Dstark, you keep repeating this, but I never said it. I said the perpetrators were also victims. You were calling the plaintiff a victim for having endured the ordeal. I pointed out that since the perpetrators were supposedly reenacting a tradition, then (obviously) they had been victims of it too.
My comments about the touching were my analysis from a legal standpoint. Some people may not care whether the first years were clothed or not, but a jury will. Proving a battery charge against the defendants is going to be difficult if not impossible since they did not do the touching. Any information indicating the act was voluntary is going to be relevant, as well as whether or not a reasonable man would find the activity to be outrageous under the circumstances. I don’t see what is offensive about considering all of those aspects of proof.
I don’t know a single man who considers another man touching his junk to be “reasonable” unless one guy is the other guy’s urologist or they are lovers.
The “elephant walk” is a thing. Look it up. There are articles written about it. I learned it was featured in the movie “Neighbors” that my S saw with his friends. That means thousands or hundreds of thousands of people have seen it on screen. All those people who are familiar with it may or may not be shocked by hearing it went on in the swim house.
That is your justification? Because it was in a stupid movie that it was okay to ask someone to do it?
Just because something is in the media or on the internet doesn’t make it a common practice or “right”. People may have heard about it but that doesn’t mean that they want to participate or don’t find it offensive and demeaning.
Why do guys do it? To humiliate other guys of course. If they are the crass type for whom that’s funny. There’s probably a closeted homoerotic component in there too.
I mean, that’s like asking why Bluto shoved mashed potatoes in his mouth in Animal House. Some people want to be deliberately gross.
Mathyone I still have no idea what you are getting at, but if every kid who violated a school policy - think drinking underage which is probably in every school policy - were punished by expulsion there would be very few kids graduating from US universities.
If the alleged elephant walk took place , it is crass and inappropriate. I do think though, to Bay’s point , that kids are seeing some crass stuff on TV and in movies. It doesn’t make this stuff right but it does help to know what kind of stuff kids are exposed to these days. Some of the films and comedy can get pretty raunchy these days. Here is a link about hazing and there is specific mention of the role that reality TV can play. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/sorority-hazing-increasingly-violent-disturbing-college-campus/story?id=9798604
No, it is not MY justification. My point was that if enough people consider the things that happened that night as not particularly surprising, (like underage drinking), they are not going to be shocked by it. As Pizzagirl says, they might find it crass, funny, deliberately gross, and even homoerotic. But they might not be outraged, and the jury needs to outraged in order for one of the elements of intentional infliction of emotional abuse to be proved. Or they might still be outraged. It was just something to consider about the case.
UVA is supposed to have a single-sanction honor system: beak the honor code once, get expelled. So wherever this punishment came from, it could not have been the honor system.
If you ask me, sending that email was far more dishonorable than, say, stealing a roommate’s yogurt out of a shared fridge, even if none of the threats ever materialized. But nobody asked me.
“if every kid who violated a school policy - think drinking underage which is probably in every school policy - were punished by expulsion”
The vast majority of schools don’t have a single-sanction discipline system. This is rare even among schools with strict honor codes. I don’t agree with these systems, because they impose black and white on a gray world and because they have all kinds of negative secondary consequences.
And that is why I have said, Hanna, more than once, that Honors charges are rarely brought. 40-60 a year, and usually by professors or TA’s in regard to cheating or plagiarism. Very rarely by a fellow student. The sanction is so severe that most people are reluctant to pursue charges. I believe the system may be being revised but I don’t follow it closely so don’t know for sure. So, yes, I also doubt that this got to an Honor Committee. They definitely were disciplined by the athletic department and the Dean of Students was involved as well.
Ok, now I understand you. I made that comment at the beginning of this thread, like on the second page, when all we had to go on was the newspaper article and nothing else. It is true that the incident came across as nonsensical to me ,because it made no sense that so many swimmers were involved, but only one filed a complaint, and the one who was physically injured did not even press criminal charges. There certainly IS another side to this story. And I certainly expressed my view as a theory, not a statement of fact.
There was “zero evidence” of anything at the time, dstark, and there still isn’t much, other than a press release, news articles and allegations in a complaint. So any opinions, including your own, about what went on should be equally “disgusting” to you. I don’t understand why that comment was so upsetting to you, but I will accept that it was. I can’t do anything about that.
Right. And that’s true of professors, too. One result of the single sanction is that a lot of professors who think a smaller infraction doesn’t merit expulsion just won’t report it.
@bay, I disagree with you. As you said, there are logical reasons why people think hazing happened. We have newspaper articles, suspensions, parents comments, what the school said, ‘multiple sources’ , a lawsuit filed after the 5 guys were suspended, etc…
There is nothing, nothing …that leads anybody to saying what you wrote.
To equate what you wrote to other speculation blows my mind.
I agree, at least from the media parts, it sounds like he was there for most if not all of the evening events. I think what is portrayed on TV and movies does come into play and it touches on issues that permeate our society these days - male/female relationships, body image, acceptable behavior with regard to alcohol, drugs and of course what constitutes horseplay and what constitutes harassment or bullying. I think for our institutions, our criminal justice systems and our police it is a balancing act determining how to address these situations. For example in Michigan it is a misdemeanor offense for kids to drink under the age of 21…and not that many years ago it was a civil infraction. It has clogged the courts and the outcomes do not appear much different than when it was a civil infraction. The legislature is debating the 'value" to society and burden on existing systems of the stronger criminal prosecution vs. the lesser civil infraction charge. It is a balancing act. It is give and take. There are always people who will want the police state and always people who will be the polar opposite…frankly more often than not it ends up somewhere in the middle and more often than not self-determination plays a part and not in the legal/legislative sense but how a person controls their own life and that balance.
I think all Bay is pointing out is that the burden has shifted from UVa and the local police investigating what has occurred and determining the outcome to Marcantonio proving the claims he is making in the lawsuit and if the suit continues, putting a monetary ‘value’ on what occurred.
This discussion continues to be frustrating for me because I feel as though I am speaking one language and people are answering me in a different language. I am sure many of you are very nice in person but trying to communicate with you via this thread is giving me a headache.
ALL of the information we have on this case comes from news articles, internet comments, or snips that HarvestMoon has shared with us from the complaint. NONE of that is evidence admissable to prove that the incident occurred. It is all hearsay. So you are okay with people drawing conclusions about what others did based on hearsay? You are not disgusted by that?
Not true. The original article lead ME to write what I wrote. You want to deny me my opinion. I get it. I don’t know why you feel you have the right to do that, but whatever, you don’t like most of what I write on any thread.
Thanks for the explanation of UVa honor code - it sounds rather archaic though noble in thought. Clearly they must have another “code” that they use or perhaps if they do not then they used the athletes code of conduct.
Deega these threads can move fast - 4 or 5 people posted while I was typing my response to an earlier comment about media.
Even I have not denied that hazing might have happened. It may or may not have happened. And yes, I agree it is logical from the information we know, to conclude that hazing happened. But even if it happened, it does not mean that the plaintiff is entitled to recover anything in his lawsuit. He must prove every element of every cause of action, (including the elements under the legal, not commonly used, definition of hazing) he has alleged in order to recover anything.
