{"id":6455,"date":"2017-04-25T07:38:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T13:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6455"},"modified":"2017-04-24T22:39:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T04:39:37","slug":"library-campus-rape-frenzy-kc-johnson-stuart-taylor-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/04\/library-campus-rape-frenzy-kc-johnson-stuart-taylor-jr.html","title":{"rendered":"From the Library: The Campus Rape Frenzy, by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"By<\/p>\n

Imagine that you could, by ritually sacrificing a few people selected at random, ensure the peace and prosperity of your community.<\/p>\n

Sure, sucks to be those people, but, eh, it\u2019s for the greater good, so we can\u2019t really worry too much about notions of \u201cindividual rights\u201d which are all sort of made up anyway. \u00a0What matters is the well-being of the collective. \u00a0After all, you need to break a few eggs to make an omlet.<\/p>\n

That is, according to KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr., what\u2019s happening at our universities.<\/p>\n

Universities, under the encouragement and, later, demands of\u00a0the Office of Civil Rights under the Clinton and Obama administrations, began to perceive their mandate as not simply providing for equal educational opportunities, but saw themselves as arbiters of student sexual misconduct, not simply in the form of expelling students convicted of assault, but by operating their own campus tribunals, in which they officially used a \u201cpreponderance of evidence\u201d standard (more likely than not, 51% likely), but, on top \u00a0of this, operated \u201ctrials\u201d in which accused students had no realistic chance of defending themselves. \u00a0Administrators running the trials prevented accused students from accessing information (such as texts sent by the accuser, or e-mails, or witnesses) that would exculpate them, disregarded for themselves inconsistencies in the accusers\u2019 stories, and expelled students or withheld diplomas from students who had completed all their coursework.<\/p>\n

Their rationale for this?<\/p>\n

In part, a conviction, to the level of religious belief, that women are (virtually) always truthful; that the number of women who falsely accuse men is so small as to be irrelevant.<\/p>\n

In part, a belief that, whether the man in question genuinely assaulted the accuser or not, the so-called \u201crape culture\u201d is so pervasive that mistreatment of women is so ubiquitous that, if a woman complains, the accused clearly must have done something wrong.<\/p>\n

And, what\u2019s more, a belief that these accusations, and expulsions do no \u201creal harm\u201d to the men, and provide a benefit, in terms of setting an example for the rest.<\/p>\n

But they do harm the men who are accused. \u00a0The authors cite cases in which their academic career is wholly disrupted, as they\u2019re unable to transfer elsewhere, they have a black mark on their records, and they suffer significant amounts of PTSD-level distress. \u00a0And the causes for these accusations, based on evidence, not just \u201chis side of the story,\u201d are things like the woman having cheated on her boyfriend, and making an accusation to deny that she had initiated the activity, or simply wanting to deny that she\u2019d hooked up. \u00a0In some cases, the women are persuaded by administrators, such as Title IX staffers or even professors, that an incident of drunken sex was rape. \u00a0And, in cases where both parties were drunk, the man is still deemed to be the \u201cresponsible party.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the media have latched onto these stories, as the authors cite multiple instances in which the accusations are reported uncritically, and then politicians jumped into the fray, proposing to enshrine into law the kangaroo court process.<\/p>\n

The stories are dismaying, and, from what I can tell, the book\u2019s critics don\u2019t deny them per se, but instead say things such as<\/p>\n

