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The rights of the accused come back to Title IX — 29 Comments

  1. While I hold no affection for the Secretary of Education and consider myself a staunch progressive, I, too, am bothered by the academy’s behavior when it comes to both political correctness and the rights of the accused. As one who works in Academia, I recognize college presidents are too often eager to defend themselves in the public light, rather than defend the rights of due process for some students or faculty who get caught up in the quirky mire of sexual harassment and assault. I have little confidence, however, in those who will re-write the laws of Title IX.

  2. jim:

    I reserve judgment on the rewrite till I see it. At least they are interested in going in a direction I think is very necessary and long overdue. If the rewrite is a bad one, I’ll certainly say so.

    Did you ever read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind? If not, it might perhaps be of interest—if it doesn’t infuriate you 🙂 . It was written in the 80s and describes the process of PC thought taking over universities, a trend that has only worsened over the years.

  3. An awful lot of the Campus ‘Rapes’ are ‘Regret Sex.’ ( She sobered up the next morning. )

    And infamously, some have proved to be out right hoaxes.

    I’m reminded of that Muslim chick on the NY subway that accused un-named parties of raping her. Video footage proved that her car was virtually empty — and no-one approached her. She spewed her lies without qualm, as it is so rare for a lying chick to be held to account.

    The Duke case still rings in the ear. Heck, the gal was loose, a stripper and a prostitute, and her tale was rebutted by many a man… It didn’t matter, they were dragged through Hell.

    IMHO Campus Rape is freakishly rare… because the guys are out numbered and modern girls are so ‘active.’ Virginal they are not.

    And the stigma of lost virginity is gone — almost completely.

    The morning after pill has crushed the impact of an unwanted pregnancy.

    All of which means that one really has to prove up a rape charge.

    There have been FAR TOO MANY false charges… and far too few punishments for making up totally bogus rape charges — filing false police reports, for starters.

    Such hoaxes destroy the guy — he’s half way to sex-offender status.

    BTW, some gals have hoaxed rape — BECAUSE her intended refused her interest. She’s lying due to rage and rejection. How does a guy dance around THAT kind of ‘thinking’ ?

    I’ve had it happen to me.

  4. If colleges reintroduced same-sex dorms and curfews, I bet a lot of guys would switch colleges. We have a huge problem with the younger generation of privileged brats. Maybe schools should make Humility 101 a required course for all students. That could also affect BLM, Antifa, and a bunch of other brats.

    I watched a program about the Rhine river the other night. It showed the river from its beginning in the Alps near Lichtenstein to its end at Rotterdam. Along the way were castles, churches, industrial centers, etc, etc. As I watched, I could only think of the thousand and thousands of people who built the boats, laid the stones, and planted grapes to make the wine. No one knows their names, anymore than we remember the cousins of our great great grandparents. Even Facebook will not save these young folks from fading away. We have to find meaning for our lives in a much more personal way.

  5. Again, I reluctantly voted for Trump; but, seeing this action under his administration is just another reason I AM glad that I did vote for Trump.

    Seriously, I am beginning to believe that Trump might be the first President that I voted for and did NOT have “voter’s remorse.”

    I hope it keeps up!

  6. Color me naive, but I never understood how colleges could set up their own star chamber legal system for so-called sex crimes without due process for males on the slender basis of a Dear Colleague letter which was supposed to ensure equal treatment of the sexes.

    It reminds me of Nazi Germany, not for death camps etc., but for the confused police system the Nazis evolved in which the regular police, the SS (Gestapo) and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) had overlapping and conflicting duties.

    This wasn’t logically or legally consistent. It was intended to get the job done of subjugating Germany to the Nazi vision without worrying about any niceties.

    American progressives have a ways to go to reach Nazi levels but they have sure gotten farther than I would have thought.

  7. Boston Globe sends me their daily headlines. Today, DeVos made them, and the first partial sentence in the article was that she cared about the rights of the offenders but didn’t mention the survivors of sexual assault. Most of these “survivors” seem to be women with a hangover who had crawled into bed with a guy. I don’t think we are talking about women who had their dorm room doors broken down or who were pulled into the shrubbery and raped by a guy they didn’t know. I suspect that the latter types of case would be handled immediately by the police, not by some Women’s Studies administrator.

    What a bunch of BS. Women are strong enough to rule the world (meaning negotiate with Putin and Kim) but they are too dumb to crawl into bed with someone when they are drunk.

  8. Already read Bloom’s opus. Already infuriated. And to expat: your compartmentalizing of all rape victims as those “too dumb to crawl into bed with someone when they are drunk” is mind-boggling and shows your true colors.

