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'Accused is guilty': Campus rape tribunals punish without proof, critics say

By the way, if there is over-enforcement of rape accusations now, it is because for many years there were many incidents of under-enforcement and cover-ups in the past.

Absolutely agree with this, but one wrong doesn't right the other wrong.
 
Agreed. Unfortunately, the human species seems utterly incapable of letting the pendulum stop in the middle.

But we can work towards that goal and start speaking out against things cause it to swing even further (something liberals used to be REALLY good at and are now REALLY bad at).
 
While I disagree with the standard, I have no issue with a college like Amherst deciding to use this standard to decide the issue as it is a private university.

I have a more significant issue with a State run school taking action against an individual that results in explusion or suspension for an act that is a criminal issue. Rape is a felony and a crime, and a state school should let what legal action occur rather than exterting a punishment upon the individual coming from a basis that the individual is assumed guilty.

They will most likely change their standard after losing a few million dollars to lawsuits.
 
I'm well aware of this, but a lot of it was not reporting by victims. You can't blame the system for that. But putting the accused in a situation where he can't adequately defend himself is not the right way to fix the problem. What we have here is a built in bias AND agenda.

There is also the university's conflict of interest. Expelling many students for rape made them look bad, until the issue has been made more public recently, it looked worse to the public and funders than failing to adequately investigate or expel rapists did.
 
Or, you know, raise him right, teach him how consent works, be responsible with alcohol, and be careful who he goes home with.

Look, there is no easy answer to dealing with alleged rape cases. The overwhelming majority of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. So inevitably, unless the rape was video taped or done in front of witnesses, it is going to be a case of he said, she said. Because of that most rape cases don't even go to court, let alone end in conviction.

I certainly don't want to abandon our "guilty beyond all reasonable doubt" standard but one of the consequences of that is most rapists will remain free. And yes, sometimes a woman will falsely accuse a man of rape. But the crime of false accusation also cannot easily be proven beyond all reasonable doubt because, once again, it is usually a he said she said case.

In the end, you will usually end up with a rape victim who feels she never received justice and is forced to keep attending the same school as her rapist unless she drops out or you end up with man who was falsely accused and his life is likely ruined to some degree.

Both scenarios suck. There isn't an easy solution to it. But I really am not comfortable with universities being the ones to handle these investigations.

Who says he wasn't raised right of knew how consent works? He was drunk, the chick came on to him and they bumped uglies. Believe it or not, that isn't exactly an unusual set of circumstances and the chick was every bit the willing participant in the event that he was. What happened after that was that she had misgivings. That also happens on both sides of the equation with some regularity. The chick chose to **** the guy. It's not like she was buying a car and some kind of "lemon law" applies.

When you have a scenario where both parties agreed to a particular act and one or both later regret it the proper role of the authorities is to tell them to sort it out between themselves. It's called taking personal responsibility for your decisions and unless women are determined to be incapable of handling personal responsibility then once it's determined that everything occurred with mutual consent you don't set up a one sided reconciliation system.
 
While I disagree with the standard, I have no issue with a college like Amherst deciding to use this standard to decide the issue as it is a private university.

I have a more significant issue with a State run school taking action against an individual that results in explusion or suspension for an act that is a criminal issue. Rape is a felony and a crime, and a state school should let what legal action occur rather than exterting a punishment upon the individual coming from a basis that the individual is assumed guilty.
I couldn't disagree more. How we judge things in private affects how we judge things in public (i.e.: juries, etc.). When we dumb down the process for something important like criminal activity, that becomes our mindset. It is the very rare individual who would be able to fully separate one from the other... though I'm sure we all think that we are that rare individual.

This is a big part of why I say: You either believe in "innocent until proven guilty", or you don't.
 
Hmm...



I wonder if this has anything to do with it.

Oh, almost forgot....if you're sending your son to college don't bother getting him a box of rubbers. Get him an attorney.

Attorneys aren't allowed to appear on the males behalf, so that would be a waste of money.
 
BTW, here's a good rundown of the whole Amherst incident.

Expelled student sues Amherst College, faulting investigation into 2012 rape case | GazetteNet.com

Chick screws her roommate's boyfriend, figures this might piss off her roomie and decides to nail the guy's nuts to the wall. Yeah, the guy is a jerk for screwing around on his girlfriend but that doesn't make him a rapist.

As I understand the story, he was not conscious when it happened, if that is possible.
 
Raise him to believe unless you have a signed, notarized affidavit, anything you do can come back to bite you?

I don't think even that would work. The girl can always say she was coerced.
 
So he's the one that got raped?

That is the story in this case and she reported it more than a year later with no evidence of any kind.

This guys future was destroyed on her word alone more than a year later.

She also had sex with another guy that same night.

There are texts to prove it all, from her.
 
That is the story in this case and she reported it more than a year later with no evidence of any kind.

This guys future was destroyed on her word alone more than a year later.

She also had sex with another guy that same night.

There are texts to prove it all, from her.

But if they had found in his favor, there would have been hell to pay. Protests, calls for action from various victim groups, having to formulate a new plan because of said calls to action, the college president being called before a special committee (or, worse, the local media) to explain why they run a college that is "hostile to women", and so on. You know the routine.
 
