Thursday, June 05, 2014

Occidental Finds Student Guilty Of Rape For Having Intoxicated Sex

At Reason

1. There is extremely strong evidence that the sex was consensual

2. Both students were intoxicated

3. The absurd standard employed is so low that if one student was guilty of "rape," then both were.

4. Yet only one (the male) was accused and found guilty by the university

The principle here seems to be: if you can't catch actual rapists, catch the people you can catch and re-define them as rapists.


So we've got: irrationality, political correctness run amok, false accusations and false convictions, and, possibly, faculty egging all of it on.

My prediction: if liberals get up in arms about this, they won't lead with any of those things, but with "this hurts the cause of rape prevention"

Which it might.

But it might not.

We just don't know.

However, even if it does hurt the cause of rape prevention, that's not the reason for condemning it. The reason for condemning it is injustice and irrationality.

Hurting the cause of rape prevention is a bad thing. But it's not the only bad thing.



2 Comments:

Anonymous cb said...

This seems like an obvious miscarriage of justice brought out by the intense pressure on Occidental to do something about sexual assault on campus.

Background, via wiki: "A Federal civil rights complaint was filed in April 2013 by 37 students stating that the school "deliberately discouraged victims from reporting sexual assaults, misled students about their rights during campus investigations, retaliated against whistle-blowers, and handed down minor punishment to known assailants who in some cases allegedly struck again... Typical of the allegations is one in which a rapist was found culpable by the college, and given as sole punishment the writing of a 2 1/2 page essay."

Here's how I interpret the event:
1) OC administrators mishandle sexual assault cases.
2) Victims and others put pressure on administrators to handle cases correctly.
3) Administration cracks down on a case that clearly does not deserve the crackdown to show they are "doing something"

Take the kid expelled for non-rape and add his name to the 37 people in the lawsuit and the 10 other people they settled out-of-court with (and the no doubt many, many more who chose to to escalate to that level) on the list of "people who were materially harmed by OC's inability to handle sexual assault cases properly".


Why do you choose to place blame on "the left", "political correctness", and "irrational liberals" rather than the actual people in power making these bad, bad decisions?

Why is righteous to take up arms about this one case in the name of "rationality", but worthy of censure to clamor about all the other cases?

8:51 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Whoa, slow down there, cb.

Why are you assuming that I don't think the other cases are bad as well? If what you way is true, then this is madness all around. The case I write about is just the case that I came across.

Bad administrators? right--clearly a factor.

But it's hard to believe that the current rape hysteria on the lefty-left has played no role. As bad as rape is, somehow the left has *still* managed to become overzealous about it...something which, *a priori*, I would have thought impossible... Real, rational measures aimed at minimizing actual rapes is what's called for--not efforts to redefine non-rapes as rapes in order to find someone we can prosecute.

Falsely accusing innocent people is not the right way to fight against any crime, no matter how heinous.

10:57 AM  

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