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<p>Actually, the “law” and what colleges are doing is two different things. </p>
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No, one should not be punished - they were both participants and the argument should be mediated, not tried and punished and yes, the law and what colleges are doing seem destined for collision as it is vigilantism.</p>
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Agree with this…having administrators, students and business people determine guilt or innocence is vigilantism at best. </p>
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And that is something we need to talk to young women quite vocally about…the law is tested. If the situation meets the legal test in that particular state then yes, rape or sexual abuse occurred and the young woman needs to pursue, but currently what women “think” might not stand the legal test. If it does not meet the legal test then legally it did not occur. Mediation is a common legal remedy for he said/she said situations whether it’s tenant law, real estate law…many “kinds” of law. Mediation is entirely different than putting kids in a kangaroo court of students, professors and business leaders and determining a judgement. Mediation is getting two sides to agree to an outcome. The problem in my mind is if too many women think the university is going to “protect” them if they have regret sex, they could soon find themselves in a worse, toothless position than if the colleges get out of the legal business and start mediating these student disputes with people who are trained in mediation. </p>
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And this above is why I’m wary of giving such power to only one side of the involved party. </p>
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<p>@Much2learn wrote:</p>
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<p>I did not say what you wrote above. </p>
<p>What I said was you cannot punish someone only based on what you believe. And punishing people requires that some objective standard be used to determine what is deemed to be ACCEPTED as real. And, yes, it is considered false, based on our judicial system, if something cannot be proved. That is the world we live in.</p>
<p>It is very important to look at this from the perspective of adjudication, which is what I am doing. If something cannot be proved, our judicial system does not accept it as a reality, which should be punished. Not sure why that is so difficult to comprehend.</p>
<p>My comment about reality was directly addressing the issue of what happens in the college situation being discussed. Just because you, society, or I think rape occurred, does not mean that it is actually viewed as occurring under our system of assessing blame and punishment.</p>
<p>It therefore follows it is wrong to punish someone for what you believed happened, as opposed to proving, based on our judicial system, it has. That is where the courts must come in. Rape, and any other crime really, only becomes a punishable reality in our system upon being proved.</p>
<p>I believe punishment should only be metered out for something, which is proved, not simply believed or simply stated to have happened.</p>
<p>@Niquii77 - Actually, I agree with your niece. But, and it is a big “but,” is because a female says it’s rape is NOT a justifiable condition to just lock a guy up or punish him. The rape still has to be proved in court for the guy to be locked up and punished. Any other way is asking for the silliness that we now see on colleges and universities. </p>
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I think that’s where the difference popped up. I assumed that when the niece said “when a girl says it’s rape, it’s rape” that she meant it was a done deal. That the guy raped her because she said so. Period. Done. And the male would be punished for raping her. </p>
<p>If that women were really able to do that, that is so much power to give to someone. Just like motb said, what about when a woman regrets the sex? He raped me?</p>
<p>But, yes, I agree with your comment completely. </p>
<p>It is all such a slippery slope - the whole concept of protectionism which if you strip out all the platitudes is what colleges are doing - taking into their hands things that historically have been protected by law. The only oddity to this take on protectionism is that many of the women are right in there drinking and tossing back shots and aren’t exactly acting in a manner that would make the vast majority feel “protectionistic” or willing to buy-in to turning over matters to non-legal-trained individuals. I sure don’t have confidence that justice will be meted in a fair and equitable manner and as I said before sure as heck glad I’m not in my twenties. If I was a mother of a daughter, I’d be afraid that she would not call the police and go to the university only later to find herself (and us) being sued in civil court. As a mother of sons, I worry that I will be forking over dollars to protect him legally from accusations and a process that was woefully mishandled. It’s a no-win for any parent. </p>
<p>^^ This is why colleges should not be handling these situations. </p>
