First of all, if you
are wrongly accused of sexual misconduct at A&M-Commerce, and especially if
you are wrongly convicted during a university hearing, please contact me, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and your attorney immediately. Be
sure to read FIRE’s guide to due process and fair procedure. Also, I’d like to thank Paul Elam and the editors at A
Voice for men for hosting my article on their
website. The videos below are an expanded version of the article at A
Voice for Men.
Summary: the A&M-Commerce administration has adopted a policy that cuts deeply into the due process rights of male students accused of sexual misconduct, fails to punish those who falsely accuse male students and teachers of sexual harassment or rape, and has a history of taking down YouTube videos recorded by students of "outrageous harassing behavior" (in the Title IX Coordinator's own words) multiple times. This is proven by a recording of my meeting with the Title IX Coordinator.
*A recording of the full interview between TCM and Title IX Coordinator Michele Vieira of A&M-Commerce is provided below. To download a 14MB WAV-format recording of the full interview that can be easily attached to emails, click HERE. To download a 70MB MP3 version (which is too big to attach to most emails but will play on more programs), click HERE. You can also view Part 1 and Part 2 of the full interview on YouTube.
So what’s this all about?
On April 4th, 2011, the Department of Education’s Office on
Civil Rights (OCR) issued the “Dear Colleague” letter, sometimes called the
“April 4th Directive,” to colleges and universities across the
United States. I’ll do a brief recap of the directive to make
sure we’re on the same page.
Although the directive has some good parts, it also contains
guidelines that eviscerate the due process rights of men and boys accused of
sexual misconduct. Most egregiously, the directive mandates that schools adopt
the “preponderance of evidence” standard in adjudicating complaints, lowering
the standard to convict the accused (an act which leads to expulsion, a
permanent career-destroying black mark on their record, as well as ostracism
from one’s community) to a likelihood of 50.01% that the alleged conduct
occurred. So in other words, administrators don’t have to be sure that the
student accused actually committed sexual assault before they expel them and ruin
their lives; they just have to believe it was slightly more likely than not
that the accuser is telling the truth.
In addition, among other things, the directive allows accusers to
appeal the findings of the hearing and start a whole new hearing over again, in
effect allowing them to make double jeopardy accusations. Unlike most policies established
in a civil society, the directive was issued in the still of the night, with no
chance for public examination or debate. And since the OCR is infamous for threatening to fine or withhold federal funding from universities where female students
experience any kind of discomfort that is not remedied by the administration
within 60 days (which is the deadline set by the directive in how long
universities have to adjudicate complaints of sexual assault), many universities
are not adopting the terms of the directive on a basis of ethics or morality, but
simply to be in a higher standing to receive federal funding.
The directive also states that “The school’s Title IX investigation is
different from any law enforcement investigation, and a law enforcement
investigation does not relieve the school of its independent Title IX
obligation to investigate the conduct.” So in other words, law enforcement and
universities will each be conducting their own investigations, and they may
each come to different conclusions. This
is already happening to students like Caleb Warner from the University of North
Dakota. Not only did police find that there was not enough evidence to pursue a
charge against him, they charged his accuser with filing a false report. Caleb
Warner, however, was found guilty at a university hearing and expelled.
Sometimes these hearing are adjudicated exclusively by the assistant
dean of students– meaning that we sometimes have the prosecutor, judge and jury
all rolled into one person. At other times, it is adjudicated by a panel of
teachers and administrators, or a mix of teachers, administrators and students.
The entire process is overseen by Title IX Coordinators, who are present at
every university and are the overarching authority on gender equity in those
institutions. They are normally members of that school’s department of
diversity.
Princeton University, however, did something rather innovative: they
decided to use a higher standard of evidence for adjudicating complaints of
sexual misconduct, but created a parallel process with a lower standard of
evidence for deciding whether certain support services needed to be provided
for the accuser. As reported by USA Today, Russlynn Ali,
the
head of OCR, indicated she wasn't necessarily opposed to a two-tracked system.
She declined to address any particular school, but said OCR was talking with
colleges about their concerns and would study them "case by case" —
suggesting colleges may have more flexibility than they realize.
Most schools, however, were
not willing to take a chance on missing out on federal funding. After the
directive was issued, controversy arose as they scrambled to comply. Law
Professor Cynthia Bowman of Cornell University remarked, “To impose those
consequences on someone requires a rigorous standard of proof and many due
process protections to ensure fairness. Indeed, there is general agreement
among faculty at the Law School that the procedures being proposed are
Orwellian.” The hysteria that followed the Directive led former Department
of Education attorney Hans Bader to remark, “Innocent people get found guilty
of harassment because the school realizes the only way it can avoid liability is
to punish everybody in sight.” Even Brett Sokolow, founder of the National
Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM), noticed the hysteria andsaid, “It’s such a fear-based reaction that a lot of colleges now are expelling
and suspending people they shouldn’t, for fear they’ll get nailed on Title IX
[4].” Organizations like The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, The American Association of University Professors, and numerous others, including A Voice for Men and Community of the Wrongly Accused, have all sharply criticized the
directive and called for it to be rescinded. They have been met with a wall of
silence.
In addition to the great work being done to raise awareness of the
directive, I believe we must also work creatively to provide influence that
helps protect them right now. It’s
important to remember that overwhelmingly, the students are completely unaware
of this, until they are wrongly accused of sexual assault, at which point they
are blindsided by it.
In the spirit of thinking globally and acting locally, in April of
2012 I met with the Title IX Coordinator Michele Vieira and the Assistant Dean
of Students Robert Dotson at A&M-Commerce, where I studied for my bachelor’s
and master’s and taught freshman composition and argumentation, but had suddenly
dropped out of the master’s program without explanation two and a half years
ago. You may listen to the entirety of our interview in my other videos. My
goal in the meetings was not to argue or debate, but to ask for clarification on
university policy, and ask them to adopt the model used Princeton University. I
knew, however, that I did not have the luxury of underestimating the entrenched
interests that perpetuate the inequities men and boys face in education, nor would
those entrenched interests be overcome by merely asking. And that is exactly
why I recorded a few of our conversations.
I will speak briefly of my meeting with Robert Dotson because many of
his answers were the same as Michelle’s (and many others were vague responses),
and that little else is eventful in our conversation. At the end
of our meeting, I asked him to adopt the sexual misconduct model used by Princeton.
While he encouraged me to send him an email about it, he ended the
conversation by saying,
“I don’t know - I’m a preponderance kind of guy. It’s hard to teach an old dog
new tricks.”
