Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewrv | Hacker News Reader

Ideally that makes sense to me, but unfortunately courts take a long of time and don't always pursue cases thoroughly. Given that reality, I don't know how an institution is supposed to handle the following scenario without their own tribunal system:

Student A and Student B have a class together. Their dorms are next door to each other. Student A rapes Student B. Is Student B expected to attend class every day with their rapist? To live next door to them? How could one expect Student B to maintain their academic performance in that sort of environment?

View on HN

What if Student A and Student B both get drunk and have sex. The next day they both feel they were raped. Which one do you expel?

Currently the de facto assumption is whoever files a Title IX report first is the victim and whoever files second is the rapist. I'm sure you can see how this system can be abused: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-i...

This is an easy determination in a case of heterosex: the male is the rapist and the female is the victim. Other cases could be more difficult.

Perhaps not as easy as you think - female on male rape happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_gender

Yes occasionally I need a reminder that sarcasm is not appreciated on HN.

Your scenario and the scenario where someone is falsely accused are indistinguishable prior to a court proceeding. In the second case the victim is the person being falsely accused. Then you would have the same problem with the victim being unable to maintain their academic performance if you kick them out of school without due process.

Let's even admit that forcing a rape victim to live in the same dorm as their rapist is untenable. So that option is off the table and one of them should leave, but in that case it would be the same burden (of leaving) on each class of victim and the tiebreaker should be innocent until proven guilty. On top of that, it may be possible to live in a different dorm or take different classes while remaining at the same school, which is a lesser burden than an innocent victim being forced out of the entire school.

Your scenario fails to consider the main thrust of the article.

Student A and B have consensual sex and then student B regrets it and claims student A raped her. Student A is now considered guilty from the onset and is banned from attending class and given no opportunity to read the charges against him or to refute his accuser.

While that would clearly be an uncomfortable situation for Student B, I'm not sure how that is different than when someone accuses their non-dorm neighbor of rape. Is it reasonable outside of school to have to live next door to your rapist while the police and courts slowly do their job? While the hope would be that if the evidence is clear, the suspect would quickly be taken into custody, obviously this doesn't always happen. And obviously, sometimes the evidence isn't clear.

Outside of universities, we've decided on a particular balance between the rights of the accused and the psychological well-being of the accuser. Perhaps we should change the system everywhere to more greatly favor the accuser and to lower the standard for guilt in cases of sexual assault, but I don't see why universities should have a different standard than the rest of society.

What happens in that scenario when it's just two people living in the same building? Why are colleges different?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com