<p>I purposely left out a lot of what my DS has told me about what happens at his school. But, I will tell you that even my wife is now way less sympathetic to these situations than she was two weeks ago. </p>
<p>The seems rather a basic problem to me; that is, one cannot demand a free-for-all, get that, and then decide on a whim to cry foul. People get real wary when the rules seem to be changed / improvised mid-stream, which is what my DS says boys are no longer willing to accept. </p>
<p>First @cardinalfang said
"There’s where we disagree. I feel quite comfortable saying that someone who rapes is a rapist. About ten million students are enrolled in four-year schools. More than half of them, but we’ll say five million, are women. About 3% of those women, 150,000, are raped every year. Let’s be generous here, and say (ridiculously) that every college rapist rapes ten women. That gives us 15,000 rapists on campus, and that’s an exceedingly conservative estimate.</p>
<p>How many men are thrown out of college each year for being rapists? Is it even in the four figures?</p>
<p>@awcntdb you replied
" Where are all these guilty verdicts to back up these lots of rapes, as opposed to lots of drunk sex by both parties?"</p>
<p>I then said
“You are now suggesting that events that haven’t been proven in a court of law, did not happen.”</p>
<p>@awcntdb you replied
“Reality exists by virtue of the fact that it can be proved to exist by some objective standard.”</p>
<p>@ awcntdb
Now you are saying
"What I said was you cannot punish someone only based on what you believe. "</p>
<p>I agree with your last statement. However, your earlier statement suggested that there is no real rape problem on college campuses at all, that you know that because of the lack of convictions, and that if a person wasn’t convicted in court, then a rape did not occur. It was clear from the comments above that you were not talking about punishment, but arguing that in reality, rapes that do not result in a convict were not really rapes at all.</p>
<p>^^ i can’t edit anymore but wanted to mention that none of this addresses the emotional toll taken on our young people, both men and women, and they ‘get it’ every day…they are considered adults by the medical profession, by the legal profession, by the military, …but they aren’t really because they can’t drink, need their parents to get any financial aid, can’t rent a car if they get stuck at an airport, and so on. They are in this really bad sort of peter pan never world and I for one think our generation has gone quite mad regarding how we “view” our young adults. </p>
<p>Barely conscious is not the majority of these cases. Most drunk students are functioning They’re all not sprawled out near pass out level. And, why is everyone okay with this quantity of drinking in the first place? That’s the problem. I just don’t get it. Sorry. This is supposed to be school. Not okay.</p>
<p>If a female student gets really drunk and goes home with someone and then two days later thinks she was raped after making out with him all night because she’s pretty sure she never said “yes” and is now regretful and embarrassed and would never sleep with him again and all of her friends think he’s a loser, was she raped?</p>
<p>I can’t believe that anyone would suggest mediation for rape accusations. That brings cruelty and insensitively to a new low.</p>
<p>Some rape accusations are false. I don’t have much sympathy for false accusers, whether they are intentionally making false accusations, or are mistaken about what constitutes rape, or can’t remember consenting even though they did.</p>
<p>But some accusers, I’d say the majority of accusers, are making true accusations. Making a victim of a violent crime subject to some mediation with the animal who attacked her is horrifyingly cruel. If my daughter (if I had one) told me she had been raped, and now she and the disgusting slimemold who raped her had to go to some damn mediation, I’d be in the dean’s face in a millisecond. What can anyone be thinking to imagine that a victim of rape has anything to say to her rapist other than “Die, scum.”</p>
<p>@awctndb wrote:</p>
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<p>OK, we were assuming different rules of discussion. </p>
<p>As to the first quote above - I assume in an exchange that any statement made is referring to the topic at hand, not taken as an off topic general statement. And, the topic at hand, as I understand it, is females accusing males of rape and the males accused of rape being treated as if they are guilty of rape by college disciplinary boards. This is to what, specifically, my first quote was referring. </p>
<p>As to the second quote above - you are conflating two issues that our system, wisely, has deemed not wise to conflate: beliefs and proved allegations.</p>
<p>To put it all together - in our system, I cannot say rape has taken place unless someone is convicted of rape. I may believe rape has taken place, but I cannot say that as fact because it has no backing of proof, based on our system. Therefore, unless there are lots of convictions of rape, it is wrong, and frankly stupid of me, to say with certainty there is such a problem on campus, regardless of what I want to believe. </p>
