*Disclaimer: Didn't read the article*

What I don't understand is why Universities are putting themselves in the position to judge something as serious as sexual assault. Surely the authorities are better trained to handle such things.

Educating students about consensual sex and posting broad guidelines of conduct is fine and in fact should be encouraged, but having specific rules of what is and isn't consemt with academic consequences seems outside the jurisdiction of what a university should be doing.

If someone is a victim of a sexual crime, counselors should be available to help the victim with the legal process. If the accused is found guilty, the school should then deal with them as they would some found guilty of a heinous crime.

Tried to read the article to see if I was on point, but it was too obnoxious to read more than the first few lines.

That very issue is discussed in the article, abge.

abge - that would be wonderful if law enforcement had shown themselves to be anything other that horrendous at dealing with sexual assault cases. it is largely because of the failure of law enforcement that universities are doing this.

I agree that law enforcement in many ways fails when it comes to cases of sexual assault, but why are we then not trying to reform law enforcement rather than make a university deal with it

In fact in many ways I feel this makes the matter worse because it gives the law an excuse to continue ignoring the problem

Abge - traditionally these things are dealt with internally because there's a greater (although still too small) chance that there would be real repercussions if actual law enforcement handled it. It's all about shielding themselves and the perps from both public eye and consequence.

Exactly. That's a bad thing.

I completely understand that. My whole point, though, is that law should be involved precisely so that there are real repercussions.

Some of these crimes occur on campus where the university is the legal authority with their rent a cops. Universities want to project what a safe environment they are by covering up crimes and when that fails showing how tough they are on crime by enacting rules that criminals are guilty until proven innocent for sex crimes. Unless there is proof that the victim is outright lying, then the university wins and looks good.

At least some of the offenses in question simply are not illegal, and would never lead to any prosecution of any kind for that reason. Whether it's good to have scholastic consequences for such behavior is an interesting question.

It is true that the school has a lot to lose if they are perceived as being unsafe, which is all the more reason why the school should not be involved in such matters, as they are clearly not objective.

Although I'm not sure I buy Randomizer's claim that criminals are guilty until proven innocent. I suspect you would find that schools, like law enforcement, still heavily favor the accused rather than the accuser.

Abge, if only you would read the article, maybe we could discuss specifics.

Perhaps you could post an article dealing with this issue that isn't so gratuitously chauvinistic?

Why? This is the one I happened to read, and I'm confident webdippers can read things they disagree and come to complex conclusions about them just as well as I can.

Are you interested in discussing this issue, in which case it should be sufficient to draw knowledge from a variety of sources, or are you just interested in getting a reaction from an article which you-yourself admit is more likely to cause needless anger than promote discussion?

abge,

I'm interested in discussing the issue. However, while I thought (and warned) that the conclusions of the article would offend many, its reporting on the facts seemed fine to me. If somebody disagrees, that too would interest me. It's mostly unheard of for a webdipper to start a discussion with a presentation of "a variety of sources" -- this is a web forum, not an academic journal. Feel free to post others if you wish. Meanwhile, stop making up stupid standards and either discuss the article, post another yourself, or shut up.

Also, I did not "admit that the article is more likely to cause needless anger than promote discussion." Is this abge-is-putin day?

I am making up no standards. I was just freely disclosing that, although I'm familiar with this issue, I didn't bother reading this particular article because the author is a jackass.

But, per your request, I shall excuse myself from your thread. Enjoy your conversation.

Which you know, because you didn't read the article. Check.

Too bad. I'd prefer you had offered other resources that you found more helpful, per my same request. But that's up to you, of course.

In any event, I find abge's claim that colleges favor the accused over the accuser dubious, but would be interested to know if anybody has support for such a claim.

In among the questionable extrapolations of some data and quick dismissals of others, and leaving aside assumptions about college sex culture (or "culture") that may or may not be founded in fact, I did find the conclusions of this one paragraph rather worthwhile:

"To be sure, the new campus sex regime puts boys in danger of trumped-up assault charges heard before kangaroo courts. But the solution is not more complex procedural protections cobbled over a sordid culture, the solution is to reject that culture entirely. Just as girls can avoid the risk of what the feminists call 'rape' by not getting drunk and getting into bed with a guy whom they barely know, boys, too, can radically reduce the risk of a rape accusation by themselves not getting drunk and having sex with a girl whom they barely know. Mothers worried that their college-bound sons will be hauled before a biased campus sex tribunal by a vindictive female should tell them: 'Wait. Find a girlfriend and smother her with affection and respect. Write her love letters in the middle of the night. Escort her home after a date and then go home yourself.' If one-sided litigation risk results in boys taking a vow of celibacy until graduation, there is simply no loss whatsoever to society and only gain to individual character. Such efforts at self-control were made before, and can be made again."

MY favorite campus sex code was when a chick did two or three shots of Yagermiester, winked at you and grabbed your crotch. Best sex code ever.

"Yagermiester"

I read the article. It disgusts me. The author's misogynistic hatred of women was painful to read and renders any useful debate impossible.

The fact that the article uses the phrase "what the feminists calle 'rape' " is sufficient to render it offensive.

smeck, you are an asshole for creating this thread and linking this mosogynistic, offensive, hateful article. How fucking dare you?

* misogynistic

How dare you, smeck? You're either an ignorant asshole, or a troll.

Jamie,

Well, thank you for at least reading and engaging it. In order to try to facilitate more productive discussion, why don't we focus on a simpler question first. Here is a more informative and perhaps less irritating (though still opinionated) description of the case at Occidental college:

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/04/occidental-expels-student-for-rape-under

The article links to the following, which has links to several primary source documents about the incident:

http://www.thefire.org/sexual-assault-injustice-at-occidental-college-railroads-accused-student/

My question: given all of this, do you consider THIS incident rape?