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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

> Katie supposedly spilled coffee on a Stanford varsity football player who assaulted a friend of hers (he got to play out the season, and was never disciplined). Stanford knew that Katie was struggling after she was brought into Stanford’s byzantine and draconian student discipline process. On the last day, or actually the evening of the last day Katie could be disciplined, Stanford sent an email to her saying they were placing her diploma on hold three months short of graduation, and proceeding to a disciplinary hearing. Her parents claim she could have lost her student status, her membership on the soccer team, her captainship of the team and other benefits of a Stanford degree.

This really doesn't make sense. It's difficult to believe that spilling coffee on someone else resulted in a formal disciplinary action.

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For me, it’s not just that. It’s that they chose to investigate spilled coffee (which is assault although the police weren’t involved so makes me think it didn’t warrant their assault label) reported not by the student but by a third party who claimed to witness it, but did not investigate the sexual assault charges against the coffee spillee.

So Stanford is selectively investigating seemingly spurious charges against weak people rather than more serious charges against powerful people.

So it’s a pretty cruel systemic bullying. And seems to reinforce my perception (perhaps wrong) that it’s a bullshit system that just wants to stay active and not actually do anything.

Where did you read that it was a sexual assault?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/24/katie-meyer-...

Ah, an unwanted kiss. I think, in the real world, spilling some (warmish) coffee on someone is a reasonable retaliation for an unwanted kiss. Once it enters the bureaucracy then they get called assault and require disciplinary action.

Where do you read that it's an "unwanted kiss"?

Maybe I'm just missing it, but I've looked through this article 3 times and can only see it referred to as a sexual assault.

In this article:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-26/stanford...

"The university defended its response to the alleged sexual assault on Meyer’s teammate — described as an unwanted kiss — by saying the incident was reported to its Title IX office, which decided against moving forward with an investigation, and local police."

How does the university have authority to decide to go to the police or not? I'm always confused when people report crimes against them to a church, school, or some other organization and then the organization decides not to engage the police or legal. The victim is just suppose to shrug and say "oh well, i guess i'm just out of luck!".

The victim should go straight to the police and report a crime was committed against them. At least leave it up to actual investigators to make a decision if a crime was committed or not and not some third party with motive to sweep it under the rug.

>The victim should go straight to the police and report a crime was committed against them. At least leave it up to actual investigators to make a decision if a crime was committed or not and not some third party with motive to sweep it under the rug.

You might as well be telling a victim to send their case to /dev/null. We have all of these awful systems as band-aids on the real problem - that of police being completely non-functional in their current state.

Nothing works if you don't try. At least then there would be formal documentation from an independent party.

I made another comment about this elsewhere, but this fact is interesting in the context where Jonathan Haidt’s perspective on the changes on college campuses. His idea is that it’s an outgrowth of an overly concerned culture of safety that trains kids to think of themselves as fragile. An extension of this is that they expect relatively small differences to be mediated by third parties rather than learning to resolve it themselves.

It should go without saying that this is a superficial connection on my part without knowing all the details of the encounter.

That is certainly part of it. Consider another angle...once a structure like that comes into existence, people will weaponize it. Any slight can be reported to campus authorities and the perpetrator gets to deal with months of severely worded paperwork.

> but did not investigate the sexual assault charges against the coffee spillee.

Did you make this part up?

From the link in the article:

"the University reported this allegation to the Title IX Office and the police, but the Title IX Office did not pursue the matter as “the criteria for moving forward with an investigation were not met.”"

To be generous, they investigated it and found insufficient evidence. To a cynic, they superficially "investigated" it.

This is a good clarification. To be more accurate, I should have said that they chose to spend significant resources investigating the coffee and did not spend resources investigating the sexual assault. In that the accusation of sexual assault didn’t result in any emails and potential degree withdrawals.

Imagine if they had just referred the “assault” accusation to the police. I expect the student would not have killed herself.

> they chose to spend significant resources investigating the coffee and did not spend resources investigating the sexual assault.

You made this up again, did you?

This is a curious statement and you’ve made it twice. Did you read the article that describes how the university acted toward one student and not another.

Do you think they spent equal or similar resources on the two events? What do you think I’m making up?

I'm guessing here, but I think there issue may be:

>"Imagine if they had just referred the “assault” accusation to the police."

But the previous comment (and mentioned link) says:

>"the University reported this allegation to the Title IX Office and the police"

I.e., they did refer it to both the school administration and the police. It was apparently not found to be worth pursuing. For more context:

"Mostofi also addressed the allegation that a football player sexually assaulted another player on the women’s soccer team. Mostofi wrote that the University reported this allegation to the Title IX Office and the police, but the Title IX Office did not pursue the matter as “the criteria for moving forward with an investigation were not met.”[1]

To be generous to the OP, they may be wondering why you are implying they should continue to spend resources on something they already investigated and found without merit. We shouldn't be investigating as part of a dog-and-pony show.

[1] https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/25/parents-of-katie-meyer-...

In the universe where I live, a Uni will most likely throw the accused under a bus, won't respect his rights and will even withhold or disregard exonerating evidence.

https://www.kennedy.senate.gov/public/press-releases?ID=26B5...

If the coffee is hot, I would argue it is worse than beating or slapping. So I'm not so surprised. On the other hand the consequences should in any case be limited since people can do some physical harm in a fit of rage.

If the coffee is hot enough to burn or scar, you've got a case that is far, far more serious than a disciplinary action could possibly encompass.

The university and a Kangaroo court should not be involved in either of these cases, we have real police and courts for that.

Getting burned by a hot liquid like coffee can lead to severe injury. But don't underestimate the danger of getting beat to the head. It's very common in popular media, but very dangerous in real life.

It was merely lukewarm coffee

Okay, so maybe this was an overreaction then? But also an investigation might be opened due to a slight slap and be also an overreaction. I find it difficult to blame the university for a suicide that happened before an investigation was even concluded. It sounds to me like blaming a court of law before a ruling has been made.

Did she actually "spill" coffee on him, or did she "throw" coffee on him?

Those aren't the same. At all.

Edit: nothing in the linked Guardian article says that it was "lukewarm", either, as some are suggesting.

"Spilling" "lukewarm" coffee and "throwing" "hot" coffee are definitely not the same thing.

>> Katie supposedly spilled coffee on a Stanford varsity football player who assaulted a friend of hers (he got to play out the season, and was never disciplined).

> This really doesn't make sense. It's difficult to believe that spilling coffee on someone else resulted in a formal disciplinary action.

Maybe "spill" was the wrong word. I don't know anything about the events in question, but the context raises the likelihood that what she actually did was deliberately dump or splash coffee on the guy.

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