More College Title IX weirdness

Parents Forum
61

I guess my issue is that I no longer believe in truly fair and open-minded investigations. It seems like there is always an agenda at play. Now, if people of goodwill really thought there was abuse, certainly it should be investigated. But I think it should be an investigation with no preconceived outcome and with fairness and respect to all parties. Is it possible that the woman was abused and afraid to say so for some reason? Yeah, I think it’s a credible possibility - particularly with respect to football culture. But just because there are many violent men in football doesn’t mean that this man on this particular day was being violent to this particular woman. As easily as I can imagine a violent and intimidating football player, I can also imagine a process and participants that are going to find a particular outcome no matter what. I think that’s the biggest problem overall - so many people coming at these issues from all sorts of places no longer have faith in the integrity of the system.

Also, in situations of abuse, I also think it’s important to make sure to work toward an outcome that doesn’t make life worse for the victim.

62

Whether my view is reasonable or not, to me what you describe is unacceptable behavior. Once someone says “no” the one teasing should stop, in my opinion. My house rules prohibit this type of behavior. I can’t imagine my adult offspring indulging in it in front of me, because they know how upset it would make me and that I would intervene. They learned that when they were very young. No one was allowed to tease another if the one being teased said to cut it out. That doesn’t mean they can’t go have a tickle party in private if they want, where I have no idea what they are up to. I am not taking away their free agency. I’m just exercising my right to have the atmosphere I choose in my own home.

If the university defines one person tickling another to death, while the one being tickled says stop stop stop as assault, I am more than okay with that definition. You can’t tickle on the quad without repercussions. You can only tickle in private if you are careful not to let others know who might report. To be safe, you can go off campus with the tickling. You still have free agency.

63

Momofthreeboys, if a woman, exercising her free agency, stays with an abuser and eventually he kills her, do you blame him for the murder? Or is it her fault for enabling the behavior and not removing herself from danger?

64

Jonri, I apologize for misquoting you. That was not what you said at all.

At the time, I realized what I’d done when I read what I wrote after posting the comment, but couldn’t get it corrected in time. I should have just deleted the post and started over.

65

It actually doesn’t happen, particularly in cases where there is no physical evidence. Obviously in murder cases there is no “living, cooperating witness”, lidrug cases where both parties are guilty, or in large white collar conspiracy cases where there are mounds of physical evidence, but an assault or domestic battery case where the alleged victim is going to testify that they were not the victim of assault/abused? No. It doesn’t happen. Most criminal prosecutors who handle sexual assault cases will tell you that this is one of the main frustrations of their job, that the woman will decide on the eve of trial that she wasn’t really assaulted/raped or just doesn’t want to go through with the process. It’s a huge problem that is mostly ignored here because it is difficult to blame on the patriarchy.

And I want to try once again to raise what I think is the salient point here, and the reason I started the thread. Should the college be investigating something like this in the first instance? Why is it inserting itself in the process? Someone up the thread said that colleges will discipline students guilty of assault, but while I am sure that is true, I am not sure that colleges have distinct investigative arms set up to hunt for potential crimes on their campus. Nor do they have tribunals set up to determine guilt in non sexual assault cases. What is different here? Are those of you who advocate for a muscular definition of Title IX comfortable with it being interpreted this broadly?

That is a very, very chilling sentence.

66

I shouldn’t have assumed the “stop stop stop” part is understood to be part of the sentence.

In my interpretation, someone who doesn’t stop tickling when the victim says “stop stop stop” is guilty at that point of assault. Sure, it’s assault on the very low end of the continuum of behaviors, but it matters to me. I have no way to know if momofthreeboys means her “stop stop stop” seriously or not. If she is serious, I want the tickler to stop immediately. How can we know whether she’s enjoying it or not? We have to listen to her words. imho

67

If it was, in fact, tickling, then I think calling it assault and acting accordingly is utterly ridiculous and the embodiment of the reason why so many have so little faith in these systems.

I also question whether Title IX should be expanded so broadly.

68

If someone being tickled says “stop” and the tickler doesn’t stop…

How do you define that behavior? Are we talking away agency from the one being tickled, if she objects and we don’t support her objection, and minimize her discomfort in some way?

We did this argument a few years back, with pinching as the example. I don’t imagine any of us have changed our views. One view I liked was that an individual’s body isn’t available for touching without permission.

