OSU Dominates U-M Again

On Saturday November 30th, the Ohio State University football team defeated the University of Michigan football team by a score of 56-27. And to be honest it wasn't really that close. Ohio State beat the stuffing out of Michigan in every physical and mental aspect of the game: defense, offense, special teams, tackling, blocking, running, passing, catching, and coaching. It was in most respects, a repeat of last year's beatdown.

Ohio State featured a first year coach, Ryan Day, but Day evidently had his players fired up and ready to lay a stomping on Michigan. It was the eighth victory in a row by Ohio State over Michigan. In the past sixteen matches between the two schools, Ohio State has been victorious in fifteen of them. 

There are high school football players, heck even graduate students who really don't have a memory of a time when U-M was even competitive in this series. This rivalry has become less of a rivalry than a yearly ritual thrashing and blood sacrifice. 

A rivalry requires that each team sometimes gets some victories over the other. A rivalry requires that win, lose or draw, each team gives it all they've got. A rivalry requires that after the game, both teams know that they've been in a serious fight. U-M head coach Jim Harbaugh was hired to do three things on the field-- win the Big 10 championship, make U-M at least occasionally relevant for the National Championship conversation, and oh yes, BEAT OHIO STATE.

Women File Class Action Lawsuit Against Yale and Fraternities

I think that many reactionary rants against today's litigious society are often veiled attempts to defend someone doing wrong. If a corporation is price gouging for insulin or deliberately selling bad meat to an unsuspecting public then the courts and lawyers absolutely have a role to play. 

But there are some complaints and conflicts where I believe that the courts and lawyers and state should stay out. If a man attends a "gentlemen's club" of his own free will it is ridiculous for the man to turn around and sue the club for sexual harassment because young women lacking clothes displayed themselves to him. That's the point of such clubs. It would also be a reach for the man to sue the city where the club was located for allowing this supposed sexual harassment. And it would seem unbelievable for the man to claim that the club was the only social venue in town and thus he had no choice but to go to the club.

And yet something very similar is happening at Yale.

Three Yale students who claim they were groped at fraternity parties have filed a class-action lawsuit against the university, arguing the school has fostered an environment where alcohol-fueled gatherings at off-campus fraternity houses dictate the undergraduate social scene.

While the New Haven, Conn., university presents itself as a campus where fraternities are not a major presence, the lawsuit states that few options besides fraternity parties exist for women who want to socialize and meet other students. Joan Gilbride, a lawyer for the fraternities named in the lawsuit, said the accusations are “baseless and unfounded,” and that the fraternities and their national organizations would vigorously defend themselves against the claims.

June Chu and Debbie Massey: Foul Behavior or Free Speech???

People across the political spectrum dislike the free speech concept. They claim that some speech, which is always speech they oppose, is not so much speech as it is weaponized hate or discrimination, which is not protected by the First Amendment. Others even drop that fig leaf and argue that "hate speech" in any form can be banned, even if it has no provable impact on anyone. Although the most vocal advocates of this approach tend to be on the left, witness the brouhahas over right-wing intellectuals speaking at colleges, arguably many of the most powerful advocates of this approach are on the right. There is a right-wing movement to criminalize advocacy of BDS (Boycott/Divest/Sanction the state of Israel) in America. So it goes. Humans being human, we will always be tempted to outlaw viewpoints we don't like. Limits on institutional ability to criminalize, punish, prohibit or restrain speech usually are only legally present on government institutions. Private institutions can set their own rules. And they often do. The government can't jail me for writing something nasty about my employer. But my employer, upon reading my screed, might decide that it wanted to fire me. Right now. And if I am in an at will employment state there's probably not too much I could do about that. 

Two recent events illustrated how someone's honest opinions got them in trouble. Well it might not be so much their honest opinions as the disdain that lay beneath them.😒

Jackie's UVA Rolling Stone Rape Allegation Falls Apart

It should scarcely need to be said but obviously rape is one of the worst crimes a person can commit, second only to murder. So society should do its best to prevent rape and failing that, to punish rape harshly. You may recall that a while back we did a skeptical post on the fact that Rolling Stone magazine was forced to retract its story about a gang rape at UVA. Since that time the local police looked into the story. They did everything in their power to avoid saying that "Jackie", the alleged victim, was lying. What they did say is that there was no substantive basis to support her story. Similarly Rolling Stone outsourced an investigation of its journalistic process and procedures surrounding this story to Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The School recently released its report. The report wasn't good in the same way that someone who comes home with 6 F's and one D on her report card didn't have a good semester. You can read the very long Columbia report for yourself if you are so inclined. For those of you who do not have the time or interest to read through 12,000 words let's just say that the report calmly eviscerates the lax reporting, fact checking and editorial standards at Rolling Stone magazine. If Erdely had called Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock – their true names – to check their sides of Jackie's account of Sept. 28 and 29, they would have denied saying any of the words Jackie attributed to them (as Ryan would have as well). They would have described for Erdely a history of communications with Jackie that would have left the reporter with many new questions. For example, the friends said that Jackie told them that her date on Sept. 28 was not a lifeguard but a student in her chemistry class named Haven Monahan. (The Charlottesville police said in March they could not identify a UVA student or any other person named Haven Monahan.) All three friends would have spoken to Erdely, they said, if they had been contacted.

I always thought that "Jackie" was making stuff up. Let's say I said I'm going on a date. I show you a picture of my date and it's a 1970s picture of Pam Grier. I state that this woman is not Pam Grier but rather an old high school classmate whom I haven't seen in decades. You might reasonably conclude that I was lying through my teeth. This would especially be the case after you tracked down that old high school classmate and she told you that she hadn't talked to me since high school and had never dated me. 

Unfortunately similar to witch trials or child abuse accusations we have allowed the country and its institutions of higher learning among others to become infected with the feminist idea that to even question a rape victim's story is proof of a misogynistic and rape apologist mindset. If a story can't be questioned and can't be weighed against alternate explanations, then how can we have a justice system? An accusation should be enough. Whether we're talking criminal charges, civil suits or journalism, a small but healthy amount of skepticism is important to keep close at hand. When someone already has a strong pov about an issue as Sabrina Rubin Erdely clearly did, it's essential to watch out for confirmation bias and ensure that questions are asked which will challenge the hypothesis.

You may hear some people saying that we should automatically believe victims. Well that's well and good for people I know intimately. I will believe them if they tell me that X happened. But for everyone else I'm going to require some level of proof. And I would certainly expect that other people who don't know me or mine would feel the same way. I wouldn't be offended if you were non-committal in automatically believing something you were told by someone I knew well but you did not know at all. It's why we have society wide procedures set up to determine if someone was a victim in the first place. It's only after that critical fact has been determined when we can start "believing victims" or "helping victims find their voice" or so forth and so on. Rolling Stone Publisher Jann Wenner has so far stood by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the freelance writer of the untrue article, as well as the other editors and supervisors involved in this nonsense. Erdely will continue to write for the magazine. No one will lose their job. This is of course completely ridiculous. It shows how deep the rot has gone in traditional media. Too many readers and viewers no longer care what the truth is. They just want to have their biases supported. Every event must be placed into service to one or another ideological goal, no matter how much fact-bending or "truthiness" must be deployed. Even though Jackie is an apparent liar some people are trying to place all the blame on Rolling Stone. They simply can't find it in themselves to say Jackie lied.

We all have biases. I am not overly fond of police officers. If I were on a jury where there was strong evidence of police misconduct, the accused had better hope God has mercy on him because I surely won't. But if there is equally strong or even stronger evidence that the person accusing the police officer of a crime is lying then I have to vote to acquit. It doesn't matter how much of a problem I think police brutality is in society. Truth is more important than "social justice". Women who lie about rape do a disservice to everyone. They should own that. The fraternity is apparently going to sue Rolling Stone magazine. I don't know how much of a case they will have. Legal experts can give their opinion. But if that is the only way to make Rolling Stone change its practices, then I'm all in favor. It's important that rape victims come forward. It's also important that liars and hoaxers be revealed as such.

Student Loan Repayment Strike

I went to college in the Pleistocene epoch when colleges did not cost as much as they do today. I was fortunate enough to have an almost full academic scholarship, some money saved from summer jobs, access to Pell grants and finally a supportive and demanding father who would and did move heaven and earth to ensure that I graduated on time with no excuses and no debts. The idea of taking out massive loans just to obtain an undergraduate degree was completely foreign to me. The world has changed since the days of yore. It's much more difficult to obtain scholarships and grants. The cost of private and public colleges has skyrocketed. Free money has dried up. If you want to go to college and are not a child of either the 1% or parents who are obsessive savers, loans will likely be a large part of how you pay for your schooling. The obvious problem with loans, as opposed to scholarships, personal savings, grants and money from Mom and Dad, is that you have to pay the loans back. Nobody lends money with any other expectation. That's why they're called loans and not gifts. Although a college degree has increasingly become a requirement for a chance to enter the precarious middle class, it is also more important than ever to get the proper college degree from a respectable university. Just having the B.S. or B.A. behind your name isn't at all a guarantee of finding a good job, particularly if you are of visible/undeniable African descent , but that is a different post. Getting a BS degree from a BS university may only net you a BS job. Many people find this out the hard way when they graduate only to discover that their current skill sets and newly minted alleged education will get them a job that barely allows them to make rent and loan payments each month, if they're lucky. It is a financial pain in the tuchus to pay back student loans. Generally speaking, the loan can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Some former students or actual dropouts have decided that their best plan of action is to refuse to pay back their loans.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sarah Dieffenbacher is on a debt strike. She's refusing to make payments on the more than $100,000 in federal and private loans she says she owes for studies at a for-profit college that she now considers so worthless she doesn't include it on her resume. The "debt strike" sentiment is catching on. Calling themselves the "Corinthian 100" — named for the troubled Corinthian Colleges, Inc., which operated Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech before agreeing last summer to sell or close its 100-plus campuses — about 100 current and former students are refusing to pay back their loans, according to the Debt Collective group behind the strike.

They're meeting Tuesday with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent government agency that already has asked the courts to grant relief to Corinthian students who collectively have taken out more than $500 million in private student loans. The Education Department is the group's primary target, because they want the department to discharge their loans. A senior department official is scheduled to attend the meeting.

Dieffenbacher said she received an associate's degree in paralegal studies from Everest College in Ontario, California, and later went back for a bachelor's in criminal justice before later dropping out. She said she left school with about $80,000 in federal loans and $30,000 in private loans, but when she went to apply for jobs at law firms she was told her studies didn't count for anything.

Dieffenbacher, who works in collections for a property management company, said she was allowed at first to defer her loan payments, but now should be paying about $1,500 a month that she can't afford. Makenzie Vasquez, of Santa Cruz, California, said she left an eight-month program to become a medical assistant at Everest College in San Jose after six months because she couldn't afford the monthly fees. She said she owes about $31,000 and went into default in November because she hasn't started repayment.

