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<p>I’ve read the entire thread and seen no one here espouse this view. I mentioned that my niece said something to that effect, but I mentioned her remark only to distance myself from her silly view.</p>
<p>Re: “level playing field” and <a href=“time mag article "Sexual Assault Crisis on American campuses" - #420 by Much2learn - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>time mag article "Sexual Assault Crisis on American campuses" - #420 by Much2learn - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums;
<p>Seems like the uncomfortable fact is that third parties, whether they are police, courts, or university administrations, are not be very “accurate” in determining whether an accused actually did commit a rape, at least in the types of situations common on college campuses (often involving drunks who have unclear memory of the incident, and no direct witnesses, particularly those who were sober and otherwise uninterested).</p>
<p>Yes, 3rd parties are not very accurate as the referenced posted shows: even when women are raped, injured, and do everything right, they are not believed. </p>
<p>I note that there are a lot of concern about men being scared of rape (accusations). I can’t say I see the fear as a huge problem. Rather it may be a necessary state of transition. If we are going to have concerned bystanders and an anti-rape culture, we may first have to have everyone worried and concerned about rape. Maybe after everyone is upset by the possibility of rape, then we can have a culture with less rape.</p>
<p>What you say makes sense, mamalion, but in my view the problem is that college is different than regular life. One huge difference is communal living. My kids in their pre and post-college lives have had negligible difficulty distancing themselves from potentially risky situations. They can avoid certain places, certain people, and certain activities. For example, they can stay away from bars late at night. If they do go to a bar, they can walk away from very intoxicated people or walk out the door completely. In general, they can chose not to befriend unstable individuals and those who live a lifestyle involving substance use and casual sex. At college, though, they live in close quarters with lots of people over whom they have no control and from whom they can’t always move away.</p>
<p>Had my S had a choice, his freshman roommate would never have been his roommate. The college chose that student to put in the same room as my son, so guess what? Now it’s going to be a whole lot tougher for S to avoid people engaging in risky behavior which could overflow into his life. That is why this campus sexual assault issue has to be handled very wisely.</p>
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You can’t distance yourself from every risky behavior. If he was taught with the skills of when to remove himself or when to put a stop on thing to reevaluate how things are going, he’ll be fine. </p>
<p>Communal living is very difficult, but it is important to creating norms of behavior. I think this is one of the reasons so many countries require a year of national service. That is, national service may be less about military training and more about culturally training citizens. For many adults, work functions in the same way, keeping us in a diverse community and on track so that we don’t become fanatics or total slackers.</p>
<p>The college experience is very much tied to communal experiences. So even if the dorm situation forces odd relationships on students, there are overall benefits in life experience. One of the benefits of communal life might well be the monitoring and normalizing of psycho-sexual relationships. Currently in some colleges, their psycho-sexual norms are at odds with traditional norms, rational adult norms, and even plain old civility. Some frats have a bad reputation for developing and enforcing pathological norms. What I’m working towards is the real possibility that there is a role for the feds to push colleges to change their cultures (just as the feds are doing with the military). I don’t expect the change to be easy, and yes, the pressure to change will be more on men than women, most of whom are living defensive lives. Really, though, it is time to change the culture.</p>
<p>Over the years I have had contact with some men who have made major political efforts to involve men in feminist causes. I’m always struck by their radicalness, it must take a lot to identify with the feminine, but in the end, men are the cultural group that could do the most to stop the violence.</p>
<p>Niquii, dId you read my earlier post explaining the scenario I referenced? S was in his dorm room studying and then sleeping with the door closed. Surely that should be a safe place to be? Yet it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Furthermore, now that due to gender sensitivity issues colleges are allowing boys and girls to live together in the same room, this problem will turn even more complex.</p>
<p>I think I did…? I’m unsure if it was your story, TheGFG. Was where your son is studying and while sleeping the roommate brings in a girl? </p>
<p>I’ll look back on it. (Insert here a post about needed post numbers.)</p>
<p>Yes it was. He was asleep/trying to sleep IN HIS OWN ROOM when whatever happened with the girl and his roommate, happened. Are you suggesting S should have left his room in the middle of the night for no reason? It’s not like he heard a rape going on and didn’t intervene or call police. In the morning the girl realized she no longer had her underwear on and suspected someone had removed it and…</p>
<p>Woah, The GFG. I’m not suggesting any of that. What I said earlier wasn’t in response to that specific event. But there is something your son could’ve done to curb it from happening in the future: talk to his roommate. </p>
<p>A good column on the subject</p>
<p><a href=“Campuses must distinguish between assault and youthful bad judgment”>http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0610-banks-campus-assaults-20140610-column.html</a></p>