I may still be naïve in some areas, but I can recognize a “no” when I
hear it. I knew immediately that it would be no further use to speak with him
on the matter. And regardless, nothing could be achieved without the Title IX
Coordinator. Given that this series deals with educational equity for men and
boys, it is the meeting with the Title IX Coordinator that most directly concerns
us. One of my concerns was clarification over the university’s definition of
sexual assault, given that I have
heard many definitions advocated which would classify myself as a victim (which
I do not believe I was). I have, for example, had sex when I didn’t want, but
went along with it to please my partner (to which she answered “no”), after
drinking alcohol moderately (“no” again), and after I was asked repeatedly (to
which she answered “possibly”).
It bears mention, however, that it doesn’t matter what
the university’s definition of rape is if the standard of evidence is so low
that it requires no evidence at all. “Really, when you boil it down to it, it’s
who can tell the best story,” she said. But should that really be the case,
especially when the standard of evidence is little more than a coin toss? It is
well known that even innocent persons may embellish or lie in their statements,
usually out of fear, uncertainty, or to cover up something else. If
administrators happen to catch two out of three embellishments by an innocent student
who is wrongly accused but only one out of three made by his accuser, the
wrongly accused student has a high chance of being found “guilty” and having
his life destroyed.
Another concern was that the figure cited from a Justice Department
report by Russlynn Ali that 1 in 5 college women are victims of attempted or
completed sexual assault, which Ali is using as a justification for the preponderance
standard. While the disclaimer that it is not an official document is stamped
on every page of the report, Michelle Vieira agreed with the figure.
If you review the campus crime reports for any university, you will
find that the 1-in-X statistics do not match up. For example, A&M-Commerce is
a university with over ten thousand students. The campus crime statistics report
an average of one sexual assault a
year - if we round up. For the year 2008, there were none.
But somehow we jump from that number to one
thousand. Even factoring in underreporting (a reasonable concern), the
numbers just don’t add up. And even if they did, what does that say about the
administration? Around the time of the interview, A&M-Commerce closed down Binnion Hall because of a water leak. If the administration truly believed
that there is an epidemic of rape which would translate to roughly 3 rapes each
day (and in turn justify the evisceration of due process rights), wouldn’t it
make sense to advocate closing down the campus – or at least the dorms - until
the problem is resolved? Or does the administration truly believe that a water
leak more important?
Why would statistics on sexual assault be so inflated? An article in the Toledo Blade informs us of a history among those who conduct research on
the prevalence of sexual assault on campus:
Researchers
say they can just as easily design a study that finds 1 in 4 women have been
raped as 1 in 50. A slight change in the definition of rape or the way
questions are worded can yield drastically different results. Scientists
responsible for the highest numbers are passionate advocates who believe rape
is very common. This troubles even some in the field.
One
scientist is a self-described radical feminist. Another conducted her study
with the backing of Ms. Magazine, for years a leading voice of the women’s
movement. Still another helped open one of the country’s first rape crisis
centers. All told, some critics conclude the rape numbers are inflated. They
charge this has been done to boost support for the cause.
Among
those who believe this: Eugene Kanin, a pioneer researcher in the field who
describes himself as an “ardent feminist.” Back in the 1950s, while a teaching
associate at Indiana University, he was trying to discover how many high school
girls experienced “sexual aggression” on dates. At the time, he says, people
laughed at his work.
Today,
he is a retired sociology professor from Purdue University. He says he is
saddened by the current research. “This is highly convoluted activism rather
than social science research,” he says. Even some scientists who don’t
criticize the high rape numbers say there is pressure to come up with
eye-popping rates. “There was some pressure – at least I felt pressure – to
have rape be as prevalent as possible,” says the University of Washington’s Margaret
Gordon, who, in a study published in 1981, found relatively low sexual assault
rates. “I’m a pretty strong feminist, but one of the things I was fighting was
that the really avid feminists were trying to get me to say that things were
worse than they really are,” she says.
What Ms. Vieira perhaps does not realize is that the definitions of
sexual assault to which she earlier responded “no” are often the very
definitions used by ideologically-driven researchers in their tabulations of
campus sex-assault victims to reach their 1-in-X figures. Dissenting Feminist
professor Christina Hoff-Sommers deconstructed the infamous 1-in-4 study by
Mary Koss, wherein a quarter of the women classified as victims did not
themselves think they had been raped, and 42% of the “victims” went on to have
sex with their “attackers” again (see the chapter Rape Research in her book Who Stole Feminism). In the article “The Campus Rape Myth,”
Heather McDonald reports that in a similar study, 65% of the “victims” “did not
think that their experiences were ‘serious enough to report’” and “generally
did not state that their victimization resulted in physical or emotional
injuries.”
My next concern was false accusations, which Ms. Vieira answered of
her own initiative:
We have
had occasion for someone to accuse someone of sexual harassment or assault and
we find that they were just mad because they got a D in the class. And they go
through a nightmare while we do the investigation. And the sad part is, the
person who did the accusing didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. They just
walked away. We don’t have anything in place in this university to address
false accusations.
And while not the sole reason, this is one of the main reasons I
dropped out of the master’s program at A&M-Commerce and abandoned my dream
of becoming a professor of English. Why should I spend another 5-7 years trying
to finish my masters and get my doctorate, put myself in tens of thousands of
dollars of student loan debt, subject myself to the brutal job competition in
an age when the supply of teachers is high, the demand low and tenure is being
phased out -when academia affords me no protection on the road to get there,
and if I do get there, affords me little protection even then?
In her book Heterophobia, dissenting
Feminist and former Women’s Studies professor Daphne Patai documents cases
where professors were falsely accused of harassment and rape for merely bringing
up in their classes the fact that some women falsely accuse men of rape, as
well as cases of students who become infatuated with their professors, who come
into their offices and find ways to turn their conversations toward personal
affairs, and then falsely accuse their professors of harassment or rape when
they turn down their advances. It also bears mention that you don’t have to be
wrongly convicted of sexual misconduct to have your reputation or career
destroyed, or for you to become disillusioned with teaching. Because for far
too many people, the guilt is not created by the conviction; it is created by
the accusation. And when you have no deterrent for committing false
accusations, how are we really protecting people from a hostile learning or
hostile working environment?
Now reverse the situation and ask yourself: what would happen if
Russlynn Ali came down from the OCR, walked into the offices of several
administrators at UT Austin and was told “we don’t have anything at this
university to address sexual misconduct, but we’re thinking about it.” What kind
of reaction could we reasonably expect? I would imagine she would probably make
a public example out of them, and would not have any remorse in doing so.
