‘If you can get your daughters to only drink beer or wine, their risk profile will be greatly reduced.’ ‘Many of these awful situations involve girls who, in effect, self-roofied themselves with high proof alcohol.’
“Is it just me, or does anybody else find these comments extremely insensitive?”
Maybe insensitive. But also accurate. Does anyone on here really disagree that this is high risk behavior? Would anyone on here disagree with trying to reduce high risk behavior by their kids? Sheesh!!!
Agree…I am still trying to figure out on what level it is insensitive…insensitive to what? Women on college campuses are in equal numbers if not higher percentages…do they not have free agency? Everyone, everyday males, females, young, old has to make risk-reward decisions…you own your decisions.
I think what bothers me is this idea that the key to dealing with the culture of abuse is to adjust one’s behavior—not to change the culture—but to protect oneself within it. It sets up a “predator-prey” mentality that I find abhorrent and uncivilized. Very “Lord of the Flies.” And that mentality does not stop at the fraternity or dorm-room door or end when one gets a diploma. It seeps out everywhere. I don’t think this is just a male vs. female thing, either. It’s about defining people as “other” instead of treating them as someone who is deserving of dignity and respect. I don’t want my daughter to HAVE to view each young man she comes into contact with as a potential abuser. Nor did I want my son to view ANY young woman as someone to be taken advantage of.
One of the reasons that we send our kids to college is so that they can make friends and get to know the people they go to school with. They can’t do that if they can’t trust the people with whom they live, learn, work, and relax. I don’t see how anyone would be able to form real relationships in a social milieu where the best advice is “don’t drink the punch because those rapey guys might have spiked it” or “whatever you do, never allow yourself to be alone with a girl because she might cry ‘rape’”.
Universities, parents, and fellow students are so busy going into CYA mode that it seems they’ve forgotten that there are certain things that are just wrong—morally, socially, and legally. Yes, this kind of exploitation happened back in the day, but it was wrong then. And it’s wrong now. IMO, it needs to be changed, not adjusted to.
“My own thought is that with the campus assault cases, there is no “attachment” between the two students involved – most have just met that night or knew each other very casually. Not sure that scenario is going to produce any expectations”
About a third of my cases involve relationships, not casual hookups. But casual hookups produce expectations – and the resulting heartbreak, humiliation, rage, etc. – all the time. That can be true for participants of any gender. That can be true even when the participants are generally sane. There are also young people who are nuts.
"an accused chalks it up to “oh she’s angry and vengeful because I ignored her the next day.”
There can be lots of other evidence about emotional motives besides the accused’s opinion. Tons of the cases have texts/IMs, and that’s usually where the interpretation comes from. Just as an example, in the current lawsuit against U of Chicago (which I am not involved with), an accuser had a blog filled with romantic reminisces and longing about the accused after a hookup, and then some years later described it as an assault and filed a complaint. That’s not proof that there was or wasn’t an assault, but it’s support for the kind of shifting-memory narrative I’m talking about.
The lengthy complaint in that case is available here; the quotes from the blog are mentioned on page 28 and continue on page 41:
http://old.chicagomaroon.com//wp-content/uploads/2014/06/doe_complaint.pdf
“I think what bothers me is this idea that the key to dealing with the culture of abuse is to adjust one’s behavior—not to change the culture—but to protect oneself within it.”
As a parent, it is my duty to try to get my kid to act safely and responsibly. Wear a seatbelt/helmet/sunscreen. Don’t drive drunk. And don’t drink like this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/opinion/drinking-to-blackout.html
Common sense. Because this is risky, dangerous behavior for lots of reasons (not just rape). And physiologically, this is especially risky behavior for girls. As I tell my two daughters, beer or wine – you’ll be fine. And also that nothing good happens after midnight. Also tell my son the same.
OK, I agree that all individuals, even college freshmen, need to take responsibility. So I tell my girls, I’d rather you not get drunk, but at least don’t do it at parties with a lot of strangers around. They’ve seen excessive drinking with friends and adults, and probably done it themselves at sleepovers. (I have never seen any of my 3 daughters drunk, but I’d be stupid to conclude therefore it’s certainly never happened). And I think they get that, because they understand that members of either sex can lose inhibitions and do things they later regret. They are young and new to unlimited freedom, but responsibility has to start somewhere.
What is different is when girls are deliberately targeted with spiked punch or pills drop into unguarded cups. That is a different situation, one where there are clear victims, and the crime is much worse, at least morally, than just underage drinking. That is a sad reality, when they’ve grown up in relatively safe and law-abiding homes, to face that some of their peers could do this.
