<p>“Or even, if she says yes but you doubt her clarity of mind, it’s No.”</p>
<p>So guys now have to be mind readers along with everything else. This conversation is bordering on the absurd.</p>
<p>^ YES. That’s the legal position now.<br>
We have to get away from seeing college men as helpless against their sexual urges.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let me make sure I have understood you correctly. Is that a “No” as in consensual sex with someone who might accuse you of rape the morning-after is actually rape? Or is that a “No” as in guys shouldn’t be having casual sex, period?</p>
<p>Lookingforward, I am glad you’re not on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Sexual harassment occurs when a student is subject to a sexually hostile educational environment, which could include, but would not be limited to unwelcome jokes or language of of a sexual nature; display of sexually graphic material designed to humiliate or offend a person on the basis of sex; unwanted personal attention; stalking; unwelcomed physical contact, or sexually based demands in return for something tangible like a grade or scholarship (quid pro quo). The behavior must be severe, persistent or pervasive enough to functionally deny a person access to their education. </p>
<p>Take a look at the 2001 guidance: [Revised</a> Sexual Harassment Guidance](<a href=“Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance”>Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance).</p>
<p>OCR’s approach to this matter has always been reasonable and fair minded designed to make recipients of Federal financial assistance responsible for ensuring that students are not discriminated against on the basis of sex. Remember it is the school that is responsible.</p>
<p>looking forward… i was with you re NO until the last one…so if there is consensual sex BUT the girl regrets it in the morning are you saying that is rape too??</p>
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</p>
<p>When I was a TA as an undergrad, we had to take a one-hour course billed as helping us develop our teaching skills. It turned out that it was actually a class on how to not get sued for sexual harassment. Of the examples you listed, I agree that many of them constitute sexual harassment.</p>
<p>I don’t agree, however, that “unwanted personal attention” is sexual harassment. What does that mean, really? If I approach a girl I find physically attractive with the intention of securing a date and she turns me down due to lack of interest, did I just sexually harass her? A literal reading of “unwanted personal attention” would say ‘yes,’ but common sense would dictate ‘no.’</p>
<p>I recall very clearly the disconnect between human resources and common sense in that class. We broke up into groups and were asked to judge whether a hypothetical case was sexual harassment. Two TAs, one male and the other female, are working for the same professor. The male TA asks his female co-worker out on a date on a Friday evening, and she turns him down. The male TA waits one week and tries again, only to receive the same reply.</p>
<p>Everyone in my group said that the male TA did not sexually harass his co-worker. We felt that since he waited one week between attempts, he was being quite reasonable. I volunteered to express my group’s position, and human resources claimed that while they understood our reasoning, they wanted to be clear that the example WAS sexual harassment :rolleyes:</p>
<p>tsdad, I totally disagree with you regarding your interpretation of the OCR letter. In fact, it is not merely advising or encouraging schools to change their guidelines; it is more like a sledgehammer, threatening schools with a termination of their federal funding if they don’t meekly obey. The lower standard of proof and diminution of double jeopardy rights is a travesty of justice for those unfairly accused of sexual harassment on college campuses. The only hope is for a subsequent Administration to repeal these new guidelines by issuing a new letter.</p>
<p>P57, you shouldn’t fear whether I or anyone else can read something and strictly interpret it. Nor should you suggest I or others would be issuing death penalites. Your gripe is with the legislators ( who write these laws) and the colleges (who can set their own standards of conduct and penalties and assess according to their own schemes.) </p>
<p>Seriously, we’re talking about protecting our sons and daughters and partly worried about ambiguity in the application of the laws.</p>
<p>Parent56- this thread has been concerned with a girl crying rape after the deed. I personally think that, if a girl says yes, she says yes. But remember all the talk about false accusations of rape? Parents here were quite worried about that.</p>
<ul>
<li>for the record, I think guys are in a tough bind. And, I am not totally against casual sex, but it would take more lines to explain my full thoughts. And, I am a mom.</li>
</ul>
<p>lookingforward…so this was a better safe than sorry approach? i was one of the ones that had concerns for son’s and false accusations.</p>
<p>Parent56- Yes, I think so. I think the point behind our worries was that a girl could accuse a guy of rape or coercion, when, for whatever reasons, he could have thought she agreed. </p>
<p>It does seem a guy is supposed to know if a girl is too drunk to consent, mentally or physically incapable of the decision, and all the rest. This may go hand in hand with a guy’s responsibilities if a girl claims to be on birth control, but gets pregnant.</p>
<p>Performersmom: Below are the answers to your questions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Government policy development and implementation is very sensitive to politics. Laws dont change, but how the government enforces them does change. For example, the current administration threw out the Title IX athletic policy that the previous administration had written, which in turn had gotten rid of the policy that had been in effect for decades. Same law; same regulation; different policy guidance on how it was going to be enforced.