LINK

I've been around for a while now. I have financial obligations that can be tiresome. Sometimes people advised me to take or avoid a certain course of action. Sometimes I listened. Sometimes I didn't. Although not every decision I made worked well I can say that ultimately all of the decisions were mine. Once you're over 18 and certainly once you're over 21, you're an adult. You get to make your own choices. If you decided to attend a sketchy college and overpay for coursework of dubious value that's your fault. If you are wise you will learn from that choice and not do anything that foolish again. I'm not sure you should get a do-over. Although there are a few cases where they are arguably warranted, bailouts almost by definition come with a huge moral hazard problem. The people who get bailed out don't pay the costs of their foolish behavior and thus are more likely to repeat such bad behavior in the future. Additionally other people who are playing by the rules of the game start to feel like suckers. Rationally it may also make sense for them to ignore the rules and default on their debt if the consequences for doing so are no longer punitive. If too many people start to do this the interest rates and fees for loans will increase. Institutions will be less likely to make loans. In extreme situations the market will grind to a halt. But maybe that is the wrong way to look at this. Maybe we should examine this situation not through the lens of loan repayment but rather through consumer protection. If someone sells me something I didn't ask for or is totally worthless then I should have the ability to complain to a consumer protection agency and get some sort of relief. That is the argument the Corinthian 100 are making. If the education was fraudulent should they pay?

I am not 100% unsympathetic to this argument, just 90% unsympathetic. There is no guarantee that a college education will provide any particular individual a path to a well paid career. It's an important factor but ultimately just one among many. Connections, career interest, personal drive, intelligence and the larger economy all play a role. A college or graduate school may boast about its alumni salaries and income but all they are really selling you is an education. What you do with that education is up to you. Still, if someone just doesn't have the money they don't have the money. I would be willing to allow student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, which is currently not the case. That requires a change in the law. But I would not be willing to allow someone to default just because they entered the real world and learned that they weren't a special snowflake. We do need to rethink how we finance higher education in this country. The structure of loan based financial aid may have done little more than give colleges incentives to raise tuition and salary packages.  There is more than $1 trillion in student debt. We can't keep on in this way. We will see more stories like this.

How do you see this story?

Should the Corinthian 100 be able to walk away from their debt?

Should everyone else be able to walk away from their mortgages or auto loans?

University of Oklahoma Racist Frat SAE Suspended

By now you may have seen the video of some members of the SAE chapter at the University of Oklahoma and their friends allegedly singing a racist ditty about how they would never ever ever have black members in their Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter. I am not surprised by this even though I suppose in some quarters it's almost expected to say you're not surprised by these events. People usually drop their masks and speak and behave more honestly when they are surrounded by those that they consider their own kind. This is true across racial, religious, ethnic and gender lines. It's just the way that human beings are constructed. So no surprises here. But it does provide some anecdotal contradiction to the notion that the United States as a whole and as a collective is always moving forward when it comes to racial animosity. These young white people on the bus are future CEO's, hiring managers, jurors, judges, professors, FBI agents, realtors, venture capitalists, university administrators and many other future leaders who will have plenty of opportunities to put their prejudices into practice. So that's the real issue here. These are not people who grew up under segregation or explicit white supremacy. These are people who were for the most part born after 1994 or so. And yet they are behaving just as their grandmothers and grandfathers would have behaved back in 1964. So it goes. Racism is an ugly weed that will always continue to bloom anew. The other thing that comes to mind watching the below video is that we should remember that there are limits to integration and very good historical and current reasons for the establishment and maintenance of black political and social organizations.

It is common in some conservative circles and even many liberal ones to bemoan, criticize or question any such black organizations, whether they be fraternities or sororities, charities, beauty pageants, television stations, newspapers, etc. This is often raised as the question of "why are all the black kids in the cafeteria sitting together?". It's blaming (gleefully in the case of conservatives) or (ruefully in the case of liberals) social segregation entirely on black people and ignoring the reasons why such organizations exist in the first place. All I can say to that is who enjoys hanging around people who have made it crystal clear that they don't like you? Most psychologically healthy people avoid such scenarios. Earning your daily bread may require you to work with, report to or otherwise interact with various sorts of bigots or otherwise unpleasant people but that's work. You're being paid to do something. Your choices may be temporarily constrained. But when your choices are free, as they are in areas of social intimacy, people generally don't wish to associate with people who have contempt or hatred for them. This is why black Greek organizations or business associations or other such entities exist. People want to be able to relax without having to be constantly on guard for the kind of bigotry expressed here. Living in a state of continuous fight or flight response is quite unhealthy. The people on the bus appear to be having a good time. If you ever wondered about the people who arrived to lynchings and burnings with smiles and grins on their faces captured for posterity well these are their spiritual and no doubt in some cases lineal descendants.

The progress that the country has undertaken is ongoing. It was demonstrated by the fact the university and the national fraternity immediately distanced themselves from the local chapter, suspending the chapter and closing the house. A black college football recruit decommitted from the school. The head football coach joined in protests with his team. 
The University President put out a statement which left no doubt about where he stood.

"To those who have misused their free speech in such a reprehensible way, I have a message for you. You are disgraceful. You have violated all that we stand for. You should not have the privilege of calling yourselves “Sooners.” Real Sooners believe in equal opportunity. Real Sooners treat all people with respect. Real Sooners love each other and take care of each other like family members.

Effective immediately, all ties and affiliations between the university and the local SAE chapter are hereby severed. I direct that the house be closed and that members will remove their personal belongings from the house by midnight tomorrow. Those needing to make special arrangements for positions shall contact the Dean of Students.

All of us will redouble our efforts to create the strongest sense of family and community. We vow that we will be an example to the entire country of how to deal with this issue. There must be a zero tolerance for racism everywhere in our nation.