the authors choose a handful of egregious examples to make the case that campus sexual assault isn\u2019t all that common and that the bigger problem is innocent young men railroaded by promiscuous women who get drunk and regret their choices, or flat-out lie at the behest of conniving campus feminists. Instead of an honest analysis of the complex issues and competing values at play, the book teems with vastly overstated claims, questionable statistics and quotes massaged beyond their original meaning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this case, that\u2019s Jill Filipovic\u2019s review in the New York Times<\/a>. \u00a0The space is too limited, perhaps, for her to support her claim of \u201cquestionable statistics\u201d (presumably she\u2019s referring to the authors\u2019 lengthy demonstration that the oft-cited claim of rarity of false accusation is something that was originally pulled from thin air; and that false accusations are much higher, and actual incidence of sexual assault much lower, than \u201canti-rape culture\u201d activists claim). \u00a0But the general tenor of Filipovic\u2019s review is that the authors exaggerate the due process problem.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the deal: \u00a0it doesn\u2019t matter how many cases of sexual assault occur on campus, because the number of assaults, however many there are, do not justify railroading innocent men. \u00a0I don\u2019t know what \u201ccompeting values\u201d Filipovic has in mind, but the value of \u201cdue process\u201d is not something which must be balanced against \u201cjustice for victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, having said that, the further question is, what is actually going on, on a day-to-day basis?<\/p>\n

At the University of Michigan<\/a>, 172 cases were reported, of which 78 were determined to not fall under university policy (e.g., an off-campus situation with a non-student), \u00a066 cases were \u201creviewed\u201d but then closed or not pursued by the complainant (e.g., she did not know the identity of the perpetrator or did not wish to pursue the matter further), and 29 were \u201cinvestigated.\u201d Of these, 2 students were expelled for sexual assault with penetration, and one for sexual assault without penetration; a further student was temporarily suspended for a period of time for sexual assault without penetration, and another for sexual harassment. \u00a0It is also worth noting that significantly more students were accused of, and found not guilty of sexual assault with penetration \u2014 eleven if I\u2019ve counted correctly \u2014 which is either a good thing (the system is properly exonerating these men) or a bad thing (they\u2019re subject to baseless accusations which can still be disruptive, especially since \u201cinterim measures\u201d can require them to leave the dorms or have their class schedule changed). \u00a0What\u2019s more, there is no mention of police involvement. \u00a0Were these sexual assaults \u201crape rape\u201d \u2014 that is, assaults which the legal system could have, and should have, prosecuted?<\/p>\n

At Michigan State University<\/a>, the numbers are higher: \u00a0461 incidents reported, of which 289 were not investigated due to \u201cnon-participation\u201d and a further 50 for lack of jurisdiction, 29 because the incident did not \u201cmeet the standard\u201d and 12 due to \u201cadministrative closure.\u201d \u00a066 were formally investigated, and 17 were still in the middle of investigation. \u00a0Of the concluded investigations, there were 8 \u201cno violation\u201d findings for sexual assault, and 19 findings of \u201cviolation.\u201d \u00a0Again, there\u2019s no indication of how many of these 19 were taken to the police, how many were actions that would seem, in a common sense view, to be rape, vs. something more ambiguous.<\/p>\n

Johnson and Taylor report that, due to the nature of the system, most students are left clueless about what to do if they are put on trial, so that only a few have the ability to make waves and file suit themselves; in most cases, the stories are invisible, which means that we\u2019re pretty much left unable to assess the magnitude of the problem. \u00a0But, again, no woman should be a victim of sexual violence. \u00a0And no man should be a victim of a kangaroo court. \u00a0The problem is that, in the former case, these are individual criminal perpetrators, and in the latter case, it is the State which has become the perpetrator, and State-sanctioned injustice is something that demands a different response.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0http:\/\/titleix.msu.edu\/_files\/documents\/Title%20IX%20Annual%20Report.pdf<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine that you could, by ritually sacrificing a few people selected at random, ensure the peace and prosperity of your community. Sure, sucks to be those people, but, eh, it\u2019s for the greater good, so we can\u2019t really worry too much about notions of \u201cindividual rights\u201d which are all sort of made up anyway. \u00a0What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":1386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[614,117],"class_list":["post-6455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-campus-sexual-assault","tag-sexual-assault"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the Library: The Campus Rape Frenzy, by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Imagine that you could, by ritually sacrificing a few people selected at random, ensure the peace and prosperity of your community. 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