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Vassar, that quintessential liberal arts college – its homepage today features “a pivotal figure from Vassar’s LGBTQ history.”
Also, it’s a haven for rapists.
That’s the takeaway from a confused columnist – not even at Vassar, but the University of North Carolina’s Daily Tar Heel – who scolds the school for following due process.
...
She claims the panel that heard her case judged the accused student not guilty because “there was [not] enough evidence to prove that my perpetrator was aware that I was incapable of consent.” (This is noteworthy because Vassar was actually sued by an accused student for how he was treated during the school’s rape investigation.)
'None of it was real. Not the fraternity party at the University of Virginia one September night in 2012. Not the mysterious student named “Haven” who led a freshman named Jackie into a trap. Not the gang rape in an upstairs room.
...
Swept away with the fictions should be the federal law that bars school officials from calling the cops without a student’s permission when the student reports a sexual assault.
Similarly, New York’s Legislature should stop Gov. Cuomo’s drive to enact an overreaching and unenforceable “yes means yes” policy that would turn every college in the state into an overseer of student sex lives.
Federal law makes trouble enough — including through a prohibition written into the so-called Clery Act that played out absurdly at UVA.'
Article here. Eleven educators sentenced and over 100 still under investigation. Nearly all were female. The head of the operation, also a woman, died a month ago. Yet if you Google this story, many of the pictures show images of the very few men who were involved. Excerpt:
'In a dramatic conclusion to what has been described as the largest cheating scandal in the nation’s history, a jury here on Wednesday convicted 11 educators for their roles in a standardized test cheating scandal that tarnished a major school district’s reputation and raised broader questions about the role of high-stakes testing in American schools.
On their eighth day of deliberations, the jurors convicted 11 of the 12 defendants of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. Many of the defendants — a mixture of Atlanta public school teachers, testing coordinators and administrators — were also convicted of other charges, such as making false statements, that could add years to their sentences.'
'On Tuesday, a summary judgment was issued in favor of Vassar. The judge in the case, Ronnie Abrams, was recommended to the federal bench by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has no problem labeling young men as rapists without any due process.
Abrams' dismissal of Yu's charges are based on the fact that Title IX does not require adequate due process rights to students accused of sexual assault. Thus, a school following Title IX cannot, in theory, violate a student's due process rights. In the alternative, because Vassar is a private college, due process rights do not apply.
Basically, schools can get away with branding young men as rapists (and avoiding problems from the Obama administration) for what reasonable people would not see as rape because of a flawed law.'
'What I do doubt is that, with a few exceptions, women will beat men at their own game. They should be hell-bent on changing the playground, not worried about competing on the same over-trodden ground. The best woman VCs and entrepreneurs are listeners, collaborators and puzzle solvers. They bring an aesthetic and authenticity to their work. And now that the digital world is inextricably intertwined with the worlds of art, fashion, medicine, athletics, retail and more, they'll bring a holistic sensibility and a new discourse.
'Passersby eyed an anatomically correct male doll fastened to a plastic contraption Thursday on the West Lawn of the Capitol. Christina Love, founder of Genital Autonomy of Western New York, explained to people that it’s a circumstraint newborn immobolizer used to circumcise male newborns.
Washington, DC - infoZine - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - Love and other genital rights activists or “intactivists,” from the words intact and activist, protested against newborn male circumcision, the surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis, as part of Genital Integrity Awareness Week.
They marched Saturday from the Capitol to the White House where protesters chanted “not the family penis.” The week concluded Monday with a White House sidewalk demonstration.'
'Leshia Ashmore, 51, of Ovett said that she was at a convenient store in Ellisville when she was taken at gunpoint and driven to an unknown location and forcibly raped.
Jones County officials launched an extensive investigation and found that Ashmore's allegations were not true.
Sheriff Alex Hodge said making false claims is a waste of resources and money for the sheriff's department and the Ellisville Police Department.
“Make no mistake, it is against the law to falsely report a crime, but not only does it waste our professional team's time and the tax payers' money, it also is a slap in the face to actual victims who muster up the last bit of strength he or she has to report an offense.” Hodge said, “The Jones County Sheriff's Department will pursue charges against Ashmore, because these were serious charges and investigated fully, taking valuable time away from legitimate cases.”'
