A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510.html?mod=hp_opinion

by davidroberts • 13 years ago

33 18 13 years ago

online.wsj.com

spindritf• 13 years ago

What's up with those weird kangaroo courts? Why aren't serious cases (sexual assault, rape) handled by real law enforcement and heard in real courts?

I can understand that universities may want to deal with academic plagiarism, misconduct, or dishonesty internally but this is bizarre. Yet, apparently, it's mandated by the government? How is this legal?

Not to mention that government is essentially outsourcing one of its core functions (competencies). Mercenaries, feudal legal system... the mediaevalist lobby deserves more attention.

pc863• 13 years ago

For most small colleges (as this "liberal arts college in New England" almost certainly was), there is an agreement between the college and the local police department (if one exists) that the college will handle just about everything internally, and push things off to the local or state PD as necessary.

My college fits the description of the one in the OA. They had a small, self-important security department of a half dozen part time and one or two full time unarmed guards. Anything that happened on campus, they'd handle. That in and of itself is not mandated by the government, but it's a fairly common occurrence.

paganel2• 13 years ago

I'm going to be that guy, but this right here it's a first world problem almost to the letter. I mean, we've got an adult (the college guy) hurrying to call his mother when he gets in trouble so that the latter would help him solve his problems, and then we've got the mother herself, ready to forgo her long-held believes (feminism and all that) as soon as her son's "future" is on the line.

pc863• 13 years ago

Yup. Having your future almost destroyed because of a lying, bitter ex-girlfriend and not being given proper due process or resources is totally a first world problem. You nailed it.

paganel2• 13 years ago

I read the article twice and nowhere did the author say anything about asking her son something like: "Hey, did you do that?", nor is the former girlfriend's opinion mentioned.

And yes, I would like for both parties' views to be on the same page, jumping to conclusions like "bitter ex-girlfriend " does no good to anyone.

greenyoda• 13 years ago

In this case, it actually made a lot of sense for him to call his mother, since his mother is a lawyer.

danso4• 13 years ago

The judicial concerns that the OP raises are not trivial, however, I do wonder if her attempt to tie them to a critique of the feminism movement is just a bit of a non sequitur.

The judicial problems here are orthogonal to the aims of feminism, because they originate more directly from how difficult it is for schools to act as extra-judicial bodies and work within the framework of student privacy rights. At some schools, these adjudication processes deal with victims quite badly:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/accountability/education/sexu...

This is not to trivialize what happened to the OP's son. But to cast aspersions on feminism seems to be missing the bigger point: academic bureaucracies are not very good at handling these types of cases, which are mishandled quite often by actual judicial systems.

moogleii• 13 years ago

Hmm, is there a critique of the feminist movement in there? I didn't really see one. There might be one of Title IX specifically.

I think it more likely that she is merely attempting to qualify herself against feminist extremists that would not tolerate any critique of Title IX.

pc863• 13 years ago

My guess is she's equating support of Title IX specifically as analogous to support of feminism generally. Not sure I agree with her on that point.

I think you're right. If anything she states she's a feminist just to clarify that she's not a far-right political hack.

danso4• 13 years ago

From the OP's concluding graf:

> I fear that in the current climate the goal of "women's rights," with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice—not unlike the very injustices the movement itself has for so long sought to correct. Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.

hacker789• 13 years ago

It's not a non sequitur. Feminism is a giant umbrella. Currently, in the first world, the loudest, most influential men and women under that particular umbrella are decidedly hateful, divisive, and deliberately antagonistic toward men.

When it comes to even daring to open a discussion about false rape/paternity accusations, the current mantra is:

If you hate and distrust feeeeeeemales soooooo much, please don't associate with them, have sex with them, or marry them. Thx! But you're probably alone in your parents' basement, like all MRAs.

flootch4• 13 years ago

The judicial problems came about as the Office of Civil Rights demanded schools lower evidentiary standards in sexual misconduct cases.

institutions should consider such allegations under the "more likely than not" standard of evidence, rather than the stricter "clear and convincing" standard that some now use.

Why would the OCR do that?

Cui bono?

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/sexual-h...

http://title-ix.blogspot.com/2011/04/commentary-on-yale-and-...

Looked at another way, the author of the WSJ piece, a woman, a lawyer, a feminist, tells you that underlying this is a feminist demand. What knowledge do you have to disagree with her? Is it possible your "reasonable skepticism" might actually be a "ignorance of the issue at hand and its history"? (BTW, I do agree she could have been more explicit in making the connections.)

danso4• 13 years ago

The reason why I don't see this as a "feminist" demand, explicitly, is because sexual harassment is a crime that affects both males and females. That it currently seems to be something that victimizes more females is the matter of another discussion. But the judicial procedures that she criticizes, and I don't wholly disagree with her, would fall as harshly on women accused of sexual harassment as it would on men.

Now, if the OP had more evidence, even anecdotal, showing that the unfair pressure applied to her son was uniquely something that afflicts males, then I would not think the connection to feminism is a non sequitur.

And before you say, "Get real, men are almost never victimized by sexual harassment in today's world"...I would contend that you're thinking of "female assaulting male" situations...and I would agree. However, Title IX would cover male-vs-male harassment and female-vs-female harassment too, so to the extent that the OCR's directives could go awry, it is not much of a function of feminism. AGain, I would say the problems here arise much moreso from the difficult nature of prosecuting sexual harassment incidents than feminist sensibilities.

flootch4• 13 years ago

Here is the former Dean of Harvard as well as the President of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education, discussing "Colleges Must Promote Personal Responsibility, Not 'He-Said, She-Said' Trials"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/04/17/colleges-mus...

In 2011, relying on the gender equity provisions of Title IX, the federal government issued standards for the conduct of sexual assault proceedings in virtually all American colleges. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Education advised colleges that they must use the “preponderance of evidence” standard of civil court proceedings, not the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of criminal trials. Within a year, almost all institutions, including UNC, had complied rather than risk the loss of federal funding.

The lower standard of proof will result in more convictions—of both guilty and innocent individuals. For some, perhaps, a few false positives are merely the collateral damage of outcomes that are more just in aggregate. But this is not a convincing argument in a society that values individual rights. The lower penalty for a conviction in a college court—a “rapist” label and career-shattering expulsion, rather than imprisonment—does not justify a lower standard of proof.

Why would the Office of Civil Rights dictate to schools they had to lower the evidentiary standard in sexual misconduct cases? Who/What was behind that agenda?

cupcake-unicorn• 13 years ago

This kind of confuses me. The mother is calling our witnesses for having no way of knowing about the alleged events, yet she herself also has no way of knowing. I'm not saying the process isn't flawed or unfair but something also seems wrong with me being expected to take the mother at her word while trashing the credibility of the alleged victim. I also feel that mentioning feminism came off as a bit of an "angle" for the piece. In addition, I'm not sure how this got to be trending on HN - I'm concerned about the relationship to the "men's rights" movement, which while their underlying idea is sound, the proponents often end up scaring me with their misogyny.

A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast

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