So, the April guidelines on sexual misconduct under Title IX and the responsibilities of colleges, represent the realities of the 2008 election. Im sure that there were external groups that had the ear of the current administration, as other groups had the ear of the last administration, that were pushing the issue. There were also people within OCR that believed that these changes were needed to be made based on their investigative work. </p></li>
<li><p>See answer in 137. Because the April letter did not go through the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. It is not “law” and it isn’t even an implementing regulation, and I doubt that any court would find a college in violation of Title IX because it didnt follow the recommendations rigorously. But who knows what the courts will do?</p></li>
<li><p>OCR has enforcement responsibility over non-profit degree grant elementary and secondary and postsecondary institutions that receive Federal financial assistance. This excludes Bob Jones, Grove City, and Hillsdale The department of Veterans Affairs deals with for-profits. DOE, USDA, NSF, and NASA also provide significant funds to colleges and universities and the science agencies were very active on the Title IX front in the last administration for some very complicated reasons. HUD and HHS also have large civil rights operations.</p></li>
<li><p>Age is very important. Take a look [Revised</a> Sexual Harassment Guidance](<a href=“http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/shguide.html#Guidance:]Revised”>Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Going to administrative hearings are very, very rare occurrences. Most schools settle up since OCR generally just says stop it; fix it. On some occasions there is money involved for a student but only if there is a tangible loss of some kind because the university violated Title IX. There are no fines. Cant say what court would do.</p></li>
<li><p>Dont know.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes. Race, color, and national origin (Title VI. The Title VI regulations lay out the procedures used in the enforcement of the other non-discrimination statutes under OCRs responsibility.); sex in educational programs (Title IX); disability (Section 504 and the ADA); age (the Age Discrimination Act).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Wow parent57. There is no double jeopardy issue here; civil and criminal matters are distinctly different. Preponderance of evidence, which is the standard of proof in civil law, even though a lesser standard that reasonable doubt, is still hard to achieve.</p>
<p>tsdad,
Thank you very much for answering all my broad and naive questions. I so appreciate you taking your time to do so. I have learned a lot!!!</p>
<p>tsdad, when the alleged victim can appeal the outcome of a sexual harassment hearing, it is definitely an issue of double jeopardy for the accused who has already been vindicated.</p>
<p>The clear and convincing standard (less than the reasonable doubt standard) has been the standard on most college campuses and I see no reason to change it now.</p>
<p>Tsdad- assuming two colleges had each followed the guidelines described by OCR and Title IX, had implemented the right notifications, trained the right staff, set up the right services and other resources, implemented the right procedures to protect the complainant and offer fair opportunity for the accused to be informed and defend himself- </p>
<p>If each then faced an identical situation- lets say it’s sexual harassment, not sexual violence: each could still apply penalties as they see fit, right? According to their own Code of Conduct and their own interpretation. One might expel or suspend a student while the other could suggest alternatives? The ultimate power for the final decision rests with the college? As long as they have followed the law and guidelines? Thanks.</p>
<p>" Government policy development and implementation is very sensitive to politics. Laws don’t change, but how the government enforces them does change."</p>
<p>Tsdad, I am glad you mentioned this, because I have been warned not to discuss politics at the outset of this thread. I agree with the above, this letter is inherently political.</p>