Now ironically, Ms. Vieira does mention that the university did move
to protect a teacher - not an innocent one, but a professor who exhibited harassing
behavior that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. "A student recorded it and put it up there. We've taken it down five times now." I didn’t probe too much into it, but I am curious: what if others
had experienced harassing behavior from that professor who would only have come
forward if they knew others who had the same experience? If parents knew their
child had been in that professor’s class, wouldn’t it be good for them to know
so they could ask their child if he or she had experienced something similar? If
underreporting is such a problem, and if the professor is truly guilty, why
suppress awareness of harassing behavior?
But perhaps the most telling part of our meeting was when I asked her
– if she removed from the equation liabilities, rules and regulations - if the
policy she was being asked to enforce was morally justified. Instead of answering, she
averted her eyes from me and looked down at her desk, and eventually said, "I don't think I can fully state my opinion on that.
While attending a required sexual harassment seminar as an instructor at A&M-Commerce, I was given the litmus test for avoiding behavior that could be construed as harassment: if you have to ask whether a form of conduct is objectionable, you probably should not do it. A similar litmus test can be applied to administrators who employ or enforce low standards of evidence to find students and teachers guilty of sexual assault: if you cannot look in the eye someone who has been a student and instructor at your university for over eight years and tell him what you are doing is justified, you probably should not be doing it.
At the end of our meeting, I asked that the university adopt the
“clear and convincing” standard after the manner of Princeton University. I
drafted my request in writing and emailed it to Ms. Vieira, who told me that
she forwarded it to her boss Dr. Edward Romero, the president of diversity at
A&M-Commerce, and Dr. Joni Baker, the director of diversity for the entire
A&M system. This is what I said:
Screenshot 1 of Email 1
Screenshot 2 of Email 1
Ms. Vieira,
I'd like to thank you again for speaking with me last Thursday and Friday. You
dedicated a lot of time to the concerns I had, and I was pleasantly surprised
not only with how willing you were to speak on such a weighty matter, but also
that we could occasionally punctuate the seriousness of the topic with a bit of
humor and pleasant conversation.
You mentioned that I might write an email
addressing my concerns about university policy, which you might then pass along
to certain individuals or committees. I have prepared that letter, which
comprises the bulk of this email. While I'm not sure if it will make any
impression, I am grateful for the opportunity. With that in mind, please
forward this message to whoever you feel is appropriate.
Admittedly, though, I am unsure to whom I should
specifically address the remainder of this email, or what their titles might
be.
Thank you for your help and your time,
[TCM]
Here is the message that Ms. Vieira forwarded (allegedly) to Dr. Romero and Dr.
Joni Baker:
Hello,
My name is [TCM]. As an alumnus and former instructor at A&M-Commerce, I
feel compelled to write the university on a matter that has been weighing on my
heart in regard to the safety of the community at my alma mater. Specifically,
I would like to address the preponderance standard with which judicial affairs
currently determines whether a student or faculty member is found in violation
of university policy on sexual assault. My purpose in writing is to request, in
behalf of the wrongly accused, that A&M-Commerce adopt the clear and
convincing standard of evidence in hearings on sexual assault, specifically.
In trials on sexual assault, criminal courts employ the standard of
"beyond a reasonable doubt," the highest possible standard of proof.
I and many others believe this is unsuited for academic settings, since justice
for sex-assault victims would be extremely unlikely under a standard so high. A
lower standard would be the "clear and convincing" standard, which I
view as a kind of middle ground. The lowest legal standard would be the
preponderance standard, in which the adjudicating individual(s) feels it is
"more likely than not," or that there is 50.1% likelihood, that the
alleged offense occurred. This is the same standard courts use for traffic
fines and parking tickets.
Sexual assault is rightly considered one of the most heinous of crimes in our
jurisprudence, and society rightly responds with vigilance toward its
offenders, and support toward its victims. Given the seriousness of the charge,
false or misidentified accusations of sexual assault are among the most
destructive forms of false reporting. Given the stigma and ostracism that often
afflicts those wrongly accused, and the persistence with which it will follow
them in the internet age, false and mistaken accusations of sexual assault have
the power to destroy their means of educating themselves, making a living,
creating loving and committed relationships, and becoming successful and
productive members of society. In other words, it has the power to ruin not
only individual lives, but fracture communities.
It is unfortunate that, in some cases, we do not have adequate means of knowing
who is innocent. In such cases, with such a low standard of proof and given the
nebulous nature of the crime, especially in the presence of alcohol, it seems
regrettably probable that for universities which apply the preponderance
standard to hearings on sexual assault, it is not a question of if a student or
teacher will be wrongly found in violation (and subsequently punished), but of
when.
Numerous faculty and administrators across the West have expressed concern for
a system that compels them to render judgments in cases when they do not have
enough information to make such weighty decisions. These sentiments can easily
be found by Googling such articles as "An Open Letter to OCR" at Inside
Higher Ed, or "Rights Advocates Spar over Policy on Sexual Assault"
at the Cornell Daily Sun. It is not my intention to create evidence by a list
of quotes and citations, however, but rather to illustrate their concern: that
when the evidence is insufficient, they need breathing room to express their
reservations with confidence, and say "We do not have enough evidence to
move forward in judgment against either party."
Accusers, of course, should have access to support services, regardless of the
outcome of the hearing, as well as the option of pursuing the case through the
legal system with the assistance of the university, and those found guilty of
sexual assault should be promptly removed from the community. I firmly support
these and many other functions that universities assume in this area. It is
only concerning the preponderance standard that I would request change.
Recently I was asked, "What forms of evidence would you say satisfy the
requirement of a clear and convincing standard?" I could define it here,
but it would require a lengthy and detailed examination of such cases. Thus,
out of respect for your time, I will simply summarize by saying it is, so to
speak, "more than a feeling."
Thank you for your time and attention. If you find occasion or desire to
do so, I am gladly willing to speak with you further on this matter.
Respectfully,
[TCM]
After waiting for a while for a reply, which I didn’t receive, I took
the initiative and emailed Dr. Baker, asking to meet and discuss the nature of
my request. This is what I said:
Hi Dr.
Baker,
My name is [TCM]. I am an alumnus and former instructor at A&M-Commerce.
Roughly two months ago I spoke with Michele Vieira, the Title IX and Equal
Opportunity Coordinator at that university, concerning the due process
implications of the April 4th Directive issued by the OCR last year. While we
also discussed the current graduation gap between male and female students,
most of our discussion was concerning the directive. After formally submitting
my concerns to her in writing, she sent me an email on May2, telling me that
she had forwarded them in an email to you. I never received a reply.
I am wondering if you wouldn’t mind meeting at some point in the near future
–particularly on a Thursday or Friday, if possible - to discuss the directive, and
possibly other diversity issues. Given that I currently reside in [withheld]
and the trip would be over three hours, I would make the trip to you at a
location of your convenience.
