I hope they do pay and pay dearly.

As I mentioned earlier, Obama is likely to be remembered as the most divisive President in recent history. Some of it isn't his fault. I suspect that a lot of black activists realized that with the election of a black president, their excuses for the black community's overall poor performance just dried up. Consequently, they had to invent more fake issues to whine about, such as cultural appropriation and microaggressions.

Some of it, however, is his fault, such as his insistence on making racial issues where none existed, like Trayvon Martin and Gates with the Concord Police Department. And I think his Dear Colleague letter (which perpetuated the ridiculous lie that 1 in 5 female students are the victims of sexual assault) denying male students (and at least one female student) their right to due process, will be remembered as one of the worst decisions made by any recent history.

Especially ironic that Obama is a Constitutional lawyer. He of all people should have stressed the importance of due process.

So, we now have rampant instances of the weaponized accusation.

The colleges only have to hold out for the next democrat president. Then the packed supreme court will give the campus kangaroo courts their stamp of approval and the lawsuits will all go away.

dee nile:

The colleges only have to hold out for the next democrat president.

Which will be six years away. And in the meantime, Trump will have replaced how many liberal Supreme Court justices?

dee nile:

Then the packed supreme court will give the campus kangaroo courts their stamp of approval and the lawsuits will all go away.

Honestly, I doubt that. I doubt even the most liberal judges of Obama's Supreme Court would think it's okay to ruin a college student's life without due process.

"Which will be six years away."

Or maybe 21 monthss.

The university's conduct officer found the female student more credible....

"More credible?"

Let's see. He had "multiple witnesses" backing up his version of events. He was acquitted by a jury. She was offered "advocacy and support" sponsored by the university as well as an infinite amount of time to respond - whereas he was given rigid deadlines by which to respond.

Small wonder then that his claim that the process was stacked against him from the beginning is proceeding in court.

Or maybe 21 monthss. [sic] ~ dee nile at April 19, 2019 6:48 AM

Doubtful. As odious as Trump is, the Democrats have yet to field a selection of candidates that does not appear to have emerged from a clown car.

Their field, so far, includes a former district attorney with ethical issues, a skateboarding failed Senate candidate who believes his mere presence constitutes a charitable gift, the mayor of a crime-ridden small city in a relatively obscure state, a law professor doubling down on her discredited claims of Native American ancestry, a 77-year-old socialist millionaire with three houses and an ethically-challenged wife, and a Senator who's current employees charitably describe her management style as "dictatorial."

Waiting in the wings, hoping to be begged to save the party, is a buffoon of a former vice president with plagiary issues and "credible" accusations of unwanted touching.

Not to mention that every one of these candidates is having his or her strings pulled by a twenty-something former bartender from the Bronx with delusions of grandeur.

In the best tradition of "the devil you know," Trump's got this one. As much as I would like William Weld to mount a credible challenge to him, at 73 years of age, that looks unlikely.

who's

Arrgh! Whose.

What I assume that dee is talking about refers back to FDR's noting that the Constitution does not state how many judges should sit on the Supreme Court. Therefore, what he threatened to do, after the SCOTUS ruled his National Recovery Administration unconstitutional, was appoint a bunch of additional judges who would have enough votes to out-vote the existing conservatives on the Court. The threat worked; the Court reversed itself on the NRA and rubber-stamped a bunch of FDR's other socialist programs.

I remember having a lawyer who assisted me with a contract explain that it cost me more money when I played at lawyer.

These academics who play at prosecutor, judge, and executioner deserve to be utterly ruined, since they saw fit to utterly ruin others for political expediency.

Conan:

Doubtful. As odious as Trump is, the Democrats have yet to field a selection of candidates that does not appear to have emerged from a clown car.

Call Ripley's. I totally agree. The selection of democratic candidates is pitiful.