  9. Jim. You got caught. The offending comment was just, directly, above yours. He said “most” and you lied that he said “all”.
    Bus Tid.
    Try to be more subtle next time you misrepresent what somebody said.

  10. Note taken, Richard, though the last para suggests a pretty broad representation:

    “Women are strong enough to rule the world (meaning negotiate with Putin and Kim) but they are too dumb to crawl into bed with someone when they are drunk.”

  11. Jim. Missed again. Although I am sure you know better.
    Women are universally too weak to resist the seductive wiles of a twenty-year old sophomore armed with a bottle of cheap port. This is true when you’re trying to max out the number of young men whose lives you’re trying to ruin.
    Women are universally strong enough to successfully negotiate with guys like Putin and Kim. This is true when you’re trying to run a woman for higher office.

    They are not both true. Each is true for the purposes. The thing is to get enough people to pretend to believe whichever one you need.

    As you know and hope we don’t.

  12. Someday I will have to revisit Alan Bloom.

    I read about half of “Closing” back in the 90s. I couldn’t put together how being open to other cultures and influences made the younger generation closed-minded.

    Then when Bloom fulminated against rock music, he sounded exactly like a classic, closed-minded, old fuddy-duddy who would never be happy with anything the youngsters were doing.

    Those may be unfair reactions. I was younger then and pretty far left.

    However, having seen the New Left up close and personal, and taking over the President’s Office of my college in the 70s, I shared Bloom’s disdain for campus radicals.

  13. huxley:

    You definitely should revisit the book, particularly the parts about Cornell.

    When I read it I had the same reaction as you did to the parts about rock music, however. But then I thought about it some more in terms of rap music and that sort of thing, which didn’t exist when Bloom was writing but started not all that much later. Bloom basically said that rock was an appeal to physical passion at too young an age, and I think in this regard he anticipated what would be happening later. Now, it seems that a great deal of rock music is about raw, unadulterated sex without the “I Want to Hold Your Hand” niceties of the 60s. If I am interpreting Bloom correctly in this, I think he was not only observant but prescient.

    Here’s a small excerpt:

    Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire—not to love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It acknowledges the first emanations of children’s emerging sensuality and addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimating them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.

    I disagree with the reductionism of “rock music has one appeal only,” however. It has many appeals, and some of rock still talks not just about sex but about other things, even about love. But the strain of rock that does conform to what Bloom describes there has become enormous and enormously influential compared to when he was writing.

  14. jim:

    How long ago did you read it?

    It might indeed infuriate you all over again if you were to read it again now, especially some parts of it. But read the parts about Cornell and relate it to what’s happening today on campus. You may find that you remain infuriated at Bloom, or you may not.

  15. expat Says:
    September 10th, 2017 at 7:51 am I don’t think we are talking about women who had their dorm room doors broken down or who were pulled into the shrubbery and raped by a guy they didn’t know. I suspect that the latter types of case would be handled immediately by the police, not by some Women’s Studies administrator.
    * * *
    In the early seventies, my college experienced a couple of those cases, within one semester, which most of us didn’t hear about unless we knew one of the victims.
    The Administration (blessedly, in those days, no Women’s Studies) decided not to give a public warning because they didn’t want to frighten the girls.

    Once the news did get around, they were quickly disabused of that conceit.

    The need for legitimate investigation and prudent cautions is undeniable; however, as with most political actions (because everything is politicized eventually; it just means “of the polis”), the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

    And DeVos mentioned survivors many, many times; she just mentioned “due process” more than the Left wanted (which would have been anything greater than zero).

  16. Richard Aubrey Says:
    September 10th, 2017 at 2:05 pm
    Jim. Missed again. …

    They are not both true. Each is true for the purposes. The thing is to get enough people to pretend to believe whichever one you need.

    As you know and hope we don’t.
    * * *
    Well said.
    This type of sleight-of-mind is typical of many political arguments, on the Left and Right. I’m sure it has some name in the study of Rhetoric.
    You have to watch carefully.

  17. On the rock music question, I was never much of a fan even as a Sixties teen, but I did enjoy a few particular songs and singers.

    What I realized after having children, and hearing my friends talk about problems they were having with the “new” music, my reaction was basically: you let them grow up listening to bands named Sex Pistols and Black Sabbath and Grateful Dead — what did you expect them to graduate to?

    (Don’t bother to remind me that many bands did innovative, lyrical, inspiring work as well; the point is, for children, they were a “gateway drug” to harder and rougher material.)

  18. Posted this on the Korea thread, but I think it applies here as well, now that the Left insists on equating tantrums with rape.

    https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/08/31/handle-two-year-olds-tantrums/

    Seriously, does anyone remember the “rape rape” and “legitimate rape” remarks from a couple of years ago, and how radically different they were treated?

