A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
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.
I wouldn't say that. At all.
But I would say, and seriously with respect, that your writing on the subject seems curiously ignorant of the feminist demands, support, defenses of Title IX.
And though I would not say men are not harassed by sexual harassment, regardless, the statistics, all the evidence is that these sexual harassment star chambers are overwhelmingly targeting men.
Now to argue that this attempted reform has become corrupted by overbearing feminists, then I ask: to what end? The motive is not clear and I think the simpler explanation is that sexual harassment and assault is by its very nature hard to investigate and adjudicate, and that these difficulties alone can cause the school's disciplinary system to go awry. Or are you arguing that in cases of sexual harassment between males (such as a homophobic attack or male on male rape), that things go just fine for all parties involved because no feminists are there to exert undue forces on the proceedings?
You make your points in this vacuum, seemingly ignorant of 40 years of bogus feminist statistics, anti-democratic feminist behavior.
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.