<p>The more fundamental point is my belief is completely separate from supporting data than I can produce. If I cannot produce supporting data, it is intellectually wrong for me to be spreading my belief as fact. Without concrete support, my beliefs are not fact; they are my personal conjecture, regardless of his much I believe them to be true.</p>
<p>The operating premises of our judicial system is what keeps us a civil society (well, as close as possible), and to de facto replace said system with what one believes is how the mass mistreatment of a group of people begins. Best to stick to facts, which are be supported and proved. That is the only way to really get people behind a cause. Just saying one believes there is a problem kind of falls flat real fast when people look for supporting data and cannot find any. </p>
<p>If it’s rape or sexual assault it needs to be reported to the police. Period. That is criminal activity in every state. End of discussion. If someone doesn’t want to actually accuse someone of rape or assault and/or wishes to keep it out of the legal system or has a dispute that cannot be resolved by the legal system…then yes mediation is generally how those sorts of disputes are handled.</p>
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<p>Oops, made a slight error:</p>
<p>The heading of my previous was supposed to be </p>
<p>" @Much2learn and @awctndb wrote:" </p>
<p>Reality is that if it gets to police/courts or university disciplinary hearings, both parties have lost. (And does anyone think that any third party will reliably get the correct verdict in cases where one or both parties was sloshing drunk, and there were either no witnesses or the witnesses were also sloshing drunk?)</p>
<p>From a parent’s point of view, you want your college bound kid to know enough to stay away from any gray areas of unclear consent situations, and know the signs that a predatory rapist may be lurking.</p>
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<p>In the grand scheme of things, I agree because after any such proceedings it is hard to get life back, but allow me to parse just a little.</p>
<p>I do not think it would be seen as a loss or people would have much issue IF these cases were going to the real police and courts. A female who accuses of rape should have her day in court, and the guy punished if found guilty. Society expects and applauds someone receiving justice for assault. And, I would think, especially so in the case of rape.</p>
<p>I think people have issue here because most of these cases are not going to the real police and courts, but to publicly unaccountable disciplinary hearings that no one knows how they operate. The end result being no one is intellectually comfortable with the outcomes, as justification for too many decisions reads like a bash process. Society does not expect secretive trials in such serious cases, and thus the entire process is seen as a loss, for the university and the parties, regardless of the fairness of the outcomes. </p>
<p>Your larger point is one to take to heart:</p>
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<p>I am sure you already have thought of the one point here is that this currently of issue - what constitutes unclear consent is now so muddled that I wonder if parents even know or understand enough the new operating ground rules (whatever they are) to advice properly. However, agreed, any adult advice is better than none. </p>
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<p>Exactly. </p>
<p>Has anyone else thought about the similarities between the college coverup and secretive trials and those of the US military, followed by federal involvement:
<a href=“Sexual assault in the United States military - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_United_States_military</a></p>
<p>“There is an ongoing problem with sexual assault in the U.S. military which has received extensive media coverage in the past several years. A 2012 Pentagon survey found that approximately 26,000 men and women were sexually assaulted. Of those, only 3,374 cases were reported. In 2013, a new pentagon study found that 5,061 troops reported cases of assault. Many people are optimistic that this 50% increase in reports is indicative of victims “growing more comfortable in the system.” Of these reported, however, only 484 cases went to trial, and only 376 resulted in convictions.[1] Ninety percent of the assault victims were eventually involuntarily discharged.[2] Another investigation found that only one in five females and one in 15 males in the United States Air Force would report having been sexually assaulted by service members.”</p>
<p>Clearly there are differences, I suspect the perverts/criminals are on average older, but the institutionalization of tolerance is very upsetting (not surprising).</p>
<p>This one is happening currently in my state. Chilling, especially the denial of the appeal within the university system.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/05/lawsuit_claims_u-m_botched_sex.html”>Lawsuit: U-M unfairly kicked student out over sexual assault allegation - mlive.com;
<p>Copy of the complaint
<a href=“http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C422124157.PDF”>http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C422124157.PDF</a></p>