Wow, I have read some really, really BAD judicial decisions in my life, but this one makes me feel like I'm getting ready to crash and bleed out. Seriously, read it and weep. Short version: Yu is male, therefore, he's guilty. It matters not one iota the exculpatory evidence or the double-standards being applied. I challenge anyone to locate a case wherein a female accused another female under the same conditions and the accussee was expelled, or a case of a male doing likewise to a male or a male to a female. It's only she-accuses-him cases that generate these kinds of embarrassingly ludicrous travesties of justice. Be sure to take some airsick meds before reading this one but keep a bucket handy nearby in case they don't kick in in time.
YouTube video here. Description: "Are women good, and men bad? How many times have you heard that women are wiser, kinder, more efficient, and just all around superior human beings? A never ending succession of books and news stories suggests they are. AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers looks at the evidence."
'The Legislative Council of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) convened on March 26 for a meeting that lasted more than six hours. Some of the issues addressed included ongoing research into McGill’s equitable hiring practices, SSMU’s stance on the debate over women-only gym hours, anti-austerity mobilization, and opposition to the development of harmful military technology. Council also discussed the results of the recent online referendum on sustainability, and the motion on accessible education that failed to pass at the last General Assembly (GA) due to lack of quorum.
...
Also on the table was a motion brought forward by VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan concerning the recent proposal to institute women-only hours at the university fitness centre. The motion asked McGill to reopen negotiations on this highly contentious issue, and work toward a compromise.
Article here. Jump the log-in requirement by Googling the first paragraph and click on the first search result. Excerpt:
'The string of higher-education lawsuits over alleged violations of due process in sexual-assault cases is no surprise (“More Men Fight College Allegations of Sexual Assault,” U.S. News, March 20). College professors and deans lack the training and experience to investigate and fairly determine guilt and innocence. Charges of such major crimes are properly the domain of police and the courts.
The federal government has placed colleges in an impossible position. Title IX enforcers threaten schools for not aggressively prosecuting cases independent of the criminal-justice system. But bungled cases mean that the guilty walk and the innocent suffer, and that colleges will pay the price in civil lawsuits. The heavy burden—and responsibility—of playing detective, judge and jury in these serious matters is not one colleges could ever competently undertake.
The truth is hard to face sometimes, but at other times, not so hard. It's especially easy when you already had figured out what was going on. But I'll let the speaker in the video here do the talking.
'The project aimed to draw attention to the issue and create “activity for change,” according to Kirby Dick, the film’s writer and director whose previous work has been nominated for an Academy Award. Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the film has drawn national attention and received a number of favorable reviews. A New York Times review called the film a “must-watch work of cine-activism, one that should be seen by anyone headed to college and by those already on campus.” The Boston Globe gave it three and a half stars.
The film, however, presents at least some information about Harvard inaccurately.
In one sequence, a series of slides lists various schools and the number of sexual assaults reported there in a given time period compared to the number that led to expulsion. The film lists that from 2009-2013, Harvard College saw 135 cases of reported sexual assault, but only 10 expulsions.
'Italian artist Vincenzo Aiello is celebrating the foreskin—and protesting male circumcision with the aid of a Kickstarter campaign.
His project, titled "HUFO: The Missing Link"[link added] (shorthand for "HUman FOreskin") is dedicated to raising awareness about circumcision and the negative impact that circumcision can have on a man's emotional health and sex life.
Aiello creates hyperrealistic foreskin sculptures using silicon resin and is selling them, displayed in frames inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, for $1,000 a pop as part of an "intactivist" Kickstarter campaign. ...
Smaller pledges will earn you a print or T-shirt showing the piece, which Aiello created after carefully studying circumcision surgeries to determine how the foreskin, dubbed "America's censored body part," is removed. For $10,000, the artist will build one of his signature mosaics in which the sculpture will be displayed.
The HUFO projects questions whether it's "ethical for parents to remove functional tissue from their children's bodies to conform to social or cultural norms," and compares the American propensity for male circumcision to widely decried African traditions of female circumcision. Aiello claims that the foreskin is important erogenous tissue, and that the surgery to remove it is painful and potentially traumatizing to infants.
"Circumcision has become so commonplace in the US that parents often forget that circumcision is a surgery," Aiello states on the Kickstarter page. "Every other surgery in Western medicine requires both compelling and urgent medical reasons to perform without consent."
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