We either believe in "innocent until proven guilty", or we don't.
Looks like the majority of reported rapes in college don't have enough evidence to support convictions, let alone indictment.
So you support this guy getting expelled?
You here to make a point? Well make it. Some of these cases have already proven the male student innocence. You just want someone to go to jail to satisfy your attitude over other poorly prosecuted cases?

I can see the point kinda went over your heads. My point was the article makes it sound like the beginning is here to start locking people up left and right without convictions or without enough evidence. But thats not true as presented by the data...
 
I can see the point kinda went over your heads. My point was the article makes it sound like the beginning is here to start locking people up left and right without convictions or without enough evidence. But thats not true as presented by the data...

That's not what I got from the article. What I got from the article is that the college's and universities are punishing male students with expulsion without evidence of an actual misconduct/crime happening. Just on the say of the woman. IE: Guilty until proven innocent... and even then still guilty.

I got your point. Your point is that just because this guy in the OP's article says that he's innocent doesn't mean that he is. And that is true. But without evidence he should be considered innocent. That is the way it is in this country and the way it has been since this country was founded. And we shouldn't follow it just for that though. We should follow that philosophy because otherwise we'll go back to the ages when innocents were thrown into prison or put to death just on the say of someone with power. Claiming something without facts and the truth to back ya up has led to riots before. It's also led to mobs and lynching's. We don't need that in a civilized society.
 
But if they had found in his favor, there would have been hell to pay. Protests, calls for action from various victim groups, having to formulate a new plan because of said calls to action, the college president being called before a special committee (or, worse, the local media) to explain why they run a college that is "hostile to women", and so on. You know the routine.

So he was an sacrificial lamb. I don't find that acceptable.
 
That's not what I got from the article. What I got from the article is that the college's and universities are punishing male students with expulsion without evidence of an actual misconduct/crime happening. Just on the say of the woman. IE: Guilty until proven innocent... and even then still guilty.

I got your point. Your point is that just because this guy in the OP's article says that he's innocent doesn't mean that he is. And that is true. But without evidence he should be considered innocent. That is the way it is in this country and the way it has been since this country was founded. And we shouldn't follow it just for that though. We should follow that philosophy because otherwise we'll go back to the ages when innocents were thrown into prison or put to death just on the say of someone with power. Claiming something without facts and the truth to back ya up has led to riots before. It's also led to mobs and lynching's. We don't need that in a civilized society.

This guy is going to be having to explain the facts of this case for the rest of his life.
 
Well this approach is not a solution, and convicting the innocent won't reduce rapes.

Convicting?

You do realize we're talking about college disciplinary procedures and not criminal trials?

I can see the point kinda went over your heads. My point was the article makes it sound like the beginning is here to start locking people up left and right without convictions or without enough evidence. But thats not true as presented by the data...

Locking people up?

The OP is about college disciplinary procedures, not criminal trials

We either believe in "innocent until proven guilty", or we don't.

That's for criminal trials, not college disciplinary procedures
 
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No. It's for everybody. Our individual mindsets are that we either believe in "innocent until proven guilty", or we don't.

I don't know why you would say that when standards much lower than "innocent until proven guilty" are found throughout society. In fact, there is only one place where that "mindset" is put into place on a regular basis (ie criminal trials)
 
I don't know why you would say that when standards much lower than "innocent until proven guilty" are found throughout society. In fact, there is only one place where that "mindset" is put into place on a regular basis (ie criminal trials)
When the topic is a criminal act the standards should be the same regardless who is involved. Why they wouldn't be is brain cell boggling. I addressed this in a previous post in this thread. If you're interested seek that out.
 
When the topic is a criminal act the standards should be the same regardless who is involved. Why they wouldn't be is brain cell boggling. I addressed this in a previous post in this thread. If you're interested seek that out.

The topic is college disciplinary actions and they can be whatever the college wants them to be.
 

Y'know on the one hand, I totally sympathize and if you go back far enough, you'll find post where I totally think that women who behave carelessly deserve much of the blame for their having been treated carelessly, and that date rape without evidence of force, coersion, or hidden drugs, (ie if you took GHB on purpose, got fall down drunk on your own, etc, lady, I got no sympathy for ya'),... all that said......

On the other hand, if this new-ish threat, (I say new-ish because rape has always been there, but the swing in whose side wins after the encounter is quite new-ish)... if this new-ish threat scares men a bit and causes them to think twice or even three times about their intoxication and their quickness to have un-committed sexual encounters, then that's probably a good thing. Women have to worry about pregnancy, when like a rape claim it may or may not happen, and now men have something about the same to worry about.
 
The topic is college disciplinary actions and they can be whatever the college wants them to be.
Just because they can doesn't mean they should. That's all you're really saying here... they can.

Couldn't refute my points, eh?
 
Just because they can doesn't mean they should. That's all you're really saying here... they can.

Couldn't refute my points, eh?

Colleges, like people, should be free to decide for themselves what they should do.
 
I can see the point kinda went over your heads. My point was the article makes it sound like the beginning is here to start locking people up left and right without convictions or without enough evidence. But thats not true as presented by the data...

That's not what the OP article is about. Its about colleges usurping criminal proceedings by setting up their own tribunals where the accused is GUILTY until proven innocent without the tools to prove your innocence.

All in all, it will get fixed in the end, after the multi-million dollar lawsuits.
 
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