Discussion about consent

This is an interesting discussion about consent and young men who have been expelled from college due to claims of sexual assault or rape. The speaker takes what some might call an unpopular position on this question: is the alleged victim always to be believed? I don’t have an answer. As the parent of both a daughter in college and a son who will be in college next year, I have concerns for both of them.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/no-part-2

I appreciate the more thoughtful discussions that are starting to occur. This should never be a one sided issue as the repercussions run deep and everyone can learn and grow from thoughtful discussion.

Just listened, and it was a fascinating addition to the series, especially combined with last week’s piece. I did have several thoughts while listening:

  • There certainly are “edge” cases where it is not clear cut even with the facts known what is “right” and “wrong”, and the perspective of both parties can be valid and correct. But I wonder — do you have clear examples as well where that is not the case that weren’t mentioned because they didn’t fit the narrative you were putting forward?
  • The justification that these men will be living somewhere anyway — I couldn’t help but think that while this is true, maybe not in a residential setting with 18-20 year old women with no parents around and lots of alcohol.
  • I agree about the difference in how women view this based on age. Maybe because the older women absorbed that no one was going to help or believe them if something happened, so we developed our own strategies and mechanisms to stay safe. And we believe that younger women are naive about this. I plan to have a conversation with my Ds about owning responsibility for verbally clarifying anything they don’t want immediately.
  • I really liked the discussion about men focusing on 1 thing and women on a dozen. And how men are socialized that any sexual contact is good contact. I think that really gets at the heart of the conflict over this. I also really liked the idea that changing that socialization so they are thinking about how they want a woman to think of the encounter afterwards is a productive one. Might be an idea that should be part of sex ed conversations from parents and schools.

All in all, a really good contribution to the discussion!

Sure, there are easy Title IX cases. If we get the complainant unconscious on video, easy case. But you don’t learn very much discussing easy cases. You learn from Roe v. Wade, when there are weighty interests in conflict.

“maybe not in a residential setting with 18-20 year old women with no parents around and lots of alcohol.”

Most transfer students don’t live on campus, and young adults out of school are not necessarily around parents or away from alcohol. But more importantly, the colleges control which kids they admit. They are not shy about saying no to my kids! When one of my disciplined students ends up at a residential college, it’s because the residential college knowingly admitted him. They don’t do it unless they’re convinced it’s a good bet.

As the parent of young women, it still makes me queasy that colleges take the gamble and it is unknown to the young women around him. Since only 7% of sexual assaults or rapes end up with a prosecution, that is a significant percentage of perpetrators, not all of whom are “edge cases” still free to act out again. That isn’t just an issue for colleges, though.

I, too, agree that this is well worth the time it takes to listen to it.

@Hanna I also think you did a great job on the show!

The two incidents you spoke of hopefully did not result in the young men being suspended, I took it you were representing or advising them? The account you presented certainly do not indicate these two should possibly be punished.

Very interesting/thought provoking. Thank you.

To understand where Kaitlin Prest (the other speaker) is coming from, you really need to listen to Part 1–which I found fascinating and disturbing in so many ways. It raises a lot of questions which don’t really get answered.

My take was that they were suspended, and Hanna was helping them get into new schools.

I have another question. You mentioned that you get calls from distraught moms as a starting point for these cases. Aside from the “edge” cases discussed, do you have parents whose sons pretty clearly did cross a line who don’t accept that (the parents, I mean). I’m wondering if/how some parents are enablers in these situations. Do parents always assume their kid is in the 2% of false accusations?

And I agree that listening to part 1 gives significant context to the conversation in part 2.

Of course, that can be more generalized beyond colleges and to crimes in general. Suppose someone commits a crime, gets arrested, convicted, and punished, and later completes whatever sentence is specified. Should s/he be treated as a pariah by employers, colleges, housing, and voting afterward?

@intparent I would question that there is just a 2% incidence of false accusations. Granted it is just one school however last year my son was falsely accused (and exonerated) and I know of another student that was falsely accused and exonerated. I can say with some degree of certainty, by looking at recent historical data, there were no where near the 200 needed reports to make the 2% figure accurate, at least in the small scale of one school in one year. Small sample obviously but in my research, as a result of my son’s experience, there are false reports/mishandled cases publicized weekly, around the country and it is a real legitimate concern for students.