One of the reasons I would like to speak with you concerning this is that it
was a strong factor in my choice to abandon continuing my masters at
A&M-Commerce, and with that my dream of becoming a professor. Many
students, as well as aspiring and existing male teachers, are concerned that
innocent persons accused of sexual misconduct have been and will continue to be
harmed by low standards of proof and a lack of other checks and balances, and
this concern remains a structural barrier for many men in teaching professions.
I understand that there are many things which demand your time. If there is a way
you can find the time to speak with me, however, I would greatly appreciate it.
For your notes and convenience of reference I have pasted below this message
the email conversation between Michele Vieira and myself.
Thank you for your time and attention,
[TCM]
I didn’t receive a response from that either. Something tells me I
would have, though, if I were a representative of the American Association of
University Women. So I sent an email to Ms. Vieira, wishing her a pleasant
summer and asking to meet one last time. This is what I said:
Hello
Ms. Vieira,
I hope your summer is going well. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind briefly
speaking with me once more before the fall semester begins, just to wrap up a
few things we discussed earlier. Any time this Thursday or Friday or in the
morning next week would work. If you're available, feel free to email me back
and name whatever time is best for you and I will accommodate it. Hope to hear
from you, and that all is well.
Regards,
[TCM]
It was my hope that Ms. Vieira and I could work together to solve the
civil rights issues facing the wrongly accused. As an alumnus, I could say
things that would be difficult for her to say, and we could use the story of my
dropping out, combined with the pressing crisis of educational underachievement
among male students, to demonstrate that the time had come to make a change.
Now at this point, Ms. Vieira has a choice. She knows that the university’s
process of adjudicating accusations of sexual assault is flawed, to say the
least. She knows I am being courteous, I’m not being argumentative, and that
I’m willing to build bridges and quite possibly work with her on addressing a
longstanding problem. She has an opportunity that does not come her way every
day. And if she takes that opportunity, it will be a difficult road, but it may
also preclude future difficulties that may be equally or more undesirable.
Unfortunately, that is not what she does. I never received a reply
from either Joni Baker or Ms. Vieira. Now remember that I don’t know for a fact
that Ms. Vieira forwarded my email to the other administrators. I’m assuming
so, although it is possible that this assumption is too generous – I don’t
know. If you listen to the interview, you’ll hear that it wasn’t hard for me to
talk with Ms. Vieira. Her demeanor was kind, and we exchanged many laughs
despite the seriousness of the topic. But if all we get out of it is pleasant
conversation, how much have we really accomplished? What has changed? Nothing
has changed. And if I leave it at that and do nothing further, have I really
done the best I can do?
Those who have viewed the rest of the blog posts and videos in this series have seen
that academia has had numerous chances to reflect upon the standing of male
students as a group, to learn from some high-profile events about how they have
been treated, and use them as opportunities to make positive change. Overwhelmingly,
academia has declined to embrace those opportunities. Since that is what this entire series is about, I encourage the uninitiated to watch the rest of it.We have learned through painful experience
that if we have to wait for it to become politically convenient for education
administrators to break ranks and take a public stand for the civil rights of
men and boys, it will never happen. We no longer have time to wait on them, nor
reason to assume that things will work themselves out on their own. That is the
rationale for what is going on here.
Now that this interview and article have been published online,
wrongly accused and potentially wrongly convicted students will be able to
easily find information about what goes on behind the scenes. They will easily
be able to hear the Title IX Coordinator’s silence, her reservation, and
finally her inability to bring herself to answer me in the affirmative when I
asked her “is this policy justified?” Prospective and current teachers can hear
that A&M-Commerce has nothing in place to protect them from false accusations.
And parents and students can hear that the administration has a history of
suppressing awareness of professors harassing students. And now that it is out
in the open, there’s no telling where this could go.
Although some have made comments to the contrary, I don’t think
Michele Vieira is an ideological extremist. I think she is a much more moderate
person. She expressed reservations about the problems in the policy, she
expressed some empathy toward the wrongly accused, but wasn’t willing to break
ranks and take the steps necessary to remedy it. In that sense, she is much
more comparable to professor Susan Thorne at Duke University, which we covered in the video dedicated to Duke.
MLK, Jr.
Administrators arecaught in a tight spot. Theirs is not an enviable position. And despite the
power that is accorded them, I can imagine there are times when some of them
feel rather powerless. I understand that the OCR is holding a gun to their
head. But what they must understand is that so long as they follow their
orders, they are currently doing the same to their students.The
wisdom passed down to us from generations of civil rights activism is that we
never need permission to stand up for civil rights. As Martin Luther King, Jr.
said, “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." The
same values, of course, hold true for all codes, customs, policies, and
directives. Most of the time, rules do serve a useful purpose. But there is a
higher authority than rules: the authority of conscience and justice.
Administrators and some faculty have a choice to make. They must come
to a place in their hearts where they are able to set aside all factors that
are external to the ethics of what they are doing - factors of liabilities,
factors of funding, factors of careerism. They must ask themselves: if I remove
all these external elements from the equation, is what is going on morally
justified? I asked Ms. Vieira that question, and she was not able to answer me.
But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter whether administrators answer
that question truthfully to people like me. What matters is whether they are
honest with themselves.
If you listen to the full interview, you will hear that in the
interview I was nice, and I was nice throughout. Not a single time did I argue
or make demands - let alone threats - for this reason: if at all possible, I
don’t want faculty and administrators to do the right thing because they feel
they are being forced, because that’s not worth as much as if they did it of
their own free will. Someone who believes in those values is a much more
effective and noble administrator of those values than someone who is
essentially a mercenary who chooses their side in exchange for titles and
money. I didn’t want people in academia to break ranks and work with others to
make positive structural because someone else wanted her to do it; I wanted
them to do it because they wanted to do it.
In Part One of Sexual Harassment Hysteria in Lower Education, we covered numerous examples of overreactions to accusations of sexual harassment, and the damage caused to boys in the process. In this post on The War on Male Students, we will cover more cases of boys being subjected to heavy-handed labels and punishments, as well as the roots of the current hysteria.
Now this one isn’t sexual harassment per se, but I do believe it merits attention. It is part of a continuum, you might say, on how our schools treat men and boys accused of sexual misconduct. And that continuum too often ranges from indifference to hostility. Here we have the administrator taking on the role of a corrupt prosecutor, attempting to bargain down the charges so he can snag the boy with whatever he can.
