
The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault - curtis
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-bad-science-behind-campus-response-to-sexual-assault/539211/?single_page=true
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Part 1 of this series
[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-
un...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-
uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/)

starts off with a story that sounds like a modern retelling of To Kill A
Mockingbird: A white woman has consensual sex with a black man. Later she
becomes worried about what other people will think and accuses the black man
of rape. He then undergoes a sham trial and is found guilty and punished. The
big difference is that in To Kill A Mockingbird, they at least pretended to
have due process giving the accused a lawyer and allowing him to confront his
accuser. The modern version doesn't even have a pretence of due process.

~~~
foldr
I see what you mean now, but on initially reading your comment I was under the
impression that the man involved was convicted of a criminal offense. Just to
clarify for anyone else reading, this didn't happen.

~~~
Sacho
He's only expelled from the school and publicly "known" as a rapist, no big
deal. But you're right, it's not criminal liability, which is why back when
this was still a new thing advocates wanted it to be more than "just"
expulsion - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/scarlet-
let...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/scarlet-letter-would-
mark-transcripts-of-college-students-convicted-of-
assault/2015/07/14/abec2fea-2a41-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html)

Which brings us back to - why are colleges making determinations about rape?
Like Professor Johnson says from that article:

“If the student is guilty, that’s not anywhere near sufficient punishment,”
Johnson said. “But if the student is innocent, this is a life-altering thing.
If they’re going to put it on a student’s permanent record, they need to do a
lot more than they do now to be sure they get it right.”

The actual criminal justice system is already horrifyingly cruel on sex
offenders, even after they've served their time, and after they've registered
on the "informative, not punitive" sex offender registries. Scott Greenfield
covers the trampling of civil liberties under the guise of "protecting the
children" here -
[https://blog.simplejustice.us/?s=sex+offender](https://blog.simplejustice.us/?s=sex+offender).
The punishments range from where to live, to whether you're allowed to use the
Internet, and those are the _legal_ ones - how well do you think a sex
offender reintegrates into society when no one wants to employ them or
associate with them?

I don't see any reasons to doubt that, if left unchecked, the college system
won't devolve into such a cruel and horrifying state. It's only natural -
rapists are almost universally hated, so it's no big deal if we trample on
their civil liberties a bit(or a lot).

~~~
foldr
I didn't say it wasn't a big deal. You're reading way too much into my post. I
was just pointing out that the term "sham trial" was used in a potentially
misleading way to refer to something that was not a trial within the criminal
justice system.

~~~
CyberDildonics
He said this student didn't even get a sham trial. Why would you even comment
on your own reading miscomprehension?

~~~
foldr
He said that there was no pretence at due process. That could just as easily
mean a trial without due process (i.e. another sham trial).

------
zaroth
You might also be interested in the Ruth Marcus op-ed in WaPo -- acknowledging
that things are very broken right now in protecting the _accused_ and actively
hoping that Betsy DeVos will help swing the pendulum back.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/betsy-devos-could-
ch...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/betsy-devos-could-change-
sexual-assault-policy-for-the-better/2017/09/08/893adc04-94ce-11e7-89fa-
bb822a46da5b_story.html)

I mean, if Ruth Marcus is rooting for Devos to fix this, I'm guessing things
have gotten really bad;

"But the Obama administration’s move also prompted an overcorrection at some
institutions that failed to do enough to protect the rights of students
accused of wrongdoing."

Puts this Atlantic exposee in perspective.

~~~
mirimir
WTF? I mean, read this:

> Colleges have adopted definitions of sexual wrongdoing, [Elizabeth
> Bartholet, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk Gersenthey, at
> Harvard Law School] wrote, that include “conduct that is merely unwelcome .
> . . even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and
> even if the accuser’s sense that it was unwelcome arose after the
> encounter.”

That is insane.

------
roenxi
It isn't that uncommon for bad ideas to take root and influence decision
making. And I'd say the core thesis of the article is that a bad idea has
taken root ('inconsistencies and gaps in the accusation can be ignored because
rape is terrible').

That doesn't seem interesting to me. But what is fascinating is considering
the difficulties that have to be worked through to organise a rational
argument in favour, essentially, of tightening the standards applied to
potential rape victims.

I'll show my colours and say that after the James Damore business, it wouldn't
be a shock if the university fired anyone who made the arguments in this
article couched in anything but the most mild terms.

~~~
bobdole1234
Anyone daft enough to write manifestos about something as sensitive as the
standards of proof for rape is grinding an axe to cause a reaction.

~~~
DanBC
Ched Evans is a UK football player convicted of rape and then found not guilty
on appeal.

There was a lot written about the case, particularly because the appeal relied
on questioning the accuser about her sexual history.

Some lawyers have written about the importance of protecting victims from
abusive questioning, while also protecting alleged offenders from miscarriages
of justice.

Those barristers and solicitors aren't grinding axes, they're trying to
educate an ignorant public. (In this case they had to correct the mistaken
impression that "not guilty" is the same as "innocent".)

(I upvoted your comment because I agree that people writing manifestos about
rape tend to be grinding axes.)

------
danieltillett
Everytime I read about this issue I wish we had the Scottish 'Not Proven' [0].
Many of these cases are murky and it is impossible to determine guilty or not
guilty.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven)

~~~
jdietrich
There's a reason they call it the bastard verdict. A system with three
verdicts creates an uncomfortable muddying of the presumption of innocence. A
verdict that implies "we think you did it, but we can't prove it" might be
comforting to a plaintiff, but it's potentially hugely damaging to a
defendant.

