More College Title IX weirdness

Parents Forum
261

“When the underlying conduct is wrong, it’s wrong no matter the extenuating circumstances.”

No one on CC questions that rape is wrong in all circumstances. (The world does have lots of such people – they came crawling out of the woodwork in Steubenville.) Yet whenever reasonable people discuss high and low risk situations, they are rebutted by reminders that rape is always wrong. It’s a straw man. Of course rape is always wrong. Also, getting so drunk/high that you can’t tell what’s going on is always risky. The second idea does not compromise the first.

“I would like to think she is asked to leave campus”

I’d like to see that too, but I don’t usually see expulsions for a first offense of theft.

“We teach our kids to protect themselves by not getting so drunk they pass out at parties.”

Do we? Some of us try. As a society, we’re failing to teach this.

262

Right. I understand we don’t all teach these behaviors to our kids and not all of our kids listen to us, no matter what we do. Parenting is a whole lot of luck. I just thought probably all of us on CC are in agreement it would be desirable parenting.

I think it is time to change societal norms about college drinking, and have suggested colleges could simply enforce their own rules in a couple of cases and, at least at the sort of highly competitive colleges with super achievers that we discuss a whole lot here, drinking would stop pretty quickly. No one ever agrees with me on that as a practical solution.

I was able to successfully convince my own kids not to binge drink, but can’t teach someone else’s kids that. I can support a college that protects students from binge drinking by just not allowing it. However, in the long run, it doesn’t seem to me avoiding binge drinking because of fear of punishment is going to solve the problem. We have to make it less acceptable and glamorous and an undesirable behavior. imho.

263

Some kids will listen and some won’t. The risky behavior is not going to ever be totally eliminated – to some extent it’s part of the maturation process.

The campus Title IX hearings have changed the landscape in that both sexes now share in the risk of adverse consequences from an encounter gone wrong from poor communication – especially due to alcohol or drugs. When students weren’t reporting because police investigations rarely got past the initial complaint, a forced encounter was something one just had to try and move on from. There really was no alternative. And yes I think the general societal view when I was growing up was to focus on the woman’s risky behavior and chalk it up to those poor decisions. We always had to think more than twice about who we were with, what we wore and what we drank. Men not so much. Who knows maybe in the long run that extra caution served us well, but we pretty much had to own most of the risk for lacking that extra diligence.

I think part of why this debate becomes so heated is because of the change in the sharing of risk. Increased reporting on campus and the guarantee of at least an investigation means both sexes now bear some risk when involving themselves in intimate encounters – especially after excessive alcohol consumption. The advice I give my college aged son and daughter is exactly the same – 1. Don’t be intimate with someone you don’t know and trust. 2. The stupidest thing you can do is ignore number 1 and do so while intoxicated. Sounds like pie in the sky and extreme wishful thinking that college kids would listen to such advice. I agree with @ahl it’s going to take a culture change.

264

Is this just my perception, or do you think it is the case that college students were less likely to get extremely drunk, to the point of passing out, or having alcohol poisoning, back when the drinking age was 18?

265

Also, good discussion, posts #256, #258, and #259.

266

Just to throw in, because it should be mentioned every so often: Women who are stone-cold sober are also raped sometimes, even on college campuses.

267

Just to throw in, because it should be mentioned every so often: Women who are stone-cold sober are also raped sometimes, even on college campuses.

268

@zoosermom has University of Texas filed an Answer to the Complaint? If so, can you post?

269

Sorry for the double-post (above). Glitchy internet.

I wanted to point out, however, that actions regarded as “risky” may depend on the observer. Here are some actions that I have been advised against, or a relative has been advised against (all when completely sober): Jogging alone at dusk or when it is dark. Walking alone when it is dark. Returning to the dorm or apartment alone after an evening exam. Returning to the dorm or apartment alone after working in the lab, when it is late. Returning to the dorm or apartment alone from the computer center. Returning to the dorm or apartment alone after a student group meeting. Walking in a wooded area. Most awfully: walking alone in broad daylight in a good region of a major American city.

The existence of escort services and emergency telephones does not remove the fact that the inability of college women to count on safety when doing these things by themselves is a major infringement of their freedom.

270

It occurs to me that an unintended collateral effect of having smaller families in the US is that fewer boys grow up with sisters, who could help to give them a female perspective; and fewer girls grow up with brothers, who could help to give them a male perspective.

Obviously, I am not advocating for any pressure to choose a family of any size (or to choose either to be or not to be childless).

But at my university, we know that an increasing fraction of our arriving first-year students have never shared a bedroom with anyone, and we think about the consequences of that. I am wondering whether not having a sibling of the opposite gender might affect people’s thinking.

In a single-child family, obviously a boy has no sisters and a girl has no brothers.

In a two-child family, if a boy is the first born, he has a 50% chance of having a sister (raw odds). 50% of two-child families have two boys or two girls.

In a three-child family, if a boy is the first born, he has a 75% chance of having at least one sister. 25% of three-child families have all boys or all girls.

In a four-child family, if a boy is first born, he has an 87.5% chance of having at least one sister. Only 12.5% of all four-child families are all boys or all girls.

The odds that a boy has a sister keep rising as the family size grows, and the odds of single-gender families keep dropping. Given that a family contains one boy, the odds that he has at least one sister are independent of his birth order.

I would not be surprised to learn that 2 generations back, most American families were larger.

The statistics on assault are hard to gather, because of the rate of non-reporting. But I wonder whether having a sister might make a young man more likely to treat women respectfully. (Obviously, I am excluding fraternities with “sister” sororities, who are “sisters” in name only.)

271

I think we need to separate out 2 problems.

One is sexual assault where there is no existing relationship between the parties. The parties may not be strangers, but there is no pre-existing romantic relationship.The second is “domestic” abuse. There is–or was-- a relationship between the parties and one may bully and socially isolate the other. Although they are intertwined, they are still, IMO, 2 different problems which can’t be dealt with in the same way.

For #1, I think the most effective prevention is bystander intervention. For example, if it looks like a young woman has had too much to drink and a guy is “hitting” on her or follows her out, observers need to step in and defuse the situation.

Young men also have to be willing to condemn those who brag about sexual misconduct. Remember the video about Steubenville that leaked? A group of young men were sitting around laughing about what had happened to the victim. From the conversation, it seems probable that there had been a previous, younger victim of other athletes at the same high school. ONE young man objected. He said something like “How would you feel if it were your sister?” It took guts for him to speak up. We need more young men like that one and we somehow have to train our young men to condemn rather than praise other young men who attack women.

In the Owen Labrie case, one male student said Labrie admitted he “boned” Chessy Prout. Several others said Labrie bragged to them about having sex with her. Labrie said he really didn’t–he just wanted to brag to his friends. We have to change the culture so that even if an 18 year old has sex with a 15 year old, he is NOT going to brag about it because his friends aren’t going to admire him for it.

We have to somehow change the culture so the guy who brags about undressing a young woman and using her body to do sexual acts (Steubenville), or sleeping with a 15 year old (Labrie) or having gotten a female drunk and having sex with her isn’t going to expect applause from his audience. Oh, and someone who is convicted of raping someone spends more than 3 months in jail (Brock Turner).

@QuantMech asks

I’m sure that’s part of it, but I also suspect that when a young man knows a woman has brothers he’s also more likely to treat her respectfully. Of course, in college the brother is less likely to be around. Male friends can substitute though.

272

@HarvestMoon1 don’t think an answer has been filed yet, but I’ll keep an eye.

273

Back in the 70s, when the drinking age was 18, at my large state university, this was not unusual behavior. My first year, first few weeks of school, a pledge at the sorority house next door to mine got passed out drunk, after drinking the punch at a fraternity party and was gang raped. My female friends and I did not even possess the vocabulary to describe this event as rape when we discussed it with each other. The most we could come up with was this was one of the “bad” fraternity houses that we’d better avoid.

The last few years I’ve been reading warnings all over the place that first year female students are perhaps at greatest risk of rape at the beginning of their first term of college.

Also,my freshman year, several fraternity pledges were killed while walking blindfold on a rural road as part of a hazing ritual, and another male tripped over a low metal chain around some landscaping and hit his head on stone and died. All those deaths were alcohol related. I also knew students who went to the clinic for alcohol poisoning.

My kids and their friends seemed to me much more mature in their relationship with alcohol than what I remembered from my own college days. I had shared a lot of cautionary tales with my own kids. Whether that had any impact I have no idea. My kids are way smarter than I am and may not have even needed my advice.

Yes. I had brothers and a very intimidating father with a state wide reputation. My dates were greeted in his study which contained a gun case and hunting trophies and I now understand this was deliberate. One young man told me my father was even scarier than he’d heard. So I was at less risk of assault than some of my friends.