A 2011 online article by Channel 3000, a CBS affiliate, says, in “MADISON, Wis. - A 6-year-old Grant County boy has been accused of first-degree sexual assault after playing "doctor" with two 5-year-old friends. Now, a federal lawsuit has been filed against the prosecutor, who attorneys said is trying to force the boy to admit guilt.
“The boy's parents had planned to speak with WISC-TV on Monday to discuss the emotional toll the prosecution has taken on their son. But the prosecutor, Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker, on Monday morning asked a judge for a gag order in the case and was granted it. The gag order prohibits the boy's parents from talking about the case. But the attorneys for the parents in the federal suit, which names Riniker as a defendant, can aren't included in the gag order, and they spoke with WISC-TV from Chicago.
“Attorneys for the parents of the 6-year-old, who is being referred to as ‘D,’ said that Riniker has gone too far by bringing a felony sex charge against a first-grader for touching a 5-year-old girl inappropriately while playing doctor last fall. ‘That behavior by a prosecutor is outrageous,’ said Christopher Cooper, an attorney for the boy's parents. Cooper and attorney David Sigale filed the federal suit last week, alleging that Riniker wants D to sign a consent decree admitting some level of guilt.
"’We're certainly hoping to vindicate D in the eyes of the law,’ Sigale said. ‘He says he didn't do it, and the little girl says he didn't do it. The little girl says he touched the back of one of her buttocks,’ Cooper said. The attorneys are also asking for about $12 million in damages from Riniker and two co-defendants. Cooper and Sigale said they are prepared to present evidence that D has been psychologically harmed by the court proceedings and is terrified of going to jail.
"’[District Attorney] Riniker bypassed the parents and sent a 6-year-old boy a summons, on which is a threat that the 6-year-old will go to jail for failure to appear,’ Cooper said. The attorneys said they have sought the opinion of many experts who said that children ‘playing doctor’ is not a sex crime. ‘(The experts say) a 6-year-old child is unable to intellectually and emotionally associate sexual gratification with the act that D has been accused of committing,’ Cooper said.
In justification for the charge, Riniker is quoted in the lawsuit saying ‘the Legislature could have put an age restriction in the statute ... the legislature did no such thing.’”
Randy Castro
A 2008 article in the Washington Post titled “For Little Children, Grown-Up Labels as Sexual Harassers,” tells us this story:
“In his seven years, Randy Castro has been an aspiring soccer player, an accomplished Lego architect and a Royal Ranger at his Pentecostal church. He also, according to his elementary school record, sexually harassed a first-grade classmate.
During recess at his Woodbridge school one day in November, when he was 6, he said, he smacked the classmate's bottom. The girl told the teacher. The teacher took Randy to the principal, who told him such behavior was inappropriate. School officials wrote an incident report calling it 'Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive,' which will remain on his student record permanently.
Then, as Randy sat in the principal's office, they called the police.
'I thought they were going to take me to prison,' Randy said recently. 'I was scared.'"
While we should all support discipline for this kind of behavior in some form, is it really necessary to call the police and potentially lead a 6-year-old boy away in handcuffs for a one-time offense of spanking someone on the rear end?
The article continues:
“Randy is only one of many children to be dealt with harshly as schools across the country grapple with enforcing new zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies and the fear of litigation.
The Virginia Department of Education reported that 255 elementary students were suspended last year for offensive sexual touching, or 'improper physical contact against a student.' In Maryland, 166 elementary school children were suspended last year for sexual harassment, including three preschoolers, 16 kindergartners and 22 first-graders, according to the State Department of Education. Statistics for the District were not available.”
The article continues:
“In 2006, a kindergartner in Hagerstown, Md., was accused of sexual harassment after pinching a female classmate's buttocks. A 4-year-old in Texas was given an in-school suspension after a teacher's aide accused him of sexual harassment for pressing his face into her breasts when he hugged her."
And on page two of the article, going back to the story of Randy:
“Claudia Castro, a preschool teacher in Alexandria, said she was shocked when officials at Randy's school called to say that he was in trouble and that they were calling the police. She later met with the principal and assistant principal. 'I told them that what he did was not appropriate. And I have talked to him about it. What I don't understand is how you can make a police report on a 6-year-old. But the principal told me that they were making reports to the police every single day.
“Mary Kay Sommers, president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, said suspensions and calls to the police in such cases are overkill. The correct response, she said, would be to explore whether the behavior is linked to abuse and to teach students about respecting peers and what constitutes ‘good touch’ or ‘bad touch.’
'There's no way these children understand what's going on. But it's been taken out of our hands. That's the difficult moral dilemma that we face,’ Sommers said. She blamed two Supreme Court decisions from the 1990s that enable suits against school districts for failing to stop sexual harassment as well as zero-tolerance policies aimed at middle and high school students that are applied to students as young as 5.
"Since November, Randy has been calling himself a ‘bad boy,’ his mother said.
Castro said school officials rejected her appeal to remove the sexual harassment incident from Randy's permanent file. And now she worries that they have branded him a troublemaker.”
Yes – he is now labeled. And labels, especially those imposed publicly and by authority figures, tend to stick. I hope these cases illustrate not only the fundamental problems with sexual harassment policy, but also the culture that boys are facing in education.
In 2010, a Duke University student named Karen Owens catalogued her sexual encounters with 13 members of Duke's athletic team in the form of a PowerPoint presentation titled "An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal activities" (article here). She ranked them by numerous criteria, among them "“Size – points were determined based on the length and girth of the Subjects’ hardware.”
If you're a man or woman and want to have sex with a hundred men or a hundred women, that’s none of my business, so long as you’re not spreading any diseases along the way. What I do care about is how society responds differently based on who they are. So what happens when a male student does the same thing as Karen Owens?
A news article in Chicago tells us:
On May 10th, 2011:
“A male former student police believe was responsible for creating and circulating an offensive list ranking females on their appearance was arrested and is being charged with disorderly conduct, Oak Park police said Tuesday.
“The 17-year-old former Oak Park and River Forest High School student, who police and school officials are not identifying because he is a minor, was arrested at his Oak Park home Monday night and was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The charges were levied with cooperation from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and Oak Park police said there will not be any additional charges. The teen is accused of handing out hard copies of the list Jan. 14 at various lunch periods and posting a copy online, according to police.
“The teenager is believed to be responsible for a list that ranked 50 female students — using racial slurs and ratings of body parts — that circulated around the school and on Facebook, police said. The teen is accused of handing out hard copies of the list Jan. 14 at various lunch periods and posting a copy online, according to police.
“School officials were mum on disciplinary proceedings, but said the student no longer attends OPRF. In response, teachers and students started a campaign against sexism, selling T-shirts that read 'Respect.'”