Other people have pointed out that the chant is not that unusual among other chapters of SAE or similar fraternities. They just happen to be the ones who got caught. Some people are calling for them to be expelled. I wouldn't shed tears were that to happen. We shall see. 

Are you surprised?

Should the students be expelled?

How long before one of the students is hired by Fox News?

Rolling Stone Magazine Retracts UVA Fraternity Rape Allegations

Although it should scarcely need to be repeated for the generally fair minded individuals who read this blog every last single one of us has our own individual biases, which are often magnified and accelerated by our experiences and the gender, race, class, sexual, political and other identities through which we experience the world. It’s just the way human beings are. So that is why it is important, though we can all forget it from time to time, to remember that an accusation does not equal proof that a crime occurred. Sometimes people do not remember what happened. Sometimes people lie. And I have not seen any evidence that shows that lying is solely or even disproportionately the preserve of one gender or another. Men and women are equally human. We all have both angels and devils lurking within.

So when the Rolling Stone story about an alleged gang rape at UVA came out, complete with such lurid details as beatings and rape as fraternity initiation and a woman being violated on top of broken glass, I didn’t feel one way or the other about it. I wanted to see some proof. There were some inconsistencies in the account that made me think that this was more of an urban legend than an actual event but I am not a journalist or criminologist. If true then someone definitely should have been arrested and charged (unless of course the assailants were cops but I digress) Unfortunately UVA and the people who are concerned with stopping rape didn’t bother waiting to find out whether this was true or not before taking action against the fraternity (in UVA’s case) or repeating what have turned out to be untruths (in the case of the media and various other social justice warriors)


Well sometimes people who rush to be first forget to check if they're right. Other investigators, journalists and writers raised some of the same questions I had about the rape allegations. Rolling Stone actually had to go back and check its story. And it found that some of the details didn't hold up under scrutiny.

In the article, published on Nov. 19, writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely described the brutal rape of a woman — identified as Jackie — by seven men at a 2012 fraternity party, the university's failure to respond to the alleged attack and the school's troubled history of handling such cases. After its publication, both the university and the Charlottesville, Va., police department launched investigations and the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, suspended its operations.

On Friday, Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana issued an apology, saying there were "discrepancies" in the woman's account. "In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced," Dana wrote. "We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story."

Earlier this week, Erdely, who had been criticized for relying on a single source and not contacting the men accused of rape, said she stood by her reporting.“I am convinced that it could not have been done any other way, or any better,” Erdely told the New York Times. “I am also not interested in diverting the conversation away from the point of the piece itself.”

LINK

Unfortunately I’ve seen first hand the impact that rape can have on a person. It is important to state again that nobody in his or her right mind is in favor of rape. Aside from murder, rape is the worst crime you can commit against someone. So to make up something that didn’t happen, to lie about rape because you think that the greater good requires it, is a particularly low malevolent malodorous foul thing to do. But this wasn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last. Human nature guarantees that slanderous false accusations will happen again. There’s no real way to stop that. But what people should remember, and I definitely include myself in this, is that just because someone you already don’t like for other reasons is accused of committing a crime doesn’t mean that they did it. If someone is convicted of rape then let them pay the penalty and then some. But accusations or stories are not equal to proof, no matter how much some of us might want them to be. Lies about rape make it more difficult for real rape victims to obtain justice. It is the nature of our justice system that some rapists will be found not guilty at trial. I don’t think that requires a rejection of the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” or that people think it’s okay to lie about an accusation. When Erdely says that she is not interested in diverting the conversation from the point of the piece itself that is a red flag that such things as truth and reality are less important to her than the cause. And that is or rather should be a problem for any of us, let alone a journalist. Erdely didn't even bother talking to the accused. She apparently didn't do basic fact checking like seeing if there was actually a frat party on the night in question. There wasn't. Truth should be among the highest values to which we aspire. There is no justice without truth.

It's On Us and Yes Means Yes: Bad Ideas or Overdue Requirements?

The Obama Administration recently launched a public relations campaign to combat sexual assault. The campaign was titled "It's on us". You can check out the video here. I do indeed feel a special obligation to look out for some women. This group would include all related women, particularly younger ones, some really good women friends or close co-workers, and any woman with whom there is, was, or might be an intimate connection. For those women I will risk confrontation and physical danger. I was raised to believe that it's my job to protect such women or offer advice, even if occasionally they eschew such assistance. So that is indeed on me. I wouldn't like it were I ever in a situation where I could have helped a woman and chose otherwise from fear or sloth. But strange women, women who I don't know from Eve, are not my primary concern. This is 2014. Many women proclaim that they are independent and can look after their own affairs. I don't think that they need or want a stranger monitoring their alcohol consumption and clothing choices, or deciding on his own that their planned sexual rendezvous with that dangerous looking biker is too risky and must be halted. It's one thing to see a woman being physically assaulted and callously refuse to assist her. I'm almost 100% certain that I would run to her assistance. There's no ambiguity about what's happening when someone is screaming for help or getting throttled or beaten. But the PSA is discussing preemptive bystander intervention. That's a horse of an entirely different color. That means someone would be overriding the woman's judgment with his own. That might not be such a good thing. It also means women can't be trusted to make their own decisions. I disagree with that.