69

Understood. The question is always how much freedom are we as a society willing to give up in order to enforce general rules of behavior? For centuries, this has been a give and take, pragmatic exercise. Are we willing to put up with a bit of illicit drug activity for example in order to maintain the security of our dwellings and person? That is basically what the fourth amendment is, and we have decades of law that has built up around what is an “unreasonable” search. Similarly, we have always been willing to live with a certain amount of maybe inappropriate behavior in the public sphere because if we tried to sanction all behavior that some will find inappropriate we would of neccessity live in a police state. For hundreds of years these types of decisions were made by people devoted to the task, who worked more or less carefully and slowly.

The difference now is that at universities or until recently the OCR, these decisions are or were being made by advocates who are not at all interested in moving carefully, care little for the lessons of the past and in fact are convinced that they can build a better mouse trap. The result of which has been shown to be not only capricious but as in the example here at least arguably overbearing. And we have a situation where someone can state with a straight face that a person (assumedly male) tickling a person (assumedly female) on a college quad should be punished. The chilling part is what we had to give up to get there.

70

Just saw a link to this on instapundit.

www.thecollegefix.com/post/35082/

71

Momofthreeboys, I think that just writing about tickling is ducking my question about how far an accused person can go, and have the victim/non-victim brush it off. What if a woman is stabbed, but it’s a flesh wound? What if she is stabbed, and surgery is required? If she is still willing to return to the man (a few women would be), should he not be charged? Ohiodad51, in the latter case, if the hospital staff can and will testify, would the man not be charged, even if the woman did not want that? And could the accusation stick?

You may regard this as purely hypothetical. But it’s a clear enough question, and I would like to know where you actually draw the line.

I would also like to comment that a settlement offer does not mean that the party being offered the settlement is in the right. While working for many years at a university, I have become aware of settlement offers that are equivalent to “just go away.” An offer may be made to avoid time costs and costs of litigation, not because the university is concerned about the eventual outcome. I am not saying that this applies to settlements mentioned on this and other recent threads–just that it is known to happen.

72

Two or three years back, at the time we were exploring the hypothetical of pinching on college campuses, my memory is that we all agreed the discussion should be gender neutral. So I start with that assumption in discussions here, even though there are new posters who didn’t participate in those earlier threads.

Those discussions were very educational to me, but I don’t have the energy to do them all over again. I’ll just read along with interest.

73

Does tickling rise to the level of assault in the criminal justice system - if the “victim” doesn’t complain?

Serious question. If it doesn’t, then it shouldn’t on a campus. Now, if someone came up to a person and tickled him or her without permission and the person being tickled complains, then absolutely act.

But if the behavior doesn’t rise to the level outside of campus AND the person being acted upon chooses not to pursue the matter, then that should be the end of it.

74

My guess is you could possibly get an indictment based on the hospital records/testimony, and maybe I guess could survive a motion to dismiss. Unilkely though that a jury would convict even under your scenario if the woman took the stand and said it wasn’t assault (assumedly she would say it was an accident or some such). At the end of the day and as a practical matter, nothing like that would ever get that far. No courtroom prosecutor carrying a beyond a reasonable doubt burden is going to try a case where the alleged victim is non cooperative. First, they would burn their credibility with the judge. Second, they would devote a ton of resources to a case they likely wouldn’t win. Third, even if they did try it, what good would it do? If the woman is uncooperative at trial, there is a good chance she will put herself back in the same situation regardless of what the prosecutor does. So what would be the point?

75

They most certainly do have tribunalsls/committees established to hear non-sexual but potentially criminal violations on their campus. How do you think they adjudicate the suspensions/expulsions of students for selling drugs, regular assaults/batteries, harassment, theft, vandalism or other violations of their conduct codes?

Here’s the link to Yale’s Executive Committee that adjudicates violations of their conduct code that do not involve sexual harassment. The committee is comprised of faculty, undergraduates and a representative appointed by the dean. An initial report is made to a designated individual, investigation is undertaken and if a hearing is scheduled the parties can choose an “advisor” who may not advocate at the hearing. Decision is rendered after hearing and appeal is available. Preponderance standard is used for adjudication.
http://catalog.yale.edu/undergraduate-regulations/procedures/disciplinary-executive-committee/

Here are the hearing procedures for CSU-Pueblo for violations under their conduct code:
https://www.csupueblo.edu/student-affairs/_doc/student-code-of-conduct.pdf
Princeton has the “Undergraduate Committee on Discipline” which hears violations under their conduct code:
https://www.princeton.edu/pr/pub/rrr/06/63.htm

Every school has some sort of hearing process for adjudication of violations of student regulations. They have to.

