Story here. Excerpt:

'National sorority leaders said Friday they have been very surprised by the reaction to a letter sent to University of Virginia chapters warning them to avoid fraternity parties on campus Saturday night.

The letter from 16 national sorority presidents — members of the National Panhellenic Conference — sparked an outcry on campus from students who said it was sexist and didactic to order women to stay home for their own safety.

“I believe people are missing the point here,” said Jean Mrasek, chairman of the NPC. The national leaders were merely enforcing an existing rule, she said. “We are upholding our policy and yet we’re being criticized for doing so. That’s the irony of this.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'The University of Virginia held a two-day conference last February on “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.” One of the speakers was the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, who touted her office’s efforts to compel colleges and universities, under pain of losing federal funds, to adopt draconian policies on sexual harassment and assault.

These policies have raised serious concerns about due process and basic fairness for the accused, and an audience member asked Ms. Lhamon how she planned to deal with such “push-back.” Her reply: “We’ve received a lot of push-back, and we need to push forward notwithstanding.” The recent experience of Harvard Law School demonstrates the value of pushing back.
...
Most institutions yield to OCR’s pressure without significant dissent. But at Harvard, 28 law professors—including liberal luminaries Elizabeth Bartholet, Alan Dershowitz, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley, Duncan Kennedy and Charles Ogletree —signed an open letter, published in the Boston Globe, in which they described the new policies and procedures as “inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach.”

Among their complaints: “the absence of any adequate opportunity to discover the facts charged and to confront witnesses and present a defense”; the designation of a Title IX compliance officer, “rather than an entity that could be considered structurally impartial,” as investigator, prosecutor and judge; “the failure to ensure adequate representation for the accused,” especially for lower-income students.

Article here. Excerpt:

'We have been informed by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement that they have been inundated with far more comments on child support guidelines than they ever expected. This is evidence that as a movement, we are stepping up the pressure more than ever, making our voices heard more broadly and more effectively. Each of you who took the trouble to submit our child-support comments deserves a pat on the back. There is power in numbers, and when we pull together with unity, we can move mountains.

Remember that our latest push is to force the OCSE to hold public hearings on child support guidelines in each of the federal regions around the country. This will be your chance to tell them directly what you think of the guidelines.

If you have not already done so, please copy and paste the following brief message and send it to: barbara.addison@acf.hhs.gov

Copy The Following

Dear Ms. Addison:

Article here. The title of the article is at least misleading and at most deliberately false and sensationalist. Mostly, it seems to me, Pope Francis is decrying the lack of paternal presence in children's lives. But it seems he's putting it all on dads and generally accusing men of selfishness or self pre-occupation. He never mentions the effects of easy divorce, feminism, misandry, and biased anti-male court systems on the distancing of men from their children in so many ways. And he's smart enough to know better. In short, he's doing the same thing his predecessors have done: playing up to the majority members of his church, who are female. Excerpt:

'“Particularly in Western culture,” he said, the father figure is “symbolically absent, missing and removed.”

At first, Francis explained, the absence of fathers “was perceived as a liberation: liberation from the father-master, from the father as a representative of the law that is imposed from the outside, from the father as a censor of the happiness of children and obstacle to the emancipation and autonomy of young people.”

In his weekly audience, the Pope recognized that in the past especially there were cases of authoritarian, overbearing fathers who didn’t respect the personal needs of their children. Now, however, “we have gone from one extreme to the other,” he said.

The real problem of our day, Francis said, “does not seem to be the intrusive presence of fathers anymore, but rather their absence and their inaction. Fathers are often so focused on themselves and on their work and sometimes on their individual accomplishments, that they can forget even the family, neglecting their children.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'A mother who inflicted lifelong damage on her child after drinking heavily during her pregnancy did not commit a criminal offence, the court of appeal has ruled.

The unanimous decision sets clear limