<p>We know these young women are demanding a change in the rules of how we deal with rapists and their survivors. They are not quietly going on to their life like “Oh well. Nothing can be done.” They are refusing to accept the silencing.</p>
<p>Social media has played a large part in this, imho.</p>
<p>Without the young men, nothing changes. I’m proud of the young men, honestly. They are willing to stand with the women and say this isn’t right.</p>
<p>Also, it occurs to me that one of the main reasons the young men are beginning to stand with the women on this issue IS that they are refusing to be silenced. It is more common now for a young man to know if one of his friends has been raped. In the past, rape happened to other women, women he didn’t know, shadowy women whose character he wasn’t familiar with. Now, it’s a woman he knows, and a boy he generally didn’t much trust anyway. </p>
<p>@poetgrl “We know these young women are demanding a change in the rules of how we deal with rapists and their survivors. They are not quietly going on to their life like “Oh well. Nothing can be done.” They are refusing to accept the silencing.”</p>
<p>That is the whole issue in a nut shell. We can consider various solutions, but do nothing is no longer an option. My DD is 18 and can not wait to get to the voting booth this fall.</p>
<p>Rape is already illegal so I don’t know what voting has to do with anything. </p>
<p>Deja vu, anyone?</p>
<p>This thread is literally going in circles. I was really hoping for something better by now. </p>
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<p>You are not that naive.</p>
<p>No, definitely not naïve. lol. So very not naïve it would blow your mind the stories I could tell. But, I won’t.</p>
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<p>be the change you want to see, N.</p>
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<p>Oh, right. Uh huh. %-( </p>
<p>Niquii - you start the thread. I’ll participate when I can. </p>
<p>Try reading this well-written account by a person who was raped:</p>
<p><a href=“http://thedartmouth.com/2014/05/16/featured/dear-dartmouth-thank-you-3”>http://thedartmouth.com/2014/05/16/featured/dear-dartmouth-thank-you-3</a></p>
<p>Here’s the Harvard Letter</p>
<p><a href=“Dear Harvard: You Win | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson”>Dear Harvard: You Win | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson;
<p>I found an app called Campus Sentinel to be very helpful in comparing the safety of college campuses. The problem I keep reading about is that schools do not accurately report the Clery data as required. </p>
<p>Has anyone else found that problem?</p>
<p><a href=“https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/campus-sentinel/id513108130?mt=8”>https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/campus-sentinel/id513108130?mt=8</a></p>
<p>@Much2learn wrote:</p>
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<p>Likewise, and this is a very good thing in my view. </p>
<p>I get most wary in a meeting when everyone is saying the same thing, and no idea or position is being pushed back against. It blows people away when the entire room agrees and then I table discussion and say we delay the decision for a week, month, or a quarter. And my main reason is I hear no opposition or contrary point-of-view. There is always an alternative, which should be considered. It does not have to be accepted, but, at least, it should still be dissected, considered and officially put aside.</p>
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<p>I understand you view the system currently as against the accuser, and arguments have been made to point out deficiencies, but that does not mean the accused should get shorted with whatever new mechanisms are put in place.</p>
<p>The rub here is what any lawyer, judge, or anyone who follows to the Constitution will say: the judicial system should be indifferent and support both the accused and accuser for each is afforded the right to present their story. The system should not support one story more than the other. (I get it that you currently think it does support the accused more than the accuser.)</p>
<p>Therefore, whatever new support mechanisms are expected to be put into place for the accuser, a mirroring set should be given the accused as well, simply because the accused is innocent until proved guilty. A fair judicial system is not weighted one way or the other. </p>
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<p>Expectations are fine, but at some point the accuser, in any case, is going to have to stand up under the weight and spotlight of “You are making a serious charge and the defendant has an equal right to say your version is inaccurate.” And as one poster pointed out what was said on CSPAN, that is not what accuser want to do and would lead to less reporting. That is a problem for the accusers. And forcing accusers to testify is a problem as well. Accusers need to decide, as they are putting themselves in a corner of sorts. </p>
<p>However, the crux of the matter is the system cannot be the one doing that for the accuser moreso than the accused, else it is not a fair system. The system needs to be doing the standing up for both accuser and accused.</p>
<p>It is tough for people to hear, but a fair system is indifferent to the stories of the accuser and the accused, and any process that treats an accuser’s story, from the outset as more credible or more supportive, is a system asking for trouble. Now people on the outside can have opinions, as to guilt or innocence, but the system should not. I understand you currently view the system not indifferent and working against the accuser. There are those, equally credible, who do not think this and thus the need to sort this out. </p>
<p>It should be noted that a system redesigned on the expectation of more convictions may not be realistic, and could easily have the unintended consequence of creating more issues than it solves.</p>
<p>Expectations of more thorough investigations, more actual cases going to trial, and more decisions being taken as to guilt or innocence I understand. Those goals make sense to anyone following this. But saying the system should be set up to somehow guarantee more convictions is unsettling because no deliberative judicial system should be able to predict percentage of convictions because each case is an independent event. If it can predict and is set up to give X percentage of convictions, then that itself is a serious constitutional issue.</p>
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<p>The “system” should be interested in finding the facts. The system can provide the accused with an attorney, but the system is in place to investigate and prosecute crime. The justice system.</p>
<p>The colleges have a vested interested in less reported rapes and less findings of guilt, due to the gaming of the campus crime statistics. The system has been systematically silencing rape victims, burying reports in campus security offices rather than sending young women to the police, slow walking investigations, and handing out ridiculous “punishments” to serial offenders for decades. This is the why of the involvement of the DOJ and OCR and Education Department in these cases. All of these cases are brought by the DOJ on behalf of multiple rape survivors on each campus. They are not single cases, they are cases where the administration has shown a pattern of refusal and hostility and cover up towards rape survivors. </p>
<p>Thats the problem with the college system, as it currently stands, and it is why young women are demanding change. Also, the red herring of colleges should have no involvement is bogus. Students live on campus. They are suspended and punished for drinking, for pot smoking, for cheating and for stealing. It’s not a neutral system that is suddenly in the business of adjudicating criminal behavior. This is a part of what dorm living demands of the schools, particularly at places where living on campus for the first two years is required, as is currently the case at an increasingly large number of universities.</p>
<p>Perhaps part of my confusion here may be dorm living since neither of my college kids (one boy and one girl at different large universities) lives in a dorm and never has done. Instead they live in what are technically called on-campus apartments. One was required to live in a dorm but fortunately, I guess, there was no room last year. Anyway, some of these women seem never to have even contacted the real police. This is not comparable to cheating on a test. Would they call the police if their car was stolen I wonder? I do understand why the school would have an interest in keeping these incidents quiet. So, it seems they want the young men in question removed from the school and they want everyone to believe their story because it’s their story. Well, that just won’t happen. What in their view is a reasonable solution? </p>
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I guess one thing it says is that you are not likely to get a better result by simply telling the system to use a different standard of proof in disciplinary tribunals. (I’m not usually a proponent of the argument that the laws that are already on the books should be enforced before we enact tougher laws, but it does seem to be the case here.) Rather, how do you remove the motivation for schools to pressure victims into silence? I think there has to be strong leadership from the top at each college to make this happen. Perhaps the attention by the DOJ will help make this happen, even if I don’t agree with all of the procedural specifics.</p>
<p>@ Flossy</p>
<p>For decades colleges have been counseling young women to report the rapes directly to them, and discouraging reports to local law enforcement. Many advocates began to speak strongly for reports to local police. At first, schools resisted, and, as can be seen in the very recent Columbia case, not only did not counsel reports to local law enforcement but failed to suspend a multiple offender. </p>
<p>I don’t really ask whether or not the girls reported to local authorities so much as I would ask if you believe in the case of a stolen car the college itself would not have the student call the police. But, even more than that, if a student is found to have stolen computers or tresspassed, the college will suspend and bring disciplinary action, without any kind of court conviction in the matter. </p>
<p>These extra difficult standards for rape survivors are an issue.</p>
<p>As for what the women want? They want justice and equal protection under the law. The recommendations from the DOJ in the DOJ report may or may not prove to be the solution. One thing is for sure, if a multiple offender is on campus, and if multiple reports have been filed, they, and everybody else, should want them off that campus.</p>
<p>x-posted with hunt</p>
<p>poetgrl, I just can’t help looking at all this from a lawyer’s procedural viewpoint. So:
Of course, the rub here is what it takes to “find” that somebody committed one of these infractions.
Yes, unless he isn’t really a multiple offender and the multiple reports are false. This may not be very likely, but even for a person with multiple complaints, there has to be some minimum level of evidence required to punish him. Saying exactly what it should be isn’t so easy.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, we’d like serious crimes to be addressed by the criminal justice system, and college disciplinary systems should address things within their own area of competence. Certainly, people convicted of crimes should also be removed from their colleges. The problem comes, I think, when the criminal justice system is unable to address some crimes very well. Prosecutors don’t have the time or motivation to pursue criminal prosecutions when they know they are unlikely to get a conviction, even if they think the accused is probably guilty. Sometimes they’ll make a plea bargain if they have a decent case; other times, they simply don’t pursue a case because they know it’s not likely to succeed. When this happens, it leaves the college in a difficult situation, especially if they have the same evidence the prosecutors had. (It’s even more difficult for the college if the criminal case goes to trial, and the accused is acquitted. Not surprisingly, he will say that he was “cleared” and that the college shouldn’t punish him. While being acquitted isn’t actually the same thing as being cleared, it still doesn’t look good to punish somebody who has been acquitted.)</p>
<p>I understand your concerns.</p>
<p>At this point, I think we just need to get some standards in place at all. </p>