Police officers make errors. They don't get it wrong all or even most of the time but they do make plenty of mistakes. They arrest people for non-existent crimes, wrongly accuse women of being prostitutes, harass people walking down the street, shoot people's dogs from pure spite, make drug raids on the wrong address, shoot people armed only with wallets, and make other errors that result in people being insulted, arrested, tased, imprisoned, beaten, shot or even killed. And these are the experts! If they make mistakes why wouldn't untrained men make even more mistakes. Police are paid to serve and protect. They often enjoy legal protection for that. But if I preemptively intervene in a couple's private affairs because I think something looks wrong, I could be making a horrible mistake for no gain. Such action contradicts my worldview that, generally speaking, grown people handle their own business. So is it really on me to watch out for people who I don't know? No it's not. Sorry. My Superman suit is at the cleaners. If you, like the woman in the debunked Hofstra "rape" case, happen to think it's a good idea to have simultaneous sex with three or four men in a bathroom , I won't stop you. You're grown. I avoid interfering with grown people's romantic and/or sexual decision making. There's a crude word for this that rhymes with dock locking. And it is an excellent way to get your lights punched out. I can't read minds. I can't distinguish between the couple fondling each other because they're drunk and will shortly have sex that one of them may later describe as rape and the couple fondling each other because they've reunited after a three month business trip and are happily anticipating numerous Kama Sutra approved activities. I don't find anything malicious about the PSA. It amuses me that it calls for patriarchal protection when "patriarchal" is considered a dirty word. I think this PSA is well meaning, if misguided in today's world.

I'm not sure I could say that the "yes means yes" law is well meaning. California recently made a change in the law by passing the so-called "yes means yes" bill. This only applies to college students who are studying at institutions that receive state funding. All non-savages want to reduce the incidence of rape but I just don't see how this law helps with that goal. All I can see coming from this law is unintentional comedy and further degradation of the innocent until proven guilty standard. The very best that could happen is that nothing changes. All we have is a reframed version of the current conundrum in such cases. There are no witnesses other than the accused and the accuser. The accuser says she was raped. The accused claims the accuser agreed to consensual sex. At trial everyone else has to weigh the evidence, such as there is, and decide if the accused was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt means that the prosecution has the larger burden of proof. In other words a woman's word alone is not enough to convict a man of rape in a criminal court of law. Nor should it be. There has to be something else. Feminists have never really liked the presumption of innocence as applied to rape accusations and have been chipping away at it for quite some time in the criminal justice system and in the court of public opinion. "Yes means yes" is a way to do that in the college justice system. The Obama Administration has already informed colleges that under Title IX legislation, colleges are to use a weaker "preponderance of evidence" standard when adjudicating rape accusations, something that received serious pushback and criticism from Harvard professors across the political spectrum.

The main problem with "yes means yes" legislation is that such legislation does not at all comport with the reality of how people really initiate or have sex. Although it might be amusing to imagine that everyone sounds like this when engaged intimately, the reality is that they don't. The "yes means yes" law virtually makes this reaction a requirement for every discrete sexual action. So if a man and woman are fooling around on their living room couch the man might ask the woman if she wants to go upstairs. Now both adults know damn well that this question is shorthand for "Would you like to get naked and combine body parts in interesting ways for the better part of two hours?". However under this law if the man did not get explicit permission for each separate action of inserting tab a into slot b, a woman disappointed with his performance, disappointed with her performance or annoyed for any number of other reasons, could come back at a later date and correctly claim that she was raped. A defender of the law might claim that well, better safe than sorry. That's always true when it comes to sex in a lot of different ways. But it's also true that the steps which a man would have to take to avoid liability under this law also happen to be steps which would destroy many women's erotic interest in that man.

More than once I saw disappointment in the eyes of women when I didn’t fulfill the leadership role they wanted me to perform in the bedroom. I realized that women don’t just desire men, they desire men’s desire―and often they don’t want to have to ask for it. I also realized that I was in many ways ashamed of my own sexual desire as a man, and that this was not healthy. 

At this point I was experiencing some cognitive dissonance with my upbringing, but in time learned to take an assertive lead unless I got a “no” or otherwise thought I was about to cross a boundary as indicated by body language.One night I ended up back in a girl’s room after a first date (those do happen in college). She had invited me in and was clearly attracted to me. We were kissing on her bed, outer layers of clothing removed, but when my hands wandered downward she said, “No, wait.” I waited. She began kissing me again, passionately, so again I moved to remove her underwear. “Stop,” she said, “this is too fast.” I stopped.“That’s fine,” I said. I kissed her again and left soon after, looking forward to seeing her again. 

But my text messages received only cold, vaguely angry replies, and then silence. I was rather confused. Only many weeks later did I find out the truth from one of her close friends: “She really wanted you, but you didn’t make it happen. She was pretty upset that you didn’t really want her.”“Why didn’t she just say so then, why did she say we were moving too fast?”“Of course she said that, you dumbass. She didn’t want you to think she was a slut.”

The man was correct to stop. The risks of not doing so were too great. No means no. But a law that presumes that men and women behave exactly the same in or out of the bedroom and that most women still don't expect men to be the ones to "make it happen" is a law that will be abused. The bedroom is not necessarily a place where there is constant talking, negotiating and begging going on. It's not always "Mother may I" unless you happen to be Norman Bates. Some people like other people to take charge. Some people like to take charge. This doesn't indicate lack of consent any more than a man taking the lead in a dance indicates lack of consent. Rape is a horrible crime. It is second only to murder in how despicable it is. Rape means lack of consent. That means someone does something to you without asking OR you are unable to consent OR you tell them no and they proceed anyway. Rape should not mean that you and someone are having sex, one of you tells the other one to move to the left and a week later one of you is in front of a college kangaroo court because after all there was no explicit permission granted for that "move to the left" order.