    The first was by a leftist (Whoopi G) defending an actual rapist, Roman Polanski: crickets from the Left, or een agreement that what he did wasn’t a problem.

    The second was by a Republican candidate trying, IMO, to make a distinction between the hysterical (I use the word deliberately) accusations that turn out to be morning-after remorse (sometimes years after) or what-used-to-be-normal flirtation or petting, and violently coerced physical sexual penetration, which is by law, thus legitimately (literally so) described as rape.

    The world was coming to an end! and certainly his political career did.

    The Left, baying like banshees, makes sanity indefensible; and then the Right is in a lose-lose situation, whether they muster a defense (which the Left will never credit or accept), or surrender to the Narrative.

  19. neo: I remember that paragraph! I kept reading afterward but that paragraph sealed the deal in my inability to take Bloom seriously.

    Reading it twenty-odd years later, even with your exposition, doesn’t help. I find it as disgraceful now as I did then. It doesn’t get fixed by softening “all” to “most.”

    Bloom is intellectually dishonest. Either he knows he speaks falsely to strengthen the point he wants to make. Or he doesn’t know he is ignorant but can’t be bothered to check something easily checked.

    Rock music mattered to me when I was young and still does. I listened mostly to pop rock, folk rock, prog rock, and country rock. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Jethro Tull, Yes, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Band, Cat Stevens, Bruce Springsteen, Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson — all shelved under Rock when I went to the record store.

    Bloom’s smear doesn’t apply to any of those, unless one goes the route, popular with the Christian Right back then, that anything with a strong beat is from the Devil.

    There were some bluesy, Dionysian bands — Led Zeppelin, the Doors and the Stones — I listened to which could fit Bloom’s bill. But those bands weren’t all of rock. Bloom may have been prescient about disco, rap and hip-hop. But again those are not rock.

    Bloom had some good points about political correctness, but as far I am concerned he is not the person to lecture anyone about being closed-minded unless he is giving lessons.

  20. [Rock] acknowledges the first emanations of children’s emerging sensuality and addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimating them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing.

    I had forgotten this lovely morsel from Bloom. Maybe some kids have their sensuality carefully tended into gorgeous flowers. Must be nice.

    However I remember my years of shame and self-loathing as a teen because much of my “tending” was from the Catholic Church.

    Meanwhile priests were hitting on my best male friends.

    Rock music made more sense to me.

  21. So why did people think electing politicians to DC would save them from these actions by the Left again?

    Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen, but delusions never cease for humanity.

  22. No wonder Japanese private schools still have same sex limited dorms and dorm enforcers.

    And they didn’t need a politician to get there either.

  23. Meanwhile priests were hitting on my best male friends.

    The original priesthood died out after 1st century AD.

    Other than a few special prophets and other people like Jean De Arc, there were no priests of Jesus of Nazareth the High Priest of Melchizedek, because the apostolic authority was destroyed and not passed on.

    The Vatican and the Protestants are in the same boat on this matter.

    Trusting in humans, who say they are priests, who got it from some falsified lineage or seminary school, was never going to work.

  24. The issue with ADD and Death Metal Rock wasn’t that they intentionally recruited for Lucifer’s Own… it was that the methods taught and used such as channeling, was a variation of witchcraft.

    The knowledge was real, even if it was sold as entertainment and fantasy. Rock bands did channel spirits into their bodies, producing Death Metal that was powerful. Of course, because it didn’t come from humans. ADD magic and the pantheon, is a very accurate rendition of the Divine Counsel and the fallen angels of Genesis Six and Deuteronomy 32.

  25. I played quite a number of CRPGs and non table top rpgs like advanced dungeons and dragons, namely from the Baldur’s Gate 2 era.

    The one class I never liked for some reason, was Cleric.

    Later on, I realized why. It wasn’t because it was an unfun class, since fighter/cleric was very versatile with self buffs and party healing and tanking. No, that cleric system that gets its power from gods, was something specifically outlawed by JHVH after Genesis 6 or Deuteronomy 32 on the Tower of Babel. Also Psalms 82 had quite a lot to say about these other gods that ruled over mankind. Deut 32 in the Masorete Text/King James is corrupted, because it has “Sons of Israel”. The Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls have “Sons of God”, which means angels.

    Since those other gods are real, the power which derives from them is also real. When advising some youths about what kind of ouji board experience they were looking for, I told them outright that they were dabbling in the occult and the supernatural, and that there are spirits that watching and listening to them.

    The whole thing of channeling power from spirits and gods, worshiping them in return for spells, works. Hollywood has been doing it for decades, as attested to by various interviews and factual documentaries.

  26. As for Roman Polanski… it would be surprising if someone that deep In Hollywood didn’t become tainted by evil.

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