alone behind closed doors.
Sure the Honor Code might chill some reporting of assaults, but it probably more than makes up for those. You’d think the aggressive enforcement of just the no booze policy would do that given how strong a correlation there is between booze and campus sex assault.
“A college system that comes down hard and consistently against all drinking, all drug use and all pre-marital sex may turn out to be an extremely protective place for female college students when it comes to sexual assault. With the issues that Hunt raises perhaps being outweighed by the benefits of the overall atmosphere that system creates.”
"@hunt “It’s simply a bad idea to have a system in which people can be punished for minor offenses as a result of reporting really serious offenses.”
@northwesty Maybe, maybe not. To draw a conclusion, you’d need to see some data."
That is just a silly argument. Often the rules matter more than the net benefit to society.
Example:
@Northwesty says: We should kill Poster X
@Hunt says: That is simply a bad idea
@Northwesty says: Maybe not. To draw a conclusion you’d need some data
Killing is wrong, regardless of what the survey says! Additionally, citizens have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not optimal safety. That sounds more like a prison.
That is a strawman argument.
Or at BYU, Liberty and others…the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness unless that pursuit includes, sex, drugs or alcohol. I, too, would place bets that it is is safer environment for young men and women than similar sized public institutions because I believe that alcohol has a huge correlation to claims of non-consensual sex.
I don’t think there’s any question that byu is a lot safer than peer institutions. That doesn’t make it ok for them to effectively punish the reporting of assaults and thus ensure they won’t be reported.
If there’s a county with a very low murder rate, that wouldn’t mean it’s ok for that county to let their small number of murderers walk free.
“I don’t think there’s any question that byu is a lot safer than peer institutions.”
We agree, and I’m sure the data would back that up.
Would you also agree that such safety is, in part, related to BYU’s strict codes and strict enforcement thereof?
I mean all schools have an anti-booze policy (since legal age is 21). But colleges don’t enforce those policies. And it sounds like Ms. Brooke had a number of code incidents in addition to her attack.
@hebegebe “That is a strawman argument.”
Not it isn’t. The purpose of the example was to illustrate my point, that, “Often the rules matter more than the net benefit to society.”
A Strawman argument would be if I asserted that the example I am giving is Northwesty’s actual position, and then I argued against that position as if Northwesty actually held that view, in spite of the fact that Northwesty has said no such thing.
I hope that difference is clear. I am creating a hypothetical example to illustrate a point, not claiming he actually said that.