The Ruin
Former dean of students Lee Burdette Williams writes at Chron, wondering "How Much Damage Have My Colleagues and I Done?" She's talking about the way sexual assaults have been handled on campus:
The weekend that changed everything for me took place 2,000 miles from the campuses where I'd worked, two years after I walked away from a title I'd worked years to achieve.It began with an invitation to speak at an event in Phoenix, a "Meet and Greet" sponsored by a group I was unfamiliar with: Families Advocating for Campus Equality, or FACE. Their stated mission was to advocate for equal treatment and due process for those affected by sexual-misconduct allegations on campuses. I Googled a bit and learned that FACE was started by three angry mothers whose sons had been accused of sexual assault, and, in trying to find resources for their sons, they found one another.
I was surprised, but not terribly puzzled, by the invitation. A year earlier, I had published a piece in Inside Higher Ed called "The Dean of Sexual Assault," a valedictory of sorts explaining part of the reason I had given up a job I loved but no longer felt equipped to do. The piece was intended as a critique of the politicization of sexual assault at the expense of fairness to all students. All students, I had written, all of my students, each of them a singular responsibility for me.
...At the start of the first session the next morning, I took my place in the middle of a row of chairs and settled in as anonymously as I could. The morning's sessions included a talk by the journalist Cathy Young, who took on the concept of "rape culture" in a way that would have earned her a place on the hit list of activists against campus sexual assault. Her premise was that our campuses have been overrun by second-wave feminists who have turned their academic passions into incubators of activism. As she spoke, I imagined the faces of my former faculty colleagues -- smart, capable, committed feminists who indeed create in their classrooms, if not incubators, something of a neonatal ICU for their students' own passions.
I thought about the specific faculty members I had relied on to serve as advocates, investigators, hearing officers, the ones who willingly gave time and energy to our efforts to stop students from harassing and assaulting one another. Is that who she was talking about? As a dean of students, I had been indebted to these colleagues. Never once had I heard their motives questioned. I certainly had never questioned them. But as I listened to Young, I realized there was a very different perspective out there.
It had never occurred to me that others might condemn their efforts, and as I listened, this counternarrative came into focus as though I were twisting a camera lens. What if Young had a point? What if these feminist warriors, women in their 50s, 60s, 70s, had taken their academic research, turned it into experiential learning, and in doing so, tilted the playing field toward the students, mostly young women, who took their classes? It was no coincidence, Young claimed, that the rise of women's studies programs on college campuses coincided with the arrival of women's centers and victims' advocate services.
"Yes, but that's a good thing, right?" So asked a troubled voice in my head. I mean, I taught in women's studies programs. I had started a women's center on one campus, for God's sake. I was one of those higher-education professionals that Young was critiquing.
...Those for whom this was their first meet-and-greet spoke about their sons' campus encounters, and after a few stories, some themes emerged. The woman involved was typically either a former girlfriend, emotionally unstable, manipulated by others, or some combination of these. A second theme: Campus administrators were either indifferent to their son's version of events, hostile, deceitful, incompetent, or again, a combination of these.
Several parents broke down in tears while describing months -- or even years -- of hearings, lawyers, suspensions, expulsions, and the cost of therapy and inpatient stays for now-suicidal sons. At the heart of it was a complete loss of faith in the competence and compassion of senior campus administrators, like, say, deans of students.
...The pendulum, of course, started to swing back with the first wave of litigation by accused students who were banned from campus and denied the right to continue their education before even having a hearing. It swung even more when those who were suspended or expelled following those hearings began to question the legitimacy of the processes that had, it appeared, doomed them. Supporting those processes was the mantra, "Believe the woman." It's a reasonable demand, coming after generations of women's rightful grievances at being ignored by the courts, by law enforcement, by student-conduct boards, and even by friends and family. The problem with "believe the woman" as an approach is that it places all women into one utterly credible bucket of complainants, and their respondents into an absolutely despicable bucket of violators. And as any of us who have spent our professional lives working with college students know, it's not that simple.
In my career, I have known stellar, decent, upstanding fraternity members. I have known selfish and self-absorbed peer advisers. I have known intellectually formidable football players. Lesbian sorority sisters. Sexually adventurous Campus Crusade for Christ members. And when it comes to accusations of sexual assault, I have known both men and women who are brave and honest, and men and women who lie without a moment's hesitation. So yes -- "believe the woman" is a good place to start, but it is not the place to finish. And that journey from start to finish? There are many twists, detours, and roadblocks, but it must be taken. And to do so -- to travel that complicated road -- is not in itself a dismissal of a woman's accusation. But many see it that way.
Here's the sort of thing that happened -- and that the Biden administration is on a course to sending us back to:
"My son's hearing was a joke," she said. "He never stood a chance. Do you know that the hearing officer and the investigator are good friends? And that the 'advocate'" -- she practically spit out the word -- "they assigned to him was also a friend of theirs? I found them all on Facebook, attending the wedding of the person who is supposed to hear appeals. All friends. I saw them leaving together after the hearing, and in the parking lot of a restaurant heading in together. We decided to eat somewhere else."
This is not justice, and colleges have no place administering it. Sexual assault belongs in the criminal justice sphere, period. Having it situated anywhere else is greases the way for more abuse and more ruined lives -- usually of men.
If you care about invidual rights, you care about men's right and everybody's rights -- even if you are a lesbian feminist politically fluid antifa princess.
You are asking one sex to give up a built-in systemic advantage over the other. Never happen.
This will be fought over, tooth and claw. The ultra feminists have no interest in justice or fairness.
Appalachia at June 15, 2021 3:42 AM
"If you care about individual rights, you care about men's right and everybody's rights -- even if you are a lesbian feminist politically fluid antifa princess"
If you are an Antifa Princess (or Prince) then almost by definition you do not care about individual rights.
David Foster at June 15, 2021 6:37 AM
And yet,
https://mynorthwest.com/2969838/ross-able-bodied-men-zip-ties/amp/
Spiderfall at June 15, 2021 6:48 AM
Beyond the process issues, there's been a dramatic expansion of what's regarded as 'sexual assault' on many (most?) campuses. To the point that there needn't be any elements of an actual assault, nor coercion or deception, to make that claim.
And that view is often actively encouraged and endorsed, so that now terms like 'violence' and 'rape' have become so abstracted that they incorporate accusations that are largely subjective and rhetorical.
But schools still want to treat the accusations they've abetted as though they reflect the original meanings of those terms. I find it hard to believe that fact has evaded LBW.
LBJ at June 15, 2021 9:24 AM
Antifa is pushing a socialist agenda. Ironically, both socialism and the fascism that Antifa purports to oppose are collectivist ideologies. Both require that the individual in a society be subordinated to the society as a whole; the determination of that subordination to be made by a body purportng to represent the society as a whole, but more often representing the individual interests of its members.
That's why things like "free speech" are not considered by the "woke" as individual rights, but as group rights to be dispensed and withheld at will by the self-appointed guardians of society.
Conan the Grammarian at June 15, 2021 10:27 AM
"Antifa is pushing a socialist agenda. Ironically, both socialism and the fascism that Antifa purports to oppose are collectivist ideologies."
No irony, that is actually quite normal in internal conflicts. It was Protestant vs Catholic, Sunni vs Shia, communist vs Nat Socialist, how many wars were siblings or cousins fighting for who gets the throne. In politics the knives come out in primaries, not just main election. Just listen to what Kamala said about Biden, ally and bloody enemy may change in a week.
Joe J at June 15, 2021 10:42 AM
Intra-family conflicts are always the bloodiest.
Conan the Grammarian at June 15, 2021 11:06 AM
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