The New York Times has today a front page story that is an
appalling account of misconduct in the investigation of rape charges on the
campus of Hobart and William Smith college (Reporting
Rape).
It has all the features that have become so depressingly
familiar: a university process that seems random when it isn't incompetent and
the usual story of football players, alcohol, and a drunken female student who
almost wishes she hadn't reported her assault.
And, oh yes, despite physical evidence of violent sex, possible DNA
evidence and defendants lying: an acquittal on all counts in record time.
Stories like this, and the inevitable generalizations they
provoke about how women are never taken seriously and always blamed for being
victims of crime will, also inevitably produce counter generalizations about PC
run amuck and students, mostly male, being victimized and expelled for having
the wrong thoughts or the wrong words, or the like.
But, rather than having dueling examples, it would be more
helpful if we stepped back and noticed what all these stories actually have in
common: a shabby process that runs on assumptions and stereotypes and not data
or due process.
University "discipline committees" seem to be a
world totally out of control and a law unto themselves. In the story at hand the three sitting in
judgment on this woman didn't even look at the report from her rape kit, didn't
let her present her story in a coherent way and seemed totally untrained. More fundamentally she couldn't have even an
non-lawyer advocate speak for her, didn't get to cross-examine witnesses and
had no real ability to defend herself.
More generally, time and again we hear that people on these
committees have little or no training, wander off into irrelevancies, and,
still, after all these years, have trouble distinguishing the desire to get
loose on alcohol and have fun from the (non-existent) desire to be gang-raped. And, equally it seems, they can't distinguish
an insult tossed off in the spur of the moment from a plan to gang-rape.
The colleges in question still don't seem to get it. In the wake of the Times article the college
president put out a masterful collection of weasel words that continues on the
passive aggressive velvet nonsense quoted in the article. They care, they take all allegations
seriously, they want to dialogue, they are committed to listening carefully,
yada, yada, yada—all the corporate PR pabulum we've come to expect. But they aren't angry their female students
are getting assaulted, the male leaders aren't gathering the male members of
the community and telling them to grow up or get out, and they certainly giving
the message to pampered athletes that they don't get a pass—they aren't leading
at all.
Even if they were, two overarching faults doom these
processes even if the people involved were smart and sensitive. First is the assumption that patterns and
generalities can decide a specific case.
It doesn't matter what percentage of the time women make up allegations
or change their mind after intimacy begins, what we have to know is what
happened in this case. It doesn't matter
the rate of boys wanting sex and pushing it on reluctant girls, we need to know
what happened in this case.
All our painfully won principles of due-process are devoted
to wresting us away from generalities to specifics. The reason evidence has to be proved physical
evidence sought and witnesses cross-examined, and people have trained advocates
to assist them in presenting a case, and why hearsay has to be discounted and
on and on is precisely because generalizations are misleading. This case, any case, is not "women vs.
men" it's specific to a time, a place, and the particular people.
The second problem is conflict of interest. The people on college panels are employees of
the college whose careers and friendships are at the college. Even if they don't know the football team,
they know how angry some will be to hear it criticized. They, in the same manner of old-line Catholic
bishops, want to "avoid a scandal" that will "needlessly damage
the reputation of a good school."
And what on earth are college employees doing investigating
allegations of a felony? Yes, there are
offenses that the college can discipline for that do not rise to the level of
crimes, but once it appears that there is the possibility that a crime has been
committed the police need to be called.
Yes, they have their problems too (read about a sloppy process in this
case) but the police are not part of the institution of the college and failing
to inform them of a crime, and acting to hush up a crime seems, to me at least,
to run the risk of being an accessory after the fact. And aren't there mandatory reporting requirements
that might be triggered here?
The inability of colleges to grasp the basics of how you
actually find out the truth and the basics of citizen rights in a democracy is
saddening. But even sadder are those who
are firmly convinced that they don't need to grasp any of those things because
they already know what must have taken place.
I don't care if this is conservatives bemoaning that "women are
always claiming to be the victim" or liberals who convinced they have the
morally correct opinion of everything and so can dispense with data.
In general I shun raising these points in mixed company as I
have found very few people indeed who can think other than in stereotypes. Either "women have all the power"
or "all women live in fear all the time of all men." Any questioning of the liberal line or the
conservative one leads to people backing away like you are infected. We insist on pitting victims against each
other and so if 10 men were mistreated that's of no account and they deserve it
because 25 women were mistreated worse.
And they probably were—but probably not by the specific men who got
shafted by some other process gone amuck.
The real lessons are the one societies have been forgetting
and painfully relearning since the dawn of civilization: power corrupts, conflict of interest is fatal
and, oh yes, due process and suspending judgment until you've proven what
happened really are good ideas.
Someday we won't try to solve injustice against women by
recounting stories of injustice to men, or calling in the spin doctors, instead
we'll try to stop all of it. That would
take leadership by women and men. It would take men--as opposed to boys in fancy suits.