I also agree we have to make bragging about conquests inconceivable.

274

To me, it seems like campus culture is much better than 40 years ago, which seems like yesterday to me. We couldn’t even name acquaintance rape as rape. That doesn’t mean I’m not horrified by what happens today and wish we had been able to fix the problems so our kids don’t have to deal with them. We could have done more. But with young women refusing to be silenced the last few years looks like another dramatic shift in campus culture, and I am hopeful.

Yes. This is a huge change for the better, imho.

275

Another campus rape allegation this week; this one is at the U of Central Florida. http://www.wftv.com/news/local/ucf-fraternity-member-accused-of-raping-person-at-party-/585320815

276

As an undergraduate back when the drinking age was 18, I actually did not know anyone who passed out from drinking. This could just be my set of acquaintances (though it was fairly broad), or my locale.

On the other hand, the first “floor meeting” for freshmen (about 30 people, roughly) at my large public university included the information that one of the young women on the floor had been sexually assaulted outside the X building. my intended major had its classes in X.

277

Men do not get women drunk. Women get themselves drunk. It takes a sexist viewpoint to believe women aren’t fully capable of making their own decisions about how much to drink and aren’t fully responsible for those decisions.

278

Well, I can totally understand that viewpoint, roethlisburger, #276, and there is certainly something to be said for it.
In some regards, I applaud it. This comment is sincere.

As an empiricist, though, I am not sure that I completely agree with it. It may be that some women are not sufficiently careful about monitoring their alcohol intake, though not planning to get drunk. I have observed women’s wine glasses being topped up, when they are not exactly tracking how much they have had. I know you think my view is old-fashioned (probably true), but I think there are some young men on campuses who intend at the beginning of an evening to have an intoxicated partner at the end. Then okay, the woman got herself drunk, but this may or may not have been her original intention. The set of men who do this could be a very small set, but I don’t believe that it is the null set. :slight_smile:

279

“actions regarded as “risky” may depend on the observer”

I’m talking about risks that can be studied and measured, not subjective assumptions.

“Men do not get women drunk. Women get themselves drunk.”

This is true if everybody knows what’s in their drinks. Unfortunately, some people lie to others about what a drink contains. It is unwise to take someone else’s word about the Kool-Aid-to-vodka ratio in that bucket, but I view the secret spiker of a drink as playing a role in the drunkenness of the drinker. (Allegations of secretly spiked drinks are a small percentage of the cases I’ve seen, but they do happen.)

280

Thanks, Hanna, for your second and third paragraphs.

With regard to the earlier comments in the same post: I am not talking about purely subjective assumptions either, Hanna. As mentioned above, at the first floor meeting in my dorm when I started college, we were told that a woman on the same floor (still there the next year) had been assaulted in the previous spring, right near the building where the classes in my major were held. We had multiple evening exams my first semester. I considered it risky to walk alone to and from them, and did not.

The incidence of women being attacked while jogging alone on campuses could be studied, but I don’t know whether this has been disaggregated from all of the sexual assault statistics. There have been reports of this problem at every university where I have worked.

My university’s student newspaper used to publish the Police Report once a week, plus longer articles on some of the assaults. I can recall an exchange of letters to the editor about a specific incident, and reports continuing through the years about women being attacked in wooded areas, on downtown streets, near the library . . . Some of the attackers were not university students.

I don’t think all of the emergency phones that were around campuses as late at the mid 00’s of this century are there purely for decoration or public relations. Nor are the escort services, special shuttles . . .

So, I consider it risky for a young woman to walk alone for any significant distance at night on my campus. I don’t know if the what the chances of being attacked on any given walk are. It is relatively rare for young women to walk alone on or near my campus. Since the incidence of walking alone is low, the data would come from a comparatively small sample space. Also, my personal risk assessment factors in the seriousness of an outcome, if bad.

I knew a French post-doc who walked alone for about a mile every night quite late, from the Harvard campus to her residence. The American women were horrified. She thought there was no problem. I have sometimes thought that if many, many women ignored the advice not to walk alone in the evening/night, then there would be a lot more women on foot, and actually lower risk. But then of course there is Mary Jo Frug.

Is it risky to walk alone in Cambridge late at night? Would the availability of statistics about the odds of assault affect most women’s willingness to walk alone there?