What on Earth does this mean?
You think that a university review board is like some supreme logical court, where they can precisely balance evidence and determine that someone is “51% likely” to have committed rape?
If you think that it is easy for anyone to press rape charges at a university in front of an untrained panel of administrators with a vested interest in not making their school look bad, you have no idea about this topic.
Start with this good article in the New York Times, an in-depth piece on how a University board goes about “trying” a rape case, and then tell us that you can just dismiss this woman because she’s only “49% likely” to have been raped.
Good to see we’re at least to the point where the instant reaction of “she must be lying” because scoff scoff scoff gets immediately challenged. The self-serving, nothing-to-see-here uselessness of college authorities and their cargo-cult courtrooms seems to be exactly the problem.
There is something so very wrong with the world when university administrations, and not the criminal justice system, is dealing with rape and sexual assault cases.
I also find it incredibly depressing that women are still made to feel shame for being assaulted. It must be one of the only crimes where the victim is made to feel ashamed for being a victim, it’s only one step away from the way women are seen as “dishonouring” their family if they get raped in some cultures.
Last year I personally witnessed how a group of female students at the University of Vienna who were all molested (not raped) by the same university assistant went to the dean, prepared to publicly testify. They were basically told to fuck off and the whole affair was spun before the rest of the faculty and student body as a conspiracy to slander the assistant. These women actually have to continue taking this piece of shit´s classes in order to graduate. And yeah, officially his name is still squeaky clean, which I guess is all you need to know.
So why don’t they go to the police?
What does it mean to molest an adult?
Because they know exactly how they’ll be treated. They might not have been able to stop becoming the victim of a crime, but they can prevent themselves from being victimized repeatedly by the criminal justice system. Especially since the incarceration rate of rapists is in the single digits. No justice for the victims anyway, so why put your education and life on hold for a lost cause?
Surely your profession of ignorance is feigned.
Yes, clearly -you- are the wounded party.
But they obviously cared enough to report him to the pretend authorities at the college. *shrug* I guess it comes down to how little I understand of the frankly baffling american judicial system.
I’m assuming the University of Vienna is in Austria.
Simply put, it is the police’s job to catch the criminals.
It is the university’s job to keep students safe on campus.
In no way is this an either/or scenario.
Why don’t they do both? I don’t know, why didn’t that quarterback see that his wide reciever was open on Sunday? It was so obvious from my recliner, after all.
This is actually true of any low-status victim of practically any crime. For rape, all these issues are maximized, but shame and tendency toward lack of reporting by the victim or pursuit of justice by authorities is just as much a fact for things like low-level fraud or theft. It’s a major part of the dynamic behind the unwitting creation by police of “high crime areas”.
Not an assumption it is always safe to make with the way they name universities in the states.
Without connecting or commenting on this story my experience is that US universities are where privilege and entitlement is played like chess by students. They also a place where the expectation of casual sex is such a major form of social interaction that when it is not offered freely some people just take what they want hoping that the nearly universal availability will dilute the power of the accusation of coercion or worse. The only culture even close that I know is finance.
Like in outside society university police don’t like to handle domestic disturbances(read rape), this means that many crimes against women are buried unless the assailant fails the attitude test.
(edit)Faculty for the most part also require some sort privilege to get beyond even the lowest levels of university employment.
When did it become the university’s job to keep students safe? Wretched meme that.
It’s a university’s job to teach and research, and to maintain an environment conducive to such. Criminal acts are a matter for the state, not the university.
When did it become the university’s job to keep students safe?
When they provide housing, on their property, to their customers. It very much IS their business, and their liability.
Wretched? That’s quite a personal word, Paul.
I was actually talking about Vienna, Austria, but it´s probably a fairly omnipresent issue anyway.
As for them not going to the police, like I said, they weren´t raped, there are no physical injuries. It´s a safe bet that the police won´t do anything. Actually, I think this is exactly the kind of thing university authorities are supposed to handle.
Universities have been cities onto themselves since the medieval period.