I have found the disagreements on this thread to be civil and thought-provoking, and have already led to conversations about it in our family. Thread started out being about athletes and has shifted, as most threads do, and that’s fine with me. Just like conversations. (FWIW, D17 is applying ED to Reed. No Greek life or varsity sports there, but that of course doesn’t mean she can be naive or irresponsible).
@EllieMom, many of us heard you. We are listening. Your post is fantastic.
Thanks.
I must have said nothing good happens after midnight a million times. My kids joke that they are going to have it engraved on my headstone. Risky behavior is always that…risky. And frankly there are crazy young men and crazy young women and after avoiding getting drunk off your ass it is probably a good idea to figure out if your potential bed partner is crazy or not. I am never in favor of gross generalizations about Greek life or athletics.
PC – there certainly are situations where girls are specifically targeted or drugged. Which is terrible.
But my view/experience is that most of these situations don’t involve that type of intentional predation. More typical, I think, is where the victim and the offender were just trying to have some fun on a Saturday night. But when the BACs get extremely high, bad things can happen. Sometimes it is regrettable, sometimes it is criminal, many times no one can tell exactly what it is.
Many of these situations just wouldn’t happen if the BACs of the victim or the offender were not sky high. Take the Vandy football rape.
The main offender there said he had between 14 and 22 drinks. Good lord! Pretty likely he’s not a rapist with only, say, 6 or 7 drinks. The victim had enough drinks* to both black out and pass out. Pretty likely she’s not a victim at a lower intoxication level.
*The Vandy victim blacked out after downing a “blue drink” given to her in a bar, suggesting she might have been drugged. Possible. But just as likely that it was just too much alcohol towards the end of a long party night. The effects of an alcohol spike and a roofie are essentially identical.
I don’t think either party has to be drunk for charges to stick. It can be as simple as the accused admitting that (a) they had a drink and (b) they had intercourse, and the prosecution is halfway there. All the college needs to find against them is the opinion that it’s “more likely than not” that the accusation happened. These cases belong in criminal courts, where both parties have rights, not in college tribunals.
In this climate, I’m more afraid for my son than I am my daughter. My daughter has a shot at protecting herself – travel in pairs, don’t drink anything you didn’t open, don’t drink hard alcohol, don’t drink more than one beer or wine cooler and never on an empty stomach, etc., etc. – but what can my son do to protect himself? If you have intercourse (whether or not either of you has had a drink), or even if you’re just alone with a woman, you can kiss your Constitutional rights goodbye.
Colleges have a vested financial interest in handling these cases in a certain way. What percentage of them can they safely find for the accused before they’re under investigation by the state or feds? What’s that magic x number that they can’t exceed without putting their funding in jeopardy? Do you feel confident enough in the system that you’d comfortable if your kid was number x + 1?
Say no, if there is a woman hitting on him that he doesn’t know. just tell him to suck it up and say no until he can figure out if she’s sane or crazy. Call a lawyer immediately after calling you if a woman accuses him of something he says he didn’t do. Tell him to preserve any communication from the woman before or after the hook-up. If unfortunately it happens to be a real crazy like Mattress girl or the UofC woman, document, document, document. If it’s really bad, tell him to get a restraining order and if she’s harassing him in social media, have the laywer send a cease and desist order. Tell him to read thoroughly every, single, step a university promises to take, make note of deadlines and make sure the lawyer as a copy of the university policies and last but not least if all else fails and he ends up being displaced from campus, call Hanna (LOL).
Colleges are learning that it is quite expensive to screw up so I’m ever hopeful we can get back to some equilibrium as far as self determination, because right now, the way Title IX is being interpreted women are a protected class much to my chagrin as a woman.
And the accused may appeal if they find against him. While each school is slightly different in how they handle appeals, in most cases the record is reviewed for irregularities or error. Sometimes additional evidence becomes available and that is looked at. It is rarely a “re-hearing” of the whole case.
I am sure you are being sarcastic but I will answer you anyway. If you have some time go back and look at the Yale data that was posted in previous sexual assault threads. You will find very few expulsions. You will find more suspensions, referrals to counseling or sexual assault awareness training. I think there is a big misconception because of the press reports on the more sensationalized cases, that colleges are expelling men right and left. I do not believe this is the case. And the Yale data showed many, many cases where they found against the complainant. So let’s just stop with the nonsense that women just make stuff up and men are then summarily expelled.
I am not sure why the sexual assault cases are being singled out. If 2 intoxicated men have a serious physical altercation and one reports it, the same exact kind of investigation and hearing ensues. Same burden of proof and same rules governing the hearing. If the tribunal finds for the complainant, the accused can be expelled or suspended. Same goes for serious hazing and many other crimes colleges adjudicate. How is that any different?