A case made the news in the Chicago suburbs yesterday that gets to @ucbalumnus point. It concerns a middle school teacher that was hired and he has a pending attempted murder charge. The school district did the background check and he came up clean, as their is no disposition of his case yet. The state can suspend a teaching license upon conviction but not with respect to an untried case. This has caused the debate as to if the state should change the law to be able to suspend a license based on the arrest. It seems logical in the name of protecting children however flys in the face of the whole innocent until proven guilty thing.

One of the problems we face now is a mismatch between what we “know” and our current procedures.

We know that fabricated claims of sexual assault are very rare – hence that 2% figure. But we know that based on a world in which making any kind of sexual assault report had strongly negative consequences for the victim and in which only those victims with the strongest evidence were likely to get any vindication at all. If, as we certainly should, we remove lots of barriers to reporting sexual assaults, and make the system much more responsive to victims’ needs, a certain consequence of that will be that marginal and even fraudulent allegations will get made that would never have been made in the past. That doesn’t mean that most or even many claims now are marginal or fabricated, but we can’t continue to “know” that such claims are as rare as 2%. Maybe they are still rare, but there almost have to be more of them than there used to be.

We could go down the rabbit hole of percentages. Legitimate studies seem to show a range, depending on the methodology, with most showing between 2 & 10% — looks like the actual % hovers around 5%. And these are studies about rape, not sexual assault. But I bet 90% of parents are sure THEIR kid didn’t do it — even if statistically that can’t possibly be true.

In general terms, this is easy. If someone gets out of prison, we want them to find gainful employment in the future. Thinking in terms of recidivism, we might not want some people to get specific types of employment, depending on the crime: a person with multiple DUIs shouldn’t be a bus driver, a person convicted of securities fraud shouldn’t be in the financial industry, and a person convicted of child abuse shouldn’t be allowed to work with kids.

How are a lot of these studies done, surveys of women asking if they ever falsely accused someone of sexual assault? A better way to characterize these studies is only 2% of women who make claims of sexual assault admit their accusation is false, which is very different than proving only 2% of claims are false.

Based on the story as told on the podcast, I think it is terrible if the two male students that Hanna mentioned were suspended. I have a daughter and I would not be supportive of having these guys suspended if this were the facts of the incident. Do many others believe it would be correct to suspend them?

My take (hope) was that there was probably some sort of hearing to determine the facts and Hanna was assisting them in their discussions with the college.

wow. That was intense. But good for me to hear; i’ve been ignoring it all. I’m going to talk to my 3 kids (2boys and my daughter) who are between 17-22 about this all. Hanna - you have quite the job; I would want you on my side for sure if ever needed. thanks for sharing that link. (And now I will know how to pronounce your name any time i see it.)

I enjoyed the podcast and I thought the conversation was thought-provoking. My younger daughter is still in college and is active in her school’s social/Greek scene. Her tales of late-night drinking and partying scare the hell out of me, but she assures me she sticks close to her friends and is pretty strict about that. I wondered why the podcast only glancingly acknowledged the role of alcohol-- and skimmed over how alcohol use might need to be addressed in a student’s ‘reclamation’.

Anyway, the correlation of heavy drinking and assaults is mind-boggling. I continue to be shocked that the kids involved are rarely treated like alcohol abusers who need urgent help and are likely to re-offend as soon as they are drinking again (because, well, they are going to drink again…and are going to re-offend when they do, no matter how ‘remorseful’ they were after any earlier incidences).

If we learned anything from the recent confirmation hearings in Washington it’s that many, many young people cannot handle alcohol. Even high-achieving, otherwise-good kids might do terrible things or show horrible judgment under the influence. We are too complicit in allowing them to move forward without forcing them to acknowledge that they cannot be drinking-- they can’t handle it, and they could do something that destroys their lives or someone else’s.

In this era of Uber and Lyft, young people feel the drinking is now ‘safe’ because they won’t be driving. But they don’t realize they are often dangerously impaired by alcohol, and assault, bullying, deceit, cruelty and injuries are often the result. Ask your kids about their group drinking experiences and what wound up happening to each person; those stories start as ‘we had a fantastic time’ and wind up in a much less happy place.

I don’t know how to decrease or end alcohol on campuses. It’s unrealistic and I’m a realist. But how we allow this to go unchecked and unremarked is beyond me.

I have long been surprised that more attention has not been given to young men and women and their use of alcohol and especially hard liquor which is far far more prevalent than when most of us were in college. I think it is well known among campus police and many administrative positions but I think it is almost impossible to manage because it is often off campus and pregaming a bunch of slugs of vodka or liqueur choice can be easily hidden.

looking forward to see the next part