Now you would think that civil libertarians would be the ones leading the charge against this law. Well some are. But as I've always said we are all hypocrites in some way or the other. There are some people on the right who are big defenders of the Bill of Rights, except when it comes to black people being harassed or searched without warrant by the police. At that point they will talk about black criminals, say that there's an emergency and claim that the police are justified in unconstitutional activities against the black population. They will demagogue on the issue by claiming that if you're against stop-n-frisk you must be for "black crime".

Well not to be outdone in contempt for the underlying values of our legal system, Ezra Klein, while openly admitting that "yes means yes" is a bad law and that innocents will be harmed, still says that he supports it because the rape crisis on college campuses justifies extreme actions.

If the Yes Means Yes law is taken even remotely seriously it will settle like a cold winter on college campuses, throwing everyday sexual practice into doubt and creating a haze of fear and confusion over what counts as consent. This is the case against it, and also the case for it. Because for one in five women to report an attempted or completed sexual assault means that everyday sexual practices on college campuses need to be upended, and men need to feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.

Colleges have settled into an equilibrium where too little counts as sexual assault, where the ambiguity of consent gives rapists loopholes in which to hide, and forces women to spend their lives afraid. The Yes Means Yes laws creates an equilibrium where too much counts as sexual assault. Bad as it is, that's a necessary change.

Da Kommissar! That should be the law's primary purpose. These evil men need to feel fear when they start having sex. They should know that the state is watching them. There are no innocents in Klein's world when it comes to rape. There are only guilty people who haven't been caught yet. And if well a few eggs get broken while making an omelet, well we can't build our Brave New World without a few sacrifices along the way. Anyone who disagrees is obviously pro-rape and need not be taken seriously. Klein shows shocking disregard for one of the basic foundations of the Anglo-American legal system, the Blackstone Ratio. Obviously Klein would reverse that ratio. In his ideal world it's better that ten innocents suffer than one rapist go free. And if this "yes means yes" law makes those college men live in fear, so much the better. Again, for those of us who are not in college, do not live in California or have sons going to college in California, this may not seem like too much of a big deal. But make no mistake, this law will eventually spread beyond California and beyond the college judicial system. And that would indeed be a big deal because even more men would be convicted of crimes which they did not commit. This "yes means yes" law is simply alien to our stated values of law. It's also important to point out that over the past twenty years there has been a large decrease in the numbers and rate of sexual assault against women and girls. The idea that there is some sort of epidemic of rape is just not accurate. The way to reduce rape is to harshly punish convicted rapists and teach men and women that drunkenness is not a necessary precursor for sex. You don't reduce rape by claiming that almost every man is a rapist and making men prove their innocence. 

I thought we wanted the state out of people's bedrooms? Unless you want men bringing a public notary and video camera into the bedroom or avoiding college women altogether, this "yes means yes" law may have some unpleasant unintended consequences. Everyone is against rape. But there must be a better way to combat it than this.

What do you think?

Ms. Annie Roberston - Rape and Race

We've long heard the startling statistics regarding rape in the United States. According to Crisis Connection the statistics are even more startling when you focus on college campus' in the United States. Here are a few of those statistics:

• Every 21 hours there is a rape on an American college campus
• 1 in 4 women in college today has been the victim of rape, and nearly 90% of them
  knew their rapist  
• Of the college woman who are raped, only 25% describe it as rape
• Of the college women who are raped, only 10% report the rape
• 34% of completed rapes and 45% of attempted rapes take place on campus
• Almost 60% of the completed campus rapes that take place on campus occur in the victim's residence
• 31% occur in another residence
• 10% occur in a fraternity

It gets worse when you take a closer look at the recent high profile cases, (Steubenville/Genarlow Wilson) which involved victims below the collegiate level.

I am a young woman, so I don't need these stats to tell me that there is a problem. I can also understand the indescribable pain that victims of rape feel, as well as the devastation that occurs for victims who speak out against their perpetrators, only to feel silenced. I get it! So the controversy at Sarah Lawrence College involving Annie Robertson and Garvey-Malik Ashhurst-Watson are of no surprise to me.

Annie in her own words:

To make matter worse for Ms. Robertson, Mr. Ashhurst-Watson was initially charged with two counts of sexual misconduct and those charges were later dismissed. The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation and concluded that there were inconsistencies in the accounts of the events between the two parties and not enough evidence to prosecute Mr. Ashhurst-Watson.



"How can you tell a woman she is safe when her body no longer belongs to her? When you are finally able to burn me at the stake, frame my ashes for your school’s distinction. Until then, I will be tying nooses with the strong cords of my voice. I will be hanging your boys up and invoking my no until the spirit takes them and their legs stop twitching." - Annie Robertson

It's unfortunate that Ms. Robertson decided to unnecessarily invoke race with well known and documented elements of slavery. For this I can't take her seriously. I can't see how, through what I imagine to be the most devastating and hurtful of circumstances, Ms. Robertson can only see the race of her "perpetrator". Ms. Robertson was a victim of a crime, a victim of violence. So why would she choose to focus on the fact that her "perpetrator" was black?

This poem is indicative of Ms. Robertson's mindset and her character. Words are powerful. Ms. Robertson knows this. So to now pretend that the racial elements were unintentional is just not cool.

If Ms. Robertson really wanted to make sure that her "attack" didn't happen in vain, she would have set out to truly make a difference. Look at the statistics (especially the ones above) and make the decision to begin a meaningful national conversation on rape and sexual violence on college campus'. Ms. Robertson could have started a movement in her back yard, by galvanizing everyone at Sarah Lawrence with a mission to make campus rape a thing of the past. No, instead she made a decision to put a "poem" on her Facebook page about lynching black men.  This poor decision not only weakens her argument, but it weakens a movement that already exists to help young women recognize when they are victims of violence, and take action against their perpetrators. Coming forward and accusing someone of rape it already a very difficult act. Victims fear persecution, so many remain quiet. Ms. Robertson has made it even worse, especially for anyone who may be a victim of rape or any other form of violence, at Sarah Lawrence.