One other point that is often overlooked in these discussions is that there is a significant body of case law that specifically addresses exactly what “process is due” in administrative and university hearings. The Dear Colleague Letter pretty much mirrors that case law.
I’m not trying to minimize the prevalence of rapes on college campuses or the prevalence of “rape culture.” What I do have issue with is it does not take into account the hundreds of college students that do not engage in risk taking behaviors , but are still being considered potential predators. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from mothers and fathers of daughters " What are you parents of son’s going to do about this? "’ or " You need to teach your sons how to treat women ". It’s very disconcerting .
I think it’s different in that rape cases turn on something nonphysical: consent. It’s frankly just a lot harder to find evidence of nonphysical things than it is to find evidence of physical things. It’s also much more political and therefore induces greater conflicts of interest.
However, I actually agree with you on this point. Colleges are bad at these tribunals and should treat assault/battery the same way they should treat rape. They should get the police involved. Amateur detective is a great read for elementary schools but it makes for bad national policy. These are adults engaged in serious, potentially criminal activity. We have a cadre of professionals we’ve developed to handle these very problems. We should use them.
^^Absolutely.
carolinamom2boys…Generally we women, who raised boys, take it on the chin and silently roll our eyeballs and wonder if the moms of only girls who post such stuff know just what those girls can and sometimes will be up to 
and generally recall what we were up to at that age LOL. But I also saw it as an opportunity to be able to give “female” voice around the dining table…and I think they listen(ed). None of the are married so i may have scared the crap out of them.
Since I had one of each, I think I have a relatively balanced viewpoint. I do know that my son, who was very protective of his younger sister, was concerned when he thought of her being put in situations like he had witnessed in college. Like most people here, I tended to focus on risk management and common sense, but, as he said to me once, “You don’t understand, Mom. You can be careful, but it’s not nice. And people don’t care.” I will admit that he had a tendency to over-react, but his worry for her was real.
Good-bye to civility. Gross generalizations of Greek life and athletics? That’s where the publicized rape action has been. And how’s this for a gross generalization? Girls that are up to so much stuff that their moms have to scare the crap out of them? And that girls are the majority at most campuses, that makes them safer?
I have never said anything to a parent of a boy about how horrible boys are. I expect to be at a few weddings in the next few years presenting my daughter to one for marriage. I’m confident, given the upbringing our girls have had from my wife and I, their husbands will not be misogynists.
I did think it absolutely my responsibility, as the mother of sons, to teach my sons to be gentlemen, which included teaching them to respect and protect women. I talked a whole lot about patriarchy and how they were advantaged and what that meant in my mind.
From the middle school years on, there were always girls pursuing my boys, in whom my boys weren’t that interested. I taught my boys to be as polite as possible. Those girls and their behavior were not my responsibility. I did feel like my boys’ behavior was my responsibility, because I was their mother and teacher.
I did not scare my boys about women. I have a married son and a grandson on the way. My daughter-in-law likes me. I raised an excellent husband for her. I adore her. She just asked if I would come stay when the baby comes. yep.
@Hanna I quickly read through that U of Chicago Complaint and Request for a TRO – very disorganized presentation of the issues --but I think I got the gist of it. Clearly John Doe appears to have some valid complaints but I just am not seeing those blog entries as evidence of an emotional motive.
My impression from those entries is that she initially did not like John Doe all that much and her affections were with another male student. That student was not consistent in his responses to her so she often settled for spending time with John Doe. As time passes she finally concludes that John Doe is a pretty good guy after all, but by then he declares he is involved with someone else. The Complaint then goes on to simply make the sweeping generalization that Jane Doe is “angry” but offers up no blog entries or anything else to support that contention. This is kind of how I feel it plays out in real life – the caricature of the scorned woman is omnipresent in these cases.
What I do think hurts her is the social media post describing the encounter as “sweet and beautiful.” But that assists in the evaluation of whether an assault actually took place, not what motivated her in filing her complaint with U of Chicago in the first place. Do we even know what the encounter entailed? The Complaint alleges she is on record as confirming there was no intercourse but offers no other facts.
Yes I agree. And after reading those texts in the St. Paul’s sexual assault case and seeing too many press reports about men engaging with unconscious women, I am prepared to conclude that it is equally true on both sides of the aisle.
It’s harder yes, but certainly not impossible – especially now with cell phone cameras and video. But more importantly similar issues of consent arise in those other cases as well. Remember the swimmer’s case (Marcantonio) of hazing at UVA? Well that case ended up being litigated, but one of the defenses that was raised was that he consented to being there and never tried to leave the house during the alleged hazing. Basically that he consented to it.
And I am willing to bet that had that case been heard by the University instead of a district court and some of those defendants ended up being expelled, we would not have heard one peep about the deprivation of their right to due process.