Now the use of racial slurs is wrong. What I will address is the response by the schools on the issue of gender. So here we go: when a woman publicly ranks men according to the size of their genitals and their performance in bed, the reaction is “you go girl,” and a Feminist regards it as an act of empowerment. But when a man does the same, Feminist teachers organize what they call “a campaign against sexism,” and sell T-Shirts reading “Respect,” which sounds all fine and dandy until you realize that in the social and political context of this day and age, they’re not talking about respecting women; what they’re really talking about respecting is double standards.
Luckily, though, some women are able to see through the bs, as you'll see in the video.
When the story of Karen Owens broke, a Duke sociologist professor Philip Morgan commented on the story, saying: "It's a girl basically bragging the way boys bragged when the double standard was in full effect. It's a story about sex, and it's a story about gender." But ranking partners according to the size of their genitals is more than just bragging. If the sexes were reversed, sociologist Philip Morgan, as well as others in the academy, would indeed tell us that it is a story about gender – a story of sexual harassment based on gender. It wouldn't be framed as mere “immodesty,” but as sexually predatory behavior.
Heterophobia, by Daphne Patai
But how exactly is a male student supposed to know what is objectionable when the definitions are so vague?
A dissenting Feminist professor named Daphne Patai wrote a book called Heterophobia, which speaks at length on sexual harassment in education. In this book she cites the litmus test that is cited by administrators in schools across the West: “Because such behavior is likely to be high risk, if you have to ask [whether it is offensive], it is probably better not to do it” (21).
What is so often lost in the definition of sexual harassment is that there is a difference between behavior that is immodest and behavior that is predatory. Or as Daphne Patai says in her book, “there is a long distance between objecting to the intolerable and demanding the comfortable” (28).
And when we observe the enforcement of sexual harassment policy for what it is – with its extremely broad and vague definitions, and with its “better safe than sorry” approach to behavior most people consider trivial and nonthreatening - it becomes clear that sexual harassment is not really about “harassment” per se (which often involves things like intimidation and coercion), but rather is really about making women as comfortable - which in some cases is to say as pampered - as possible.
The ideology behind sexual harassment comes, of course, from Feminism. The 1998 “Issues Report” by the National Organization for Women, the biggest Feminist lobbying organization in the US, states: “Sexual harassment is a form of violence against women, used to keep women ‘in their place.’” Here we encounter the standard Feminist hysteria where words in and of themselves are equated with physical brutality.
Dissenting Feminist Dr. Christina Hoff-Sommers says on page 53 of the War on Boys, “Groups such as the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund have been successfully lobbying the federal government to impose strict harassment codes on the schools. In August 1996, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights issued a 26-page guideline on the subject of ‘peer harassment.’ No age limits were specified. Rooting out schoolyard harassers is now a prime objective of the Department of Education.”
The War Against Boys, by Dr. Christina Hoff-Sommers
She goes on to say on page 53, “A similar curriculum guide, Girls and Boys Getting Along: Teaching Sexual Harassment Prevention in the Elementary Classroom, was also funded by the Department of Education. This 144-page curriculum includes a special anti-harassment/self-esteem-building pledge for second- and third-graders." She gives us an example:
“I pledge to do my best to stop sexual harassment,
I will show RESPECT, by caring for myself and others;
I have dignity and will give it to others;
I am special, you are special, and we are all equal.”
But do second graders who are made to recite these pledges really know what they are talking about when they talk about sexual behavior? If the lines between offensive and inoffensive are so often indecipherable for an adult, how can we expect boys as young as age 6 to do an equal or better job?
On page 47 of The War on Boys, dissenting Feminist and professor Christina Hoff-Sommers tells us, “Leaders in the equity movement [that is to say, the Feminist movement] take a very dim view of errant boys, speaking with straight faces about schoolyard harassers as tomorrow’s batterers, rapists, and murderers.”
Among others, she quotes Sue Sattel, a self-described “equity specialist” with the Minnesota Department of Education, who says “Serial killers say they started harassing at age 10…they got away with it and went from there.”
Hoff-Sommers goes on to say, “Nan Stein, a director at the Wellesley College Center for research on Women and a major figure in the movement to get anti-harassment programs into the nation’s elementary schools, has referred to little boys who chase girls in the playground and flip their skirts as ‘perpetrators’ committing acts of ‘gendered terrorism.’”
Do we seriously believe that the act of a 9 year-old boy calling his teacher “cute” is a gateway to him becoming a serial killer? If a boy “gets away with” hugging his teacher out of gratitude for breaking up a fight, is he much more likely to commit domestic violence? What about a 6-year-old boy who sings “I’m sexy and I know it?” Is that a good indicator for his proclivity to rape later in life? Somehow I doubt it.
One of the best ways to raise our consciousness of sexism against men and boys is to simply reverse the sexes and look at how it comes across. It could also be said that women who lie about rape as adults tended to lie about trivial things as girls, when they learned they could get away with it. Should we then treat little girls who lie about small things as future false rape accusers? Is it really justified to look upon even moderately offensive behavior by girls under such a lens? I don’t think so.
Hoff-Sommers says on page 50 of The War on Boys: “None of these things would be of much moment if the zealous women promoting these views were not a major force in American education. Schools have to listen to Hanson, Stein, Sattel, and their colleagues to avoid running afoul of complicated federal laws concerning sex equity.”
Whenever parents see 6-year-old boys being punished for sexual harassment, they exclaim, “he’s too young to even know what being sexual is; how can he possibly be guilty of sexual harassment?” They naively think that it is an accident or oversight. But it isn’t. It is the result of a deliberate, concerted, and effort of increasingly radicalized reforms pushed by a few narrow-minded ideologues who have spent so much time cloistered within the ivory tower, and for so long have had no one to challenge their worldview, that they are now disconnected from the real world. It is also a result of the pervasive cowardice of education administrators who are more afraid of political inconvenience than they are driven to doing what is right.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m going to be a critical of the actions of certain Feminists and Feminist organizations. I will refrain from making many broad generalizations about Feminism, and I will quote the good Feminists who I believe are the exceptions. I’ve already done so here by quoting professors Christina Hoff-Sommers and Daphne Patai.
I would like to stress that the problem is not just a few misandric apples in the Feminist bunch who have achieved positions of influence over education. The problem is also the self-serving cowardice and careerism of administrators and faculty who either enforce these extremist policies against the warnings of their own conscience, or who see others doing so and fail to speak out. The fact remains that no matter how draconian sexual misconduct policies become, administrators still have a choice as to whether they will adopt or enforce them. In his “Letters from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “One has a moral responsibility to obey just laws; conversely, one also has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” There are an abundance of people in education who claim – claim – to uphold the ideals of equality and justice. But when it is our sons against whom unjust policies are directed, all of those champions for equality and social justice are often nowhere to be found. And this holds true, regardless as whether it is a civil rights issue like sexual harassment, or whether it is an issue of educational attainment.