~~~
danieltillett
It is a lot less damaging than being wrongly convicted.

The issue with almost all these cases is if the presumption of innocence was
applied consistently nobody would ever be convicted. The juries are basically
put in the position of trying to determine a binary outcome from an event that
is often too murky to allow this.

The wiki article does discuss the positive impact of this verdict on sexual
assault cases.

~~~
mamon
>> The juries are basically put in the position of trying to determine a
binary outcome from an event that is often too murky to allow this.

If the event is "too murky" then I would argue it shouldn't even be covered by
the criminal law (or any law). Let's convict only in cases where it is
possible to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and leave those ambiguous,
murky ones as something to settle between two adults (for lack of better term
let's call them "alleged victim" and "alleged abuser").

~~~
danieltillett
Juries don't get to choose the cases put before them. There is also the minor
issue of what is reasonable doubt.

As we have learned from the number of innocent people freed from death row in
recent years juries don't always get it right. Let's give them more than a
black or white option to a grey world.

~~~
mamon
When the case reaches the jury it's already too late - accused student can be
suspended and otherwise punished a long time before that. We've lowered the
threshold of what triggers an investigation to such ridiculous level that we
are getting a lot of false positives.

Why the universities even need special internal policies about sexual abuse?
Why college students cannot be prosecuted according to the same criminal laws
as the rest of the society? Why do we need this ideologically biased Title IX
personnel, instead of relying on police and DA office to investigate? College
students are at least 18 years old - let's treat them like adults, not like
vulnerable, stray children.

------
hodgesrm
If universities were serious about reducing campus assaults as well as false
accusations it seems as if cutting down on binge drinking would be an awfully
good place to start. It seems to be implicated in every reasoned discussion of
the subject, this article included.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
The same author (Emily Yoffe) wrote an article about this 4 years ago, but she
was of course shot down with the usual 'victim blaming' misrepresentations.

------
mirimir
OK, I've been robbed at gunpoint. Also arrested at gunpoint. And a guy with a
knife threatened to rape me, but didn't.

The first two left me very traumatized. The third, not so much. True, I would
very likely have been traumatized, if he'd actually raped me.

Still, sex isn't the major issue for me. It's being powerless. But of course,
I'm a guy. So maybe I'm just incapable of truly empathizing.

~~~
manyhands
Rape often causes feelings of dirtiness, worthlessness, etc that other forms
of powerlessness usually don't.

~~~
mirimir
I guess.

Many years ago, an ex girlfriend got back in touch, and wanted sex. Just once,
it turned out. Then, I was diagnosed with Chlamydia and HSV. And later, I hear
from mutual friends that she was bragging about infecting me.

Anyway, _that_ I feel dirty about. Because I will have HSV for the rest of my
life. Maybe that was rape, but in a devious way. And I get that forced risk of
disease is part of the trauma about rape.

~~~
cperciva
I don't know about whatever legal jurisdiction you're in, but in Canada that
would be an open and shut aggravated sexual assault case. People have gone to
jail for _failing to disclose that they have an STD_ , on the basis that
you're not really consenting if they leave out an important detail like that;
to _deliberately infect_ someone is far beyond that.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, I'm sure that it's illegal now, everywhere sane. But this was a _long_
time ago.

~~~
cperciva
Ah, ok. I tend to assume that anything people talk about on HN is fairly
recent, since most people on HN were _born_ fairly recently...

~~~
true_religion
Really? I fall into the assumption that most people are near my age... and I
was not born too recently.

------
cadlin
Emily Yoffe is not an objective arbiter on this topic. She has been writing
against first the existence of, and then the response to, campus sexual
assault for five years. That doesn't prove her wrong, but she does have an
agenda.

I would point to several red flags regarding this article.

1st: If she sought comment from Rebecca Campbell, it's not mentioned anywhere
in the piece. An article in a magazine like The Atlantic should include, at
the very least (we reached out to Rebecca Campbell, but she declined to
comment). (Edit: This is incorrect. She does mention a conversation with
Rebecca Campbell near the bottom of the article.)

2nd: All of the people who firmly agree with her in the article are lawyers,
some for those accused of sexual assault. The scientists she interviews are
more circumspect. She interviews scientists who have doubts and uses lawyers
to "prove" she's right.

3rd: She doesn't interview anyone who specializes in sexual assault research
or work. There is no quote from anyone defending this theory or its
applicability to their work. There are no interviews with people who have
claimed this has happened to them, either (or who can say that's not what
happened to them).

4th: There's no comment from any of the schools saying they use this research
as a major part of their sexual assault prevention strategy. Once again,
there's no "no comment" response either.

5th: There's not a single outside link in the piece (who is this band of self-
styled experts schools are relying on? Who knows). If you look at Ta-Nehisi
Coates's recent article, which is excerpted from a book, there are links, so
it's not an editorial policy at The Atlantic.

This is shoddy journalism, and I encourage anyone reading it to take it with a
grain of salt.

~~~
imh
>1st: If she sought comment from Rebecca Campbell, it's not mentioned anywhere
in the piece. An article in a magazine like The Atlantic should include, at
the very least (we reached out to Rebecca Campbell, but she declined to
comment).

This is straight from the article:

>I spoke with Campbell about all this last fall, and in our conversation, she
said...

If you're not gonna read the article, you've gotta at least ctrl+f before
saying that.

~~~
cadlin
I'm sorry, I missed that. I'll leave it in, but I'm wrong about it.

~~~
danieltillett
Why don't you leave it in and add a footnote to your original post to
acknowledge you were wrong?

~~~
cadlin
Done.

