I know there are some who will not read this because it comes from a publication called the American Conservative, but for those who can get past the fact that this publication tilts in the opposite direction of most main stream sources, I think the narrative contained in the piece adds something to our familiar debates around here.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/campus-drunk-confidential-rape/
Looks like a police detective basically saying that everyone (victim, suspect, others) being stumbling drunk makes it very hard to figure out what really happened after the fact.
“At the end of the day, you end up with a mess that you can’t prosecute.”
Yup. Which is why the criminal justice system is unable to do much with most sexual assaults.
Which is also why the title ix college system is similarly unable to do much with most sexual assaults. No matter how hard you try to water down burdens of proof and due process protections. Because it is still pretty much impossible to prove something for which there is no good proof…
Who says conservatives are out of the mainstream?
At any rate this was a very well written article that explains why it can be so difficult to prosecute cases where large amounts of alcohol are involved. It’s a shame.
When it comes from the people in the trenches, the truth hurts. This cop’s take is probably closer to the truth than many would want to believe…
I posted it for two reasons really. One, it clearly expresses what several colleagues who spent time in the “trenches” of the state criminal justice system have repeatedly shared with me, a perspective which I think is often discounted here. Two, I didn’t realize that ambien was that prevalent on campuses & had never thought of the interplay of binge drinking and prescription meds.
I did not mean to imply that they are. But I believe candor compels acknowledging the reality that virtually all of what is referred to as main stream media tilts left to one degree or another. I think confirmation bias is an underappreciated phenomenon, and have seen example after example here and other places where people ignore things out of hand if the source doesn’t fit neatly within their preconceived world view.
Ohiodad51…I have a college junior home for the summer and working locally. He came home for lunch and i had just read your link. I asked him if ‘kids’ use Ambien and he said he knew girls that use Ambien. I wonder what for and why? At first I thought the cop meant Adderall, but maybe he really meant Ambien.
“Hook-up culture” doesn’t exist. I can’t take seriously any article that doesn’t acknowledge that. College students have the same number of partners that they did in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.
He thinks that there is more binge drinking now than there was when he was in school. There wasn’t. Rates of binge drinking haven’t changed in over 2 decades.
He is remembering a past that doesn’t exist.
Yeah, like I said the Ambien thing seemed weird. Given the way my kids sleep, it is hard to believe there are teenagers anywhere with insomnia. I guess it would be helpful for really high strung kids maybe. Don’t know.
Adderrall on the other hand is a stimulant so based on completely second hand and in no way illegal experiences I may or may not have had in college, I wouldn’t think there would be any immediate problems with mixing Adderrall and booze.
Speaking of Adderrall, from what my kid tells me, on his campus at least, Adderrall is ever present and kids eat it like candy. It is a crazy world.
Kids eating Adderrall like candy don’t always sleep well. So Ambien…
@romanigypsyeyes With all due respect, I think one of his points was not that there is more alcohol consumed or partners, but that riskier situations due to the medications. He spoke mostly in a present tense - and he stated that people drank when he went to school.
I have it on good authority that college kids hooked up for casual sex in the 1980s. It may have been tempered a little bit due to the then new fear of aids, but I have been told that kids had sex way back in the day.
As far as rates of drinking/drunkenness, I have no idea how you would measure that. Again, I have been told that students drank a fair amount back in the 1980s. Sometimes even two or more nights a week.
I believe the difference today is that until very recently it was not quite so easy for a young woman to determine that she was wrongfully taken advantage of and that the school should do something about it.
Edit:
Another underappreciated point is the cop’s point about standards of behavior. As I said on another thread, like it or not, quite a lot of our former societal mores had the at least incidental benefit of protecting women from getting in to compromising positions.
I don’t think there is a difference in sexual behavior from when I was in school(late '80s). However, back then when this sort if thing happened women generally chalked it up to poor judgement. It is generally good that young women believe they should report sexual assaults. However, in cases the article describes it might be impossible to know whether the incident was an assault or not.
I don’t know…my son3 is taking a class called Hook Up Culture this summer…and I know people were “hooking up” way back in the 70s…we just didn’t have a name for it.
Adderall + Abien makes sense. I forget that Adderall in and of itself is an upper.
I am a raving looney liberal, but I think this article makes a good point. I have 2 teenagers, a boy and girl. I have taught both my kids to repect the opposite sex, and themselves. I have told my son to stay away from girls who are drunk, full stop, especially if he is drunk too. (Btw, neither of my kids has ever been drunk, yet.) Even if she said yes when she was drunk, who knows what she will say the next day. Drunk people can’t give informed consent, and certainly unconscious people can’t. I have told my daughter pretty much the same, and to avoid drunk guys, and to be sure she gets her own drink and doesn’t accept them from anyone.
This is probably an unpopular view, and I might get a lot of backlash for saying so. First, no man should take sexual advantage of any woman ever, whether sober or drunk. Men must be taught to respect women, that no means no, and that it’s a crime to be sexual with someone without consent. But I think that women need to look out for themselves too. I’m not talking about dressing sexily or acting provocatively. It’s fine to do that, and no woman is asking to be raped if she does that. I mean don’t put yourself in a situation in which you get so drunk that you participate in sexual acts, and you wake up the next day, sober, and feel unsure of what happened, but you regret it. Poor judgement on your part doesn’t mean someone else acted criminally. I am not taking at all about being threatened, or forcible rape, or what happened to the girl in Stanford, or Katie Koestner from William and Mary.
I do think that more women are coming forward after being sexually assaulted on campus. I think that is a good thing. I have told my own daughter that if she is ever sexually assaulted or forced to do something against her will then she needs to go to the police rather than report it to the college. I do think colleges try to keep these incidents quiet. I hope to heaven that she never needs to do that. I also hope to heaven that my son never finds himself being interrogated by police. I think our kids’ generation needs a new mantra: sex and alcohol=bad idea.
I’m not old enough to know about the 70’s, but I’m fairly sure that giving a guy you just met a blow job in the bathroom being a generally accepted “thing that happens regularly and the culture of your peers around you doesn’t bat an eyelash” was not happening then. It’s the fact that apparently this is the prevailing atmosphere (as opposed to the extreme outlier) that is “hook up culture.”
I read the entire thing, even though the picture preceding the “article” of three attractive, tipsy looking women raising their glasses to me let me know exactly where this was headed.
My over-arching thought after reading this - it’s a copy and paste of an email and the writer is anonymous. How impressive is your opinion if you are not willing to put your name to it? This is not a victim; this is supposedly a police detective, but not one willing to put their name to his beliefs.
So, this anonymous person who claims to be a police detective has these blanket and unsubtaniated comments about college women.
Now go back and read all the quotes but add “stupid slut” at the end. Doesn’t change the writer’s tone much, does it? My prayer for today: Dear God, if my daughter is sexual assaulted in college please, please, please do not let this man be the investigating detective, stupid ■■■■■■■.
I am and it was, as much as it is now, which is not at all as widespread as you make it sound.
The 1970s came after the free love 60’s and before AIDS camein the 1980s so in a way, people were far more promiscuous then than now.