In the case of the 6-year-old boy being suspended for singing, The Morning Show spoke of the general culture of education as "too politically correct."
But what is political “correctness” exactly? And if how it is employed so often seems to be wrong, why do we call it “correct” in the first place? In page 57 of The War Against Boys, Dr. Hoff-Sommers quotes the words of a high school teacher named Martin Spafford, who says, “Boys feel continually attacked for who they are. We have created a sense in school that masculinity is something bad. Boys feel blamed for history, and a school culture has grown up which is suspicious and frightened of boys.”
In education, we have swung the pendulum from a time when we had no protection, to the point that we are now overprotective. Policy on sexual harassment, just like policy on domestic violence and rape, is premised upon the idea of protecting women and girls from harm by men and boys. But when these policies become radicalized, we might benefit from an alternative perspective.
In Vancouver, Canada, there is a poster campaign that I believe captures the essence of this perspective.
“You don’t fear and hate African Americans, do you? No, because you are a decent human being.
You don’t fear and hate Jews, do you? Of course not, because you are a decent human being.
You don’t fear and hate gays and lesbians, do you? Of course not, because you are a decent human being.
You don’t fear and hate women do you? No, because you are a decent human being.
You don’t fear and hate men, do you?
Do you?
Whoever controls the language controls the argument. We need a new language and a new word to address this phenomenon. Don’t call it political “correctness.” Call it misandry - sexism against men and boys.
One of the most alienating messages that schools send to boys is the idea that they are inherently dangerous and predatory. This is especially true in the area of sexual harassment, our next topic in The War on Male Students. After a few decades of one-sided reforms and increasingly punitive reforms to education policy, schools now face fines, investigations, or lawsuits if female students suffer any kind of discomfort which can be defined under the broad umbrella of harassment. Schools are hypervigilant toward any kind of misbehavior on the part of boys, to the extent that boys who exhibit quasi-offensive behavior (or behavior that would be inoffensive or non-threatening to most people) are being labeled as predatory - labels they inevitably internalize – and being punished for it. I'll give numerous examples.
In North Carolina in 2011, a 9 year-old boy suspended for sexual harassment for telling not the teacher, but a fellow student that he thought his teacher was “cute." Article here.
When the world first heard of the concept of sexual harassment, they were sold the idea that sexual harassment was defined by exploitation and an abuse of power by employers or fellow employees. But sexual harassment today is not really about employers who require employees to perform sexual favors before they are promoted. It has been broadened far beyond its original and once widely-supported framework, and has moved into criminalizing many forms of trivial behavior that many consider non-threatening.
In another story out of North Carolina, a 14 year-old Middle School student was suspended for hugging teacher. According to this CBS article: “Ryan Blackmon, an eighth grade student at Bladenboro Middle School, was suspended when he hugged his teacher after she broke up a potential fight between himself and another student.”
“I said, ‘Thank you,’ after she got done,” Blackmon told the station.
“I went to hug her, then she just snatched me up by the arm and drug me to the other teacher and said that I needed to be written up, and that something serious had happened.” Blackmon’s parents have filed a police report against the teacher and the school after a mark was left on the boy’s arm from where the teacher grabbed him.
“I don’t understand how she could feel threatened if I was showing my gratitude, but she could have told me politely to tell me to move away,” he told the station.
And in Denver, Colorado, a 6 year-old boy was suspended for singing “I’m sexy and I know it.” Article here.
Are these boys who are subjected to such heavy-handed treatment more likely or less likely to develop into socially well-adjusted young men? Are they going to be able to carry on their studies in an environment where they are now labeled as predatory? It isn’t just the parents of these suspended kids who should be angry. We should all be angry at how the school system treats our kids. Because if they think it’s ok to treat other kids this way, they’ll think it’s ok to treat our kids this way. And until a group of concerned citizens rises up and campaigns for positive structural change in our school systems, they are going to keep doing it.
Another 6 year-old boy suspended for sexual harassment.
Article here. According to USA today, “In BROCKTON, Mass. (AP) — A 6-year-old boy is getting a lesson on the meaning of sexual harassment long before he'll be able to spell it. The first-grader was suspended for three days for sexual harassment after he put two fingers inside a classmate's waistband, school officials told his mother, Berthena Dorinvil. The boy told her he only touched the girl's shirt after the girl touched him.”
"The connotation is you're getting some kind of sexual gratification, or wanting sexual gratification, or are putting pressure on for some kind of sexual gratification, when a 6-year-old doesn't have that capacity," said E. Christopher Murray, a civil rights attorney who has handled school discipline cases.
“The boy's mother called the Jan. 30 suspension from Downey Elementary School outrageous. She said she can't even explain to her son what he did wrong because he's too young to understand. ‘He doesn't know those things,’ she told The Enterprise of Brockton. ‘He's only 6 years old.’”
And what of the accusation that the girl first touched him? If schools are so committed to investigating and rooting out sexual harassment, why do we not hear the results of this part of the “investigation? Of course, I use the word “investigation” loosely, assuming schools are actually objectively searching for facts, rather than going with whatever stories are the most expedient.
Yet another 6 year-old boy suspended, this time for kissing a girl on the cheek. Article here. According to the Associated Press: “A 6-year-old boy who kissed a girl on the cheek was suspended last week on the grounds of sexual harassment. Jackie Prevette said the school overreacted to an innocent peck on the cheek by banishing her son, Johnathan Prevette, to a room apart from his classmates. Johnathan said that the girl asked him to kiss her and that he was expressing friendship.
Johnathan Prevette
"District spokeswoman Jane Martin said the policy was clear, sayin ‘A 6-year-old kissing another 6-year-old is inappropriate behavior. Unwelcome is unwelcome at any age.” A teacher who saw the incident reported it to the principal, who decided the first-grader should be punished. Johnathan missed out on coloring and playing with friends. He also missed an ice-cream party honoring pupils with good attendance.” His mother said, ‘This makes children wonder, ‘Should I hug somebody? It’s no wonder we have all these people with behavior problems.'”
I agree, with a slight correction: it’s no wonder we have all these boys with behavior problems. I followed up a bit on Johnathan Prevette. When searching for his name under Google images, it turned up a link to his mother Jackie’s Myspace page, which contained a link to Johnathan’s own page. The case happened in 1996. He is now 22 years old, and on MySpace he goes by the name J-Perv. It would appear that he has indeed internalized the label of a sexual predator publicly imposed upon him by the school.
