Frat parties hardly the only place where heavy drinking occurs near colleges.
BTW throwing kids out of school for under-age drinking is pretty puritanical in my book. That was one of many goofy suggestions here.
When both parties have been drinking, why is it that drinking seems to be a mitigating factor in culpability for the male but an aggravating factor in blame for the female? In a situation where a male assaults a female. Am I mistaken in my characterization of this?
Please read the thread posts more carefully. That was not my suggestion; it was my answer to a poster on how underage drinking COULD easily be stopped. As my earlier posts make clear, I think the drinking age should be set by the states and we would probably see that states lowering the drinking age to 18 might see these problems recede.
Actually he did not stick his penis into her at all. It was also not defined as rape by CA law. It was a sexual assault. He probably was too drunk to perform.
For the alcohol-self-administered drunken rapist, the culpability is a felony. Our judicial systems explicitly define shades of felony offenses.
For the alcohol-self-administered drunken prey, the culpability is stupidity. I’m not aware of any authorititative body that defines shades of stupidity.
There are certain things that anyone smart enough to get into college knows is stupid to do while drunk:
– crossing a 4-lane busy highway on foot
– going scuba diving
– buying lap dances in a strip club using your parents’ credit card
– skiing moguls
– driving a car
– sneaking into the tiger exhibit at the zoo to take a selfie
I don’t know why so many college students have a willing blind spot about the stupidity of being drunk at a frat party.
He was convicted of PC 289(d), 289(e), and 220(a)(1) (see http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/calawquery?codesection=pen ). Rape is defined in PC 261.
@GMTplus7 - I didn’t mean necessarily in a pure legal sense. More in terms of how outside folks view blame v responsibility.
It really is impossible to tell young women that they bear some responsibility for what happens to them when they’re drunk without it casting some blame on them for the crime that someone else actually committed.
When you get excessively drunk, you are responsible for your own hangover and that’s it. Sure, it would be nice if people never “put themselves in that situation”, whatever that situation is. But criminals are devious, they don’t play fair and they seem to be one step ahead of us in many ways. THAT is what needs to be stopped.
When many women were sexually assaulted on New Years Eve in Cologne, Germany was it their fault for going out? Would you advise them to not go out next year, to never go out again, because it might happen again? Should they just be cloistered away from men? Or should we unleash the police on that scenario and arrest any man who tries it again? Put the blame where it belongs.
If I don’t lock the doors of my house and someone comes in and takes my stuff when I am gone, is any of that on me? Leaving doors wide open doesn’t give someone the right to take my stuff. So it doesn’t excuses the person taking my stuff.
Getting drunk doesn’t give someone else the right to do bad things to you or excuse them from doing so. But it doesn’t put you in a good spot and increases the likelihood that something bad will happen. And that you may do something that you will regret.
It’s disingenuous not to acknowledge that some places are riskier to be while drunk than others-- like standing in an open field vs standing in the middle of 4 lanes of traffic.
Standing in the middle of 4 lanes of traffic is more dangerous while sober too. Unless there is lightening striking the field. It’s not a crime to drive in that traffic or for lightening to strike the field. We can’t change the lightening. We can change the traffic to make it as safe as possible because that is a human behavior. Or should we tell people to never cross the big bad road? Why did you try to cross? Didn’t you know he might be texting while driving and not see you? What were you thinking? A crosswalk doesn’t have magical powers you know.
You mean like public K-12 education?
There are other highly female-dominated industries out there, too. Oddly, they tend to be low-paid industries.
(Okay, done with replying to the topicjack. Back to alcohol.)
I’m too tired to read this whole thing, sorry.
Campuses do an enormous amount to try and stop these things but, as someone who helps create and run these things types of things, we do things the best way we can and 18 year olds treat us like we’re a joke. There are services up the wazoo and people don’t use them. I report rapes because I am a mandated reported but since it is anonymous and the women (almost always women) don’t want to press charges, there is nothing the police can do.
As for culture changing, it actually has changed a LOT. Spousal rape is now (mostly) illegal. Date rape isn’t just (automatically) brushed off as “boys will be boys.” Long term, STIs are down considerably from where they were a generation and two ago. Binge drinking is DOWN considerably since the 70s.
So culture IS changing. The fact that we’re reading stories about this and sticking up for the survivor shows that the culture is changing. The fact that survivors have resources shows that the culture is changing.