I really wish Annie Roberston hadn't taken the direction of this conversation to such a disgusting level.

Sound off...

1 - When you read Annie Robertson's "poem" what did you think?
2 - Has Ms. Robertson weakened her argument?
3 - When the charges were dismissed against Mr. Ashhurst-Watson, what should Ms. Robertson have done? What should any victim in Ms. Robertson's position do?
4 - Is this situation a lesson for young men on college campus' across the US?

You Deserve Rape: Free Speech or Harassment?

How far do you think the First Amendment protections on free speech should stretch? In a famous Supreme Court case which then restricted the ability of anti-war citizens to distribute anti-war literature, the Court said that a person could not falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. I think the example was a good one although the actual case opinion was in my view horribly incorrect.

"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." LINK

This standard was fortunately later modified in the 1969 Brandenburg decision which allowed that free speech could not be restricted unless, among other reasons, it incited or was likely to incite imminent lawless action. I'm guessing this would for example include such things as standing up in a courtroom where your loved one was about to be sentenced and yelling out to your numerous friends and family "Let's burn this muyerfuyer down and kill that judge!!". That's probably going to get you removed from the courtroom and arrested. There are some other instances in which free speech protections do not apply: threats, lies, copyright infringement, parental rights over children, and a few other circumstances which don't much interest me for purposes of this post. Of course my blog partners Old Guru and The Janitor can easily give chapter and verse on exactly where free speech is and is not limited legally. It's what they do. But I'm not only interested on where the legal line currently is but rather where do you think it should be?

In Arizona there may be another test case, not necessarily legally, but culturally and politically of where we think free speech ends and harassment begins. At the University of Arizona a student protested Take Back the Night rallies and designation of April as sexual assault awareness month by holding a sign that read "You deserve rape".

A student holding a sign that read “You deserve rape” ignited outrage across campus Tuesday, on the same day of a sexual assault awareness event, but administrators declined requests to remove him or his sign. 

Dean Saxton — also known as Brother Dean Samuel — regularly preaches on the UA Mall in front of Heritage Hill and the Administration building. On Tuesday, his sermon drew the attention of onlookers, several of whom either personally confronted him or complained to the Dean of Students Office. 

The Dean of Students Office received stacks of written complaints, emails and multiple phone calls regarding Saxton’s sermon about women, said Kendal Washington White, interim dean of students. Saxton has never directly threatened anyone in particular, and his language has been general enough that he isn’t targeting a particular person, White said. However, a university attorney was contacted to discuss the situation. “We find it to be vulgar and vile,” White said. “However, it is protected speech. He has yet to, at this point, violate the student code of conduct.”

Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”  “I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”

LINK

I think this is a classic case of "I disapprove or what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  I tend to think that the best remedy for bad speech is good speech...in the public sphere. That last is important. I don't hold that there is any free speech right to come to a blog and insult people, visit someone's home and curse out the owner or even for the government to insist that a private organization accept an individual member who has previously stated his or her fervent opposition to the group's goals. And often once a parent tells a child that "this conversation is over", well that's the end of that. Usually in my household that particular phrase was a warning signal that this was my final chance to sit down and be quiet before more convincing methods were used. Obviously in a private workplace, someone carrying that same sign Saxton is carrying likely would be fired immediately, forcibly escorted from the premises and possibly sued. So those are all exceptions to "free speech" with which I'm fine.

But in the public sphere where the government is able, willing and eager to use coercive methods that are simply not available to blog moderators, company managers or strict parents, I think we need to be very careful about suggesting that some ideas can't be expressed or worse yet, must be punished after the fact if anyone dares to express them.

The country is full of people who have repugnant ideas. Whether we like it or not, they have the right to express them. Although I might well enjoy forcing certain people to shut up  , whatever political coalition gives me the power to take that action and play censor may be fleeting. So in the not too distant future I might be forced to give up my free speech rights by "bad guys" who find my ideas repugnant. That's not acceptable. Even folks who are in the same general political spectrum as I am can often have surprisingly and to my way of thinking, ridiculously different ideas about topics. They may think that banning this or that idea is a small price to pay for harmony. So it goes.

Saxton's speech may well be hateful and may make people uncomfortable. But that's exactly the sort of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect. Unless Saxton makes a particularized threat to someone or otherwise disrupts class I don't see where the university has or should have the power to prevent him from expressing his opinion. One man's free speech is another woman's hostile environment. In the public sphere I think protecting the right to free speech is more valuable than supposed completing claims like freedom from hate speech or hostile environments. Anything stating someone deserves sexual assault is wrong, obviously. But saying "You deserve rape" in a general sense is different from saying you're going to rape a particular person. One is free speech, albeit ugly, while the other is an actionable threat which should see someone locked up. Of course Saxton's message is not directed at my gender. So maybe I can afford to be rather blase about it. Though in truth I'd feel the same way if he started carrying around a sign endorsing theories of racial inferiority. What if the message is directed at you? What if you are a woman who is wearing a skirt that is too short, heels that are too high or a top that's too tight or too revealing for Saxton's preference. Does your opinion change? Does Saxton deserve a punch in the mouth?

Questions

1) Is this free speech?

2) Should the student code of conduct change to make things like this actionable?

3) Should public schools or universities have exemptions from First Amendment protections in order to provide safe environments?