Something that Conan didn't mention, though is that the three front-runners are men. And you can be sure than the women trailing behind, or their supporters, will make sure that they don't get that nomination. Even if they have to make weaponized accusations to do it. And in Biden's case, as Conan points out, that would be especially easy to do. We actually have evidence of Creepy Uncle Joe placing unwanted hands on people.)

And it doesn't even matter than one of those men, Buttigieg, is a gay man. Gay white men are just not minority enough.

Which irritates me very much. Which demographic do their think has historically suffered the most anti-gay hate crimes? "Oh, but you're white and male, so that automatically makes you privileged!"

(Incidentally, Buttigieg should have changed his name before going into to politics. That name on a gay man is just way too easy to make fun of.)

Yep on the Buttigieg stuff Patrick. Not minority enough for the SJWs and a name that is far too easy to make fun of. Even his economic messaging doesn't really work. On the one hand most Democrat voters don't care about economic growth. Those that did were largely driven from the party. On the other hand Buttigieg's economic record isn't that great. It's like a 5'10" guy bragging about how tall he is. It just looks silly.

Oh, hell, the Dems aren't in a clown car. They're staying in Creepy Uncle Joe's van marked with "free candy" on the side, down by the river.

https://youtu.be/bXk3teJpzGU

And they're running hard to the left because of Chiquita Khrushchev and her fellow travelers, Omar and Talib.

Let me know how that plays in Peoria.

> Gay white men are just
> not minority enough.

I hate it when Patrick's correct. It's a weird and backhanded truth, but it's a truth.

More like this———

Storm Clouds Over Tulsa Inside the academic destruction
of a proud private university

I just started a new decade, and it's going to be a cranky one... Like, here's-a-flamethrower-get-off-my-lawn cranky. The political left and the political right have each disappointed me horribly in recent years and continue to do so, without shame, in this very hour. Game on.

If it is true sexual assault, you need to go to police immediately. Two years later makes it impossible to determine what happened. To my mind, waiting two years means that at the time you didn't think it was rape. Oh, and a bad breakup is not "sexual assault".
When universities ignore supporting witnesses, do not allow a lawyer, and withhold exculpatory evidence, this makes it a kangaroo court (with apologies to real kangaroos).

I would suspend the accused until they were cleared of charges and then reinstate them. Colleges don't want to deal with random crap and judging people isn't their jobs. Let the courts handle it.

> Trump's got this one

Prolly. The left refuses to be humbled.

Dismantle tenure and watch these problems fade away.

Prolly. The left refuses to be humbled.

Ideally, Barr pulls a Holder and ignores them.

Professor arrested in NYC cathedral with gas cans.

Just taking a shortcut through the church, officer.

Don't know the stats, but have heard that tenure is something of a rarity nowadays.

That might not even be true, but it's kind of fun to think that the new layers of useless, incorrigible, and termination-proof administration, whose salaries have caused tuition to explode, simply became so offended by the idea of tenure that they put a stop to it.

To my mind, waiting two years means that at the time you didn't think it was rape.
___________________________________________

Please. Plenty of young people are still not taught that rape is seldom committed by strangers. Besides, if a het boy got raped by a man, how hard is it to imagine HE might hesitate, for years, to report it?

Patty's truth is further affirmed in first paragraphs here, but note Welch's correction.

Still only heard the first half of that podcast. Another drops this afternoon. Matt's Matt, Moynihan is my favorite drinker who reads history, and Foster, despite speaking every word as if he's making a deposition in a capital case, has shining moments too.

(The podcast is here.)

Schools are in a no-win situation here. They're required to hear and determine sexual assault complaints under the current interpretation of Title IX. And they've been directed to do so under guidelines and evidentiary standards that are inherently unfair to the accused. On top of that, the federal offices and agencies dictating these requirements have officially endorsed false claims about sexual assault that they expect schools to endorse and act on.

So basically, if schools were to offer a fair process they would be in violation of Title IX as it is currently enforced. The risk of losing student load eligibility outweighs the cost of a few law suits.