What we need is the legal system to change.
While I agree that a second lesson is about the alcohol culture, I think the focus is on the guy here because he got a boys will be boys reduced punishment when he should have gotten a drunk driving style drunk raping increased punishment. There was clear proof. This was not a he said she said.
If this victim hadn’t been drunk and blacked out this animal would have just chosen another victim.
The sentence for this crime should be no surprise to anyone. While shocking and totally insufficient for the crime, this sentence is the result of an increasingly liberal and permissive society. In NYC, kids found dealing drugs in school are not referred to law enforcement and I could go on and on about how penalties for crimes are being watered down.
After years and years of violent crime reductions nationwide, we are going in the opposite direction as a result of liberal crime policies and an overall structureless society.
If you want a country with no limits, be prepared for more of these penalties and more of these crimes.
Without deterrent penalties, crimes like this will continue to make news. I am not sure why the judge is being blamed, blame the voters of California in the end it is their fault. Property crimes below $950 in value don’t even get prosecuted now.
“Standing in the middle of 4 lanes of traffic is more dangerous while sober too”
30 years ago when I was in college, some fraternity from another school (I want to say Michigan, but I could be wrong) came to visit their house at NU. One of the guys got drunk and went out on Sheridan Road (major road that goes through campus) and did push-ups at 2 am. You know the rest - he got hit by a car and died. It’s disingenuous to say that going out in traffic is dangerous when sober, because sober people don’t go out on major streets and lie down and do push ups.
“think one issue completely ignored on this topic is the social acceptability of equating alcohol with having a good time. And that extends beyond college kids and to adults.
Adults seem to be incapable of getting together socially without alcohol. Adults are teaching and role modeling that the best way to have a good time with a group of friends is to drink.”
Absolutely agree. And here’s exhibit 1: in the Parent Cafe, if someone comes on and says “I want to / my kids’ future in-laws plan to throw a rehearsal dinner without alcohol” there are choruses of how sad and lifeless it will be and how everyone “expects” there to be alcohol at an event and please at least warn people so they can plan to get a drink elsewhere that evening and everyone’s going to whisper behind their backs how lame it is. Now, no one is accusing these folks of wanting to get blotto drunk and there’s nothing wrong with a glass of wine or whatever, but this is part of “alcohol culture” IMO.
“When you get excessively drunk, you are responsible for your own hangover and that’s it.”
I don’t agree with that. Lots of people get excessively drunk and vomit on the floor for their classmates to deal with; others get excessively drunk and wander off a bridge and die. Those aren’t acts of God. A voluntarily drunk person is responsible for those choices and lots in between. That’s not the same as being responsible for the decisions OTHERS make around them.
One thing I loved about Bryn Mawr is that on the rare occasion when someone got too drunk and puked in the dorm hallway, residents raised Cain about that imposition on their living space, as well they should. The RA should march that hungover student out of bed and get him/her to work with a scrub brush and Lysol. Darn right s/he’s responsible for that.
"If this victim hadn’t been drunk and blacked out this animal would have just chosen another victim. " I’m not convinced of that. If none of the women at the party had been falling down drunk, do you think this guy would have assaulted a woman who was able to resist and call for help? Possibly, but my guess is no. I don’t think it’s the case that there is some kind of quota of assaults these people are meeting. I think these are crimes of opportunity and that if there is less opportunity there will be less crime.
Could these drunken rapes be despite the fact that women are seen as equal to men in today’s society in most circles, some men know where it isn’t like that? It has been drilled into us all for decades that women don’t need men, they can do just fine on our own; also that women are not delicate creatures that must be protected by men. Women are being allowed into combat; surely they can protect themselves on a college campus, one might think. Then, all of a sudden, a man and woman have several drinks and wham, they aren’t equal any more. The woman typically becomes more incapacitated than the man does, which means that if the guy is a rapist, he can more easily take advantage. That is saddening in today’s world, where on more and more playing fields doors are being opened to women, but some men still see them as property and try to circumvent their position as equal human beings.
No woman or man deserves to get raped for getting outrageously drunk, and being drunk doesn’t give any man or woman the right to rape someone. But it should be a warning to anyone that getting drunk increases your chances of being a victim. If you drive without a seatbelt, that doesn’t give someone the right to hit you. But in case someone does, it is better to be wearing one.