4) Should hate speech lack First Amendment protection?

5) Should Saxton be expelled?

Rutgers Basketball Coach Mike Rice Fired!!!

It's important for each coach to be able to run his team as he sees fit. Some coaches are easier to get along with than others. Some coaches are famously intolerant of the slightest mistakes while others are more soft-spoken and try to teach via example instead of humiliation. Still, unless a coach happens to have recently won a national title or be related to or have embarrassing pictures of the Athletic Director and/or university President or Regents, there is usually some consistent pressure to "get things done".  Nobody has time for hurt feelings or thin skin. Results count.

This can make coaches act in disturbing ways and do things they might not have done if they knew the public would get a look at them. On the other hand, coaches are also supposed to teach character and leadership. And I was always taught that character is revealed by how you act when there is no one else around to see you or how you treat people over whom you have power. By those standards, Rutgers' basketball coach Mike Rice failed. Rutgers is joining the Big Ten next year. Rice was fired because of this video (and others) and the words and actions he displayed within. I could never allow any man not my father or a police officer exercising a lawful warrant to lay his hands on me without retribution but that's just me.

What do you think?

 

Naomi Schaefer Riley: Arrogance and Ignorance

I can outline but do not fully understand such scientific concepts as Schrodinger wave equation, general and special relativity, Olbers' paradox, Planck's law, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, study of fluid mechanics, Bernoulli equation, or several other ideas that are basic building blocks of modern physics and engineering. I've got the big picture on some of those ideas but definitely can't go into the nitty gritty details or the mathematical equations. Why? Well I took a few classes some decades ago and enjoy reading about them but I'm not a physicist or an engineer. So I'm not the man to speak with authority about any of those topics in either an applied or theoretical sense.

Imagine if I didn't let that little lack of knowledge or any basic credentials in physics stop me. Suppose I sauntered into a convention of physicists discussing string theory and smugly informed them that not only were their equations and calculations all wrong but also their entire field was balderdash, completely worthless. I declared the only reason they were involved in the field was because of a Eurocentric bias against non-Western modes of understanding the Universe. So to me, they were all, by definition, losers and racists with a special hatred of black people.


Let's say that, once challenged to share my credentials and experience in the field, provide some evidence of my claims, or even simply show that I had even read some of the sources which I was categorically dismissing, I arrogantly responded that I hadn't read any of their simple-minded twaddle and had not the slightest intention of doing so. If I were asked to leave it wouldn't be censorship. It would be an incident of experts involved in grown folks' discussion realizing that I was neither expert nor grown and had nothing of value to add.

Former Wall Street Journal writer Naomi Schaefer Riley did what I just described above, only being a conservative, she substituted black studies (history, sociology, everything) for physics. She was invited to give her opinion on the field by the Chronicle of Higher Education. When you're writing critically for something which is read by actual educators and scholars you need to come correct but Riley did not. You can read what she wrote here. Her essay shows that she has such incredible contempt for anything investigating the history, culture, or sociology of black people that she not only thinks such academic endeavors are not worth her time, she doesn't think they're worth anyone's time.  For example:

You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them....

Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man

OK. By all means please read the entire piece yourself. Riley had more to say, much of it nonsensical in my view but make up your own mind. The biggest problem with what she wrote is that she freely admits she didn't even read the dissertations she was mocking. Because to her it's just not worth her time. In some aspects her know-nothing attitude is akin to what Dubois had to deal with at the turn of the century.

Now I do not believe that social sciences are quite as rigorous as the disciplines of physics or mathematics (personal bias) but I do believe that before you dismiss something you need to at the very least know something about it. That's true in every discipline, soft or hard science, music, sport, art, whatever. It's an academic and logical crime to jump to a conclusion without even evaluating the evidence. Clearly Riley was not willing to engage in fair criticism; her mind was already made up beforehand. So the Chronicle of Higher Education(CHE) decided maybe it would be for the best that she blogged and critiqued elsewhere. On cue, the usual suspects started screaming and crying about academic freedom and political correctness and censorship.

This all misses the point. Riley's puerile and viciously lazy condemnation of an entire academic body of knowledge is really quite breathtaking in what it reveals about the thinking of SOME right-wing, mostly white conservatives.

• There is nothing that black people have done, are doing or will do in America that is worthy of rigorous study.
• The only reason anyone would study black history, sociology, anthropology, etc is because they hate white people.
• Black studies are only of worth to the extent that they agree with a conservative ideology around race.
• Even if some black person somewhere did something worth studying, black studies departments lack the ability to produce such study.

That pretty much sums it up. Never mind that there are such esoteric fields as Judaic studies, seminars on Ottoman economics, scholarly books about music printing in Leipzig during the 30 Years War, or a myriad of other popular or obscure topics in which some number of people study, become expert, teach and obtain doctorates. Only the study of Black people , and especially the study of Black people by Black people seems to call forth such putrid bile by the right wing. 

Riley ignores the fact that there is of course no reason that you could not be both right-wing and an expert on Harlem Renaissance poets or Negro Baseball league economics. You could be damn near fascist and know more than any living soul about sharecropper political economy in the Mississippi Delta of the late thirties or musical sharing between 1920's Cuba, Jamaica and New Orleans. So you can make your own judgments on why Riley is so fearful and contemptuous of Black studies. You can also read what Black Ivy League scholars had to say about their field here.


QUESTIONS
1) Was the CHE right to part company with Mrs. Riley?
2) Do you think black studies is a worthwhile field of endeavor?
3) Is it fair to condemn something without examining it?
4) Can you explain special relativity in ways that I could get it?