Truth is, the extension of Title IX to sexual behavior is a deliberate effort to expand the definition and prosecution of sexual assaults. Schools have been enlisted because they can be compelled to try cases that are not criminal, or not prosecutable. This in itself opens them up to tort liability because they are often enforcing penalties on behavior that is not illegal or even in clear violation of private standards of conduct.

The only good solution for schools was the sue the federal government over the catch 22 they put them in. But lets be honest, the very vast majority of schools were gleeful to be so directed. The federal government may have put them in a catch 22 but at the same time they wanted it. There was no push back. There weren't even complaints at most institutions. So I have little pity for them. They weren't actually compelled against their will.

I don't know if that's true Ben. Keep in mind that it was Obama's OCR that imposed the current 'guidance' because they felt schools weren't prosecuting complaints aggressively enough.

I suspect that the leadership of most administrations would prefer a much more limited responsibility here, though they can't say that explicitly. And as the Harvard Law faculty complaints show, there are a lot of faculty who question the appropriateness and fairness of these policies.

One thing that's come to light with these suits, is that ideologues have been able to take over these processes and force the results. I don't think that would be the case if schools actually wanted to embrace the role of sex police.

Obviously I disagree with you Mormon. That some at various schools disagree with how things are done is nothing new. They were unable to make any changes. At most they posted a few critical letters or articles. Where were the law suits? Where were the schools who refused federal funding over this? (Hillsdale did, who else?) The ideologues didn't just take over this process. They took over the entire school. Some college presidents have started to criticize the excesses of Title IX. But don't just look at their words. Words are cheap. What do their actions show? Best I can tell they don't believe anything they say. It's purely advertising.

"I suspect that the leadership of most administrations would prefer a much more limited responsibility here, though they can't say that explicitly."

Why can't they say that? If they aren't running the school they aren't really the leadership.

"To my mind, waiting two years means that at the time you didn't think it was rape. "
leona doesn't agree.
Many of the college accounts I have seen include a woman who apparently was into it. She took her own clothes off, was in a dorm where she could of screamed for help, and was free to leave. The fact that at the back of her mind she wasn't really into it is unknowable to the guy and does not make it rape. Consider the Ansari public fiasco--the girl was chasing him, went back to his apartment, he asked politely for every sex act and she was eager about some of them. They were negotiating what they did and did not want to do. Somehow the fact that she felt dirty afterwards was his fault? In many college cases the girl is talked into it years later by a campus staff person. Not right.

In many college cases the girl is talked into it years later by a campus staff person. Not right. ~ cc at April 21, 2019 7:41 AM

I don't know that she's talked into pressing rape charges as much as someone listening to a years-edited version of the story interprets it as rape and affirms her self-diagnosis that she was taken advantage of.

Years later, "I wasn't really into it" can be amplified by fear, shame, disgust, bad memory, victim-chic zeitgeist, et al into "I felt kinda pressured" and anyone listening to the years-later version of the story will understandably interpret it as rape, not simply bad sex.

Being brutally honest with one's self and taking responsibility for one's own mistakes, however horrific, can be difficult. And "I made a mistake" can easily morph into "it's not my fault" without self-discipline.

Theodore Dalrymple (nom de plume of Anthony Daniels) was a UK prison psychiatrist for years and wrote that there wasn't a guilty man in the place. They were all framed or victims of circumstances - i.e., "and the knife just went in." [from his book, Life at the Bottom]

Gay white men are just not minority enough. ~ Patrick at April 19, 2019 8:57 AM

I don't know if Buttigieg realizes this. He's certainly playing up his self-declared feud with Mike Pence for all it's worth - counting on the publicity from the feud to remind voters that he's gay, and thus, a victim.

He's not campaigning on unifying the country, but on his plank of the party's identity politics platform.