<p>TatinG: Very good opinion piece that, IMHO, lays out the issues on both sides. That does not mean I think this is not a very real problem, but that the answer is not to expel boys, and essentially ruin their lives, without very strong evidence. Yes, this is only one example but I really believe that this is the kind of case that is actually quite common in a college setting. While there was one study that suggested that the perpetrators were generally not drunk but worked to get the girls drunk, not sure that has been duplicated (and included men much older than typical college students).</p>
<p>Just to clarify, I firmly believe that rape is a problem and that women’s voice must be heard. I believe that all too often women are dismissed in their concerns and that there are ways society must change. I also think there are women that make bad choices when drunk and then regret those choices later and decide that an assault took place. I also think we have “innocent until proven guilty” as the basis of our judicial system and that must apply here as well. As to the idea that theft or murder is more likely to be properly adjudicated, I am not sure that most prosecutors or defense attorneys would agree. Almost no cases go to trial and most are either dismissed or plea bargained down. And we all know that many high profile cases end in verdicts that the public disagrees with. There are presumably guilty murderers walking free and innocent men on death row. </p>
<p>I’m not defending the Occidental situation. I think it’s atrocious that the male student was expelled and I don’t think he committed rape or sexual assault. Drunk students who consent to sex were not raped.</p>
<p>I do wonder about this: “The young man, an A student in high school, can’t get another college to look past that one drunken tryst.”</p>
<p>And the reason I wonder is that I’ve heard that many colleges are not so picky about who they take. Here is an example that I know about because I know someone on the team who was there. Freshman year, before classes even started but while athletes were on campus practicing, there was a team party at a certain school. One student, whom I’ll call Drunky McRape, showed up drunk, got drunker, and announced that he was going to “go get some” of another student, a beautiful young woman who had shown no interest in him. His teammates tried to dissuade him. He tried to assault her once, was stopped, and then somehow got in her room, attempt to rape her again, and was stopped, physically, in a fight, by a teammate who had gone to try to protect the young woman from this guy’s unwanted advances.</p>
<p>He went to sports practice the next day. The coach, who had been apprised of all the events by his team captains, told Drunky he was off the team. Eventually, Drunky was thrown out of the school. Although rape charges would obviously have been plausible, since there were witnesses, the young woman, a foreign national, declined to press charges. In her culture, the shame of being raped would have been too much for her. </p>
<p>He found another school to take him and is competing on their team, despite the fact that the whole story was well known in the sport and the coach at the other school would have known he was accepting a guy who was thrown out of college for trying to rape another student.</p>
<p>Maybe students who are expelled for sexual assault and who are not athletes have a tougher time.</p>
<p>I see two separate issues. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Colleges do not require a conviction of a felony to dismiss a student. </p></li>
<li><p>Colleges need to encourage reporting and keep strong records. It is not likely that these predators will rape once. They are serial sex offenders. A history of reports is enough to dismiss a student. </p></li>
<li><p>Separately, the absolute uproar over a few young men being wrongly (perhaps) dismissed from school when compared to the decades of women battling for help with this epidemic is interesting. Young women should take notes on how quickly the injustices they face are adressed. They should continue to agitate loudly for change and justice. Clearly the men can defend themselves and will. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>@mamalion - I like your phrasing of “pathological norms”. That’s the concept that I was trying to get at way back when with my reference to the University of Oregon case involving a member of the basketball team. Maybe that’s part of what is meant (or should be meant) by rape culture. It seems like in that case both the male and female parties were influenced by “pathological norms.” The young woman indicated in her statement to the police that she thought that’s what happened in college, and it seems like the young men involved had some idea that what they were doing was within the normal, acceptable range as well. The sexual goal posts have definitely shifted since I was that age but I think the perception of what regular people are or should be doing has gotten WAY out there. That is some of what makes me uncomfortable with one current brand (not all) of feminism is that an “open to anything” attitude is empowering. It seems like a con to me. </p>
<p>@CardinalFang, <em>everything</em> is different for recruited athletes, especially in premiere male sports.</p>
<p>True </p>
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Yes. </p>
<p>Well if women were not raped in places they have no freedom, or if there were more rapes now and not just more reporting and more demands for justice by the victims, that might be valid. However, the crisis is really a crisis for colleges because young women finally believe they deserve the justice they used to be afraid to demand. </p>
<p>I suppose the fact that women outnumber men as college student by a relatively significant number makes their demands for safety more important than they were deemed to be in the past as well. </p>
<p>This was not a premiere male sport. It was a non-revenue sport. Kudos to the coach and the teammates, who couldn’t jettison this creep fast enough. Boos to the other school that picked him up, so that he could rape young women at the new college.</p>