76

I think that the last paragraph by Ohiodad51 in #68 is overly broad. It definitely does not appear to me to be the case at my university. Please read on before disregarding this just because you know my general views.

I had a student who was sexually assaulted off campus. I am quite certain that this is factual. I have no idea who her assailant was. She reported this both to the police and to the relevant university office. The man sued her for defamation on those grounds (probably the report to the university office). I was told by the university that the defamation case was being handled for her by outside counsel pro bono. However, whether that only applied at the beginning or did not apply at all, she wound up with $60,000 in legal costs leading up to summary dismissal of the defamation case by the judge. When I initially reported the assault to a staff member in the responsible university office, I was told that the man was “known” to them. This probably should not have been said. While I have no idea of the identity of the man, he was clearly still a student. There is no indication that he did not graduate on schedule.

Aside from the types of cases mentioned by Ohiodad51, where the woman does not wish to cooperate with a charge of rape against the man, this case illustrates the difficulty of proving anything when the actions occur without witnesses. There are certainly well-publicized cases of universities not responding to assault, or making the situation worse for the victim. I think that an objective examination would show that this is more common than pre-judged, imaginary-perp hunts by feminists, at least in my region of the country.

In another instance, one of my colleagues told me that a student in one of the large lecture classes had accused another student in the same class of assault. Apparently, the outcome was that one of the students was moved from one of the accompanying small-group breakout sessions to a different one. Hardly an injustice to the man.

Here, the Bart Simpson Rule seems to apply: “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me (aside from the victim), and you can’t prove anything.” The likelihood of proving something “beyond a reasonable doubt” is far lower than proving something by a preponderance of evidence. Even the latter standard cannot be met in a number of cases where the action occurred in private, and there were no witnesses.

For anyone who has lost track, I am an advocate for a “clear and convincing” standard of proof within the university, which is stronger than preponderance of evidence, and I have said so on CC. I think that the occurrence of true assaults that cannot be proven (at the applicable standard in the setting) is the cost of justice. We have to bear that cost.

The cost is borne unequally, though, Ohiodad51. “We” in generally are harmed by the inability to respond to assaults, but the victim is harmed far worse.

I am hoping for later-life attacks of conscience in the unprovable cases. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha–except that I actually am hoping for that. I am all in favor of a social environment that can strengthen people’s consciences.

77

@HarvestMoon1, sorry, I am drawing a distinction between investigations by the relevant police department and non law enforcement entities like the Title IX committee. Police Departments, whether it is the Yale Police or the Pueblo police, (I didn’t see any mention to anything but academic violations in the Princeton document you linked) are in the business of investigating crime. Not sure the Title IX committee has or should have the same brief.

78

Finally, Hanna, yes, I have been around long enough that I am not surprised by most things that some university somewhere would do. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the action is common across universities.

79

“They most certainly do have tribunalsls/committees established to hear non-sexual but potentially criminal violations on their campus.”

That’s right. We talk a lot about Title IX on CC, but easily half of my suspension/expulsion cases are about selling drugs, cheating, drunk-and-disorderly, drunken brawl, drunken vandalism, etc.

However, all those cases don’t concern me nearly as much because the proof problems are minimal. In most cases in all those categories, everyone agrees about the facts. The dispute is entirely about the meaning of the actions and what the consequence ought to be. Universities are pretty well equipped to handle that part.

80

Momofthreeboys hasn’t been back yet to answer my question about the knife attacks on a woman. One of the hypothetical attacks involved only a flesh wound. The other required surgery. The woman subsequently returned to the man and does not want charges to be pressed.

Ohiodad51 has said that even in the case requiring surgery (with the hospital staff to testify), a prosecutor would not bring charges.

On one level, this renders my question moot. But I would still like to know whether this is okay with other posters? Does the attack requiring surgery cross the line for you, or not?