In page 54 of War on Boys, a dissenting Feminist professor named Christina Hoff-Sommers cites two stories where boys are accused of sexual harassment: “A mother in Worcester, Massachusetts, who came to pick up her son was told he had been reprimanded and made to sit in the ‘time out chair’ for having hugged another child. ‘He's a toucher,’ she was told. ‘We are not going to put up with it.’ That little boy was three years old.
And later, “A nine year-old boy already had a reputation as a potential harasser: he had been caught drawing a picture of a naked woman in art class (following a school trip to the National Gallery of Art). When he was accused of deliberately rubbing up against a girl in the cafeteria line, school officials notified the police. The boy was charged with aggravated sexual battery, and was handcuffed and fingerprinted. The family's lawyer, Kenneth Rosenau, said, ‘A 9 year-old bumps into a girl in the lunch line while reaching for an apple and all of a sudden you've got World War III declared against a fourth grader.’”
If anyone is familiar with the National Gallery of Art, they know that visitors will inevitably come across a painting of a nude or semi-nude figure. Consider the Renaissance artist Titian, who is known for his famous painting “Sacred and Profane Love,” which presents us with two women at a well, one dressed in fine clothing, the other mostly naked. The viewer is left to inquire: which one is sacred, and which one profane? Some may be tempted to say that the naked woman is profane; that she is dressed in a provocative and wanton manner, unrefined by the principles of our finer society, as is the well-dressed woman. Others may say that the naked woman is the embodiment of sacred love; for the reason that true beauty is not a form camouflaged by the at best imperfect accoutrements of humankind, but one drawn by the timeless and almighty hand of nature, or of God.
So which is which? Titian does not give us an answer. What he does do, by presenting is with a duality of forms and two unattached labels, is provoke us to reflect upon our fundamental conceptualizations of morality. Like much Renaissance artistry involving nudes, it is far from a pornographic depiction of flesh; the painting of Titian says, “What is beauty and love?” By his nude statuary, Michelangelo compels us to ask, “What is noble?,” and his painting invites us to ask, “what is spiritual?”
If Titian had been a schoolboy today, he would have been told that the underlying moral, philosophical and spiritual themes in his work are irrelevant; that it does not matter how he intended his work, and all that matters is how it is received. And in our school system there exists no shortage of people who choose or are trained to see pathology among men and boys where it does not exist either because it validates their social and political worldview.
Now here’s one where I do believe what the boys did was wrong, and that it deserves punishment. But their receiving punishment in and of itself is not what I will address here.
According to Komo news: “MCMINNVILLE, Ore. - Two 13-year-old boys facing sexual harassment charges in a case that has drawn national attention will go to trial, a judge decided on Wednesday. The boys are accused of spanking girls' bottoms and poking at their breasts at Patton Middle School.”
Now I do believe that these boys should have been disciplined in some form, because I view what they did was wrong. And after reviewing a lot of the coverage and seeing them on video, I think it quite possible that at the time of the offense, they were being little punks. What I and many others do not agree with was the degree of the charges which district attorney Bradley Berry brought before the court. As Susan Goldsmith reports in The Oregonian, “Berry said he was inundated with calls and e-mails from readers who complained that charging the boys with 10 counts of sex abuse and harassment was an overreaction, as their parents maintain. Lawyers for the boys say each count could bring a year in confinement and mandatory registration as sex offenders.”
“The boys' families said they were furious…’It makes us angry that they can overcharge and make us think this could happen,’ said Tracie Mashburn, Cory's mother.”
Unfortunately, this is often how the justice system works works. Prosecutors don’t bring charges based on what they think is morally right or wrong; they bring charges based on what they think they can get away with. If there is a lot of public hysteria about a given issue, such as sex abuse, they can often get away with a lot. But this time they didn’t get so lucky.
But there’s more to this case than just the overcharging of two 13 year-old boys. Buried at the end of the archived news article by Susan Goldsmith, she, “Confidential court records and police reports obtained by The Oregonian showed that other Patton students - boys and girls - were also slapping bottoms. Two female victims later recanted, saying they were friends of the boys and felt pressured to make false statements against them.”
ABC news reports the same here: “But police reports filed with the court said other students, both boys and girls, slapped each other on the bottom. ‘It's like a handshake we do,’ one girl said, according to the police report.”
There are so many questions about this case that no one covering it seems to be asking. If slapping someone on the rear is felony sexual assault, why were the girls not arrested also? Why weren’t they charged with felony offenses, and threatened to be forced to register as sex offenders? If what the boys did was such a serious offense, why did the school not also regard the false accusations of those crimes as serious offenses? Why were the girls who made false accusations of felony offenses not arrested for potentially ruining the lives of the young men? Who pressured the young girls to make false accusations against the boys? Was it a teacher? Was it an administrator? If they are false accusers as the article says, why does the media still refer to them as victims?
In another case, a 14 year-old boy with down syndrome is suspended for sexual harassment for hugging a bus driver. Article here.
You know, I shouldn’t even have to argue whether this is wrong. I hope we all can see that it is wrong without me having to make a case. I truly believe that for me to argue whether this is wrong would be to give the actions by these school administrations more legitimacy than they actually deserve.
But more importantly, why is it wrong, and what should change? It is wrong because it does not take into account the mental state of the person accused. As we all know, when it comes to sexual harassment, it doesn’t matter what your intent of the person accused is; all that matters is what the accuser “feels.” In the vast majority of crimes, prosecutors are required to prove two things: one is mens rea, which is Latin for a “guilty mind,” which refers to a state of mental culpability, and often described as “motive.” The other is an actus reus, which is Latin for a “guilty act.”
So for example: let’s say someone forgets their suitcase at the luggage station at an airport, and you, being a good Samaritan, pick it up to deliver it to them. If we did not take into account your mental state at the time you picked up the suitcase, which we could likely verified by your actions before and after you picked it up, you could be guilty of stealing their suitcase – especially if we left it up to someone’s feelings, rather than the weighing the objective facts of the matter.
We need to change our perspective on sexual harassment. We need to understand that while everyone has a responsibility to not act or speak in inappropriate ways that may cause offense, we all also have a responsibility to not place inappropriate constructions upon the words and actions of those others, and to avoid to deliberate choice to read sexual content into the words and actions of others where no such content exists.
When we eliminate consideration of the mental state of the person accused, it turns justice on its head and short-circuits the rights of the accused. That is now exactly what is happening in a great many cases of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment, which long ago was narrowly defined, now encompasses a wide variety of behaviors.
This is not just a social or political issue. This is a due process issue, which means that it is a civil rights issue. I’ll be talking about this more in the future. I hope this post was informative.