<p>FYI, online: the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits state and federal governments from prosecuting individuals for the same crime on more than one occasion, or imposing more than one punishment for a single offense…Only certain types of legal proceedings invoke double jeopardy protection.</p>
<p>This thread is SO depressing to me.</p>
<p>I don’t hate men. I don’t think all men are rapists. However, I find the attitudes of some of the posters on this thread absolutely mind-boggling. </p>
<p>Lets shift the context a bit. Some of you may remember the case of Matthew Sunshine. Matthew was a freshman at Northwestern. For reasons unknown to me, some of his fellow student disliked him. They egged him into a drinking contest. Matthew was drinking vodka shots. Unknown to Matthew, his “competition” in the contest was swigging water shots. Matthew tried to keep up with him. Matthew got very, very drunk. He passed out. The contest “organizers” and their friends wrote some really nasty things on his body. They took photos of him that way. Then they left him alone. Matthew died of alcohol poisoning. </p>
<p>Do you think that the organizers of the contest, who supplied the underage Matthew with booze and tricked him into thinking his “competitor” was also chugging vodka did anything wrong? Do you think that they should have been prosecuted for what they did to Matthew? Do you think that what they did was morally/ethically acceptable? (If you want to find out more facts and the outcome, google Matthew Sunshine.) </p>
<p>At the time these events took place, there were students and parents who were “outraged” that anyone would be accused of wrongdoing in Matthew’s death. After all, nobody poured vodka down Matthew’s throat. He wasn’t a victim, according to these commentators. He was the only person responsible for his death. </p>
<p>I guess that’s how many of the posters in this thread view young women who drink too much and have the chutzpah to complain that they were raped. I guess the lesson a few people on this thread want to teach their sons is that it’s morally acceptable to have sex with a young woman who is obviously drunk out of her mind or passed out cold beneath a table at a frat party. </p>
<p>Now, please understand, that I gave my own D a gazillion lectures on the possible consequences of getting drunk and exposing herself to risk. But the idea that another woman would say that if my D had gotten drunk and her son forced himself on my drunken D, it would have been entirely her fault and her “innocent” son would have done nothing wrong is mind boggling to me–and depressing. </p>
<p>There are, BTW, men who get drunk and who are “picked up” by women who take them “home” to have sex. The men are then photographed in compromising positions and blackmailed. Sometimes the women “only” rob them. I guess that’s okay because the women didn’t pour liquor down the men’s throats, right? </p>
<p>And, believe it or not, there are young women so naive that they don’t realize those little jello squares offered to them at college frat parties are made with vodka, not water, or that the “punch” they are drinking was made with grain alcohol. I guess it’s perfectly okay for one of these “innocent” college frat guys to have “consensual” sex with them in those circumstances.</p>
<p>And, of course, unless these young men are actually convicted of rape after a jury trial, no disciplinary action should be taken against them by the colleges they attend. </p>
<p>I’m really, truly disgusted by the attitudes on this thread.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that there aren’t young women who cry rape when the allegation is false. Of course, there are…and I’m not defending those women. But the concept that there are PARENTS out there who think that a young woman who alleges she was raped by a young man isn’t entitled to any protection against him unless he is convicted of a crime truly boggles my mind.</p>
<p>Friend’s son at a large private southern university works EMS once a week. He was sad that every run is a rape. Almost always it is a very drunk female student, and a not so drunk male student. The sadness was for the drunkeness of the females, the taking advantage by the males and of course the rape. These are his fellow students. He is astonished that other students at the university are unaware of the number of rapes.</p>