As I mentioned earlier, Obama is likely to be remembered as the most divisive President in recent history. Some of it isn't his fault. ~ Patrick at April 19, 2019 1:32 AM

Ironically, I think he really wanted to be remembered as a unifying president. However, his "community organizer" experience (based, as it often was, on identity politics) led him to make snap judgements on several hot-button issues that resulted in division and not unity. You mentioned a few of the big ones: Trayvon Martin, the Gates incident with the Cambridge police, and the "Dear Colleague" letter from his Department of Education.

Let's see Ben. Betsy DeVos has introduced guidelines that establish procedural safeguards and limit the definition and application of Title IX w/ regards to sexual behavior. Despite what you hear, she's really just reformed the extremes produced by Obama's OCR.

But if schools continue to conduct these processes as they have been, we'll know that where their preferences lie.

I agree if they don't change that will be telling Mormon.

"I would suspend the accused until they were cleared of charges and then reinstate them."

So, basically, you're fine with wrecking the young man's Air Force career before it even starts by suspending him a couple of weeks before graduation, thereby preventing him from becoming qualified for his commission. And you're perfectly OK branding him for life with the Scarlet Letter of having been disciplined while in college (which is what a suspension is, make no mistake), which will come up on every background check and security clearance application for the rest of the there lives, all on the basis of an unsubstantiated allegation?

Oh, and by the way: Public Universities don't get to do this anyway. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that they shall not deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Suspension from college implicates both liberty and property interests. The same Amendment also provides that no State shall deprive any person of the equal protection of the laws - which is exactly what is happening if a young man's immediate future -- and possibly his whole life - can be so badly disrupted or ruined by a state entity (which is what a public university or college is) on the basis a mere allegation.

Do you have a husband or sons? If so, you would demand better for THEM if they were in this boat, I'd venture. Or so I would hope.

cc, I couldn't tell that you were talking about a specific situation. For the record, I agree that regret is not rape. (So does Dan Savage.)

In the meantime, one of the first articles that came up when I searched on "why I didn't report it" (without quotation marks) was, from marieclaire dot com:

"You’re Asking Why I Didn’t Report? Why Don’t You Ask Me Why I Regretted It When I Did?"

Haven't we all heard how horrible THAT can be, even though officials and police alike are supposed to be better trained by now? Btw, the woman trusted the man beforehand likely mainly because they'd had consensual sex in the past.

Then, of course, there's # WhyIDidntReport.

More:

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=XAy-XP7QGofn_QaO4rmwCA&q=why+i+didn%27t+report+it&oq=why+i+didn%27t+re&gs_l=psy-ab.1.1.0l10.1059.6241..8317...0.0..0.97.1338.19......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0i131j0i10j0i22i30j0i13.XUUa18fobgA

Some reasons:

"They want to forget"
"They're afraid people will find out"
"They're afraid no one will believe them"
"They're told to dismiss it"
"They're afraid of repercussions"

And Mary Gaitskill wrote the following in Harper's Magazine, in 1994 (it's from "On Not Being a Victim"):

http://genedseminars.umb.edu/engl273-2/spg09/documents/HarpersMagazine-1994-03-0001592.pdf

"...The experience was terrifying: my attacker repeatedly said he was going to kill me, and I thought he might. The terror was acute, but after it was over it actually affected me less than many other mundane instances of emotional brutality I’ve suffered or seen other people suffer. Frankly, I’ve been scarred more by experiences I had on the playground in elementary school. I realize that the observation may seem bizarre, but for me the rape was a clearly defined act, perpetrated upon me by a crazy asshole whom I didn’t know or trust; it had nothing to do with me or who I was, and so, when it was over, it was relatively easy to dismiss. Emotional cruelty is more complicated. Its motives are often impossible to understand, and it is sometimes committed by people who say they like or even love you..."

So that would suggest, at least, that being raped by someone you thought you could trust would be a lot harder to report to the police (or to your parents) than being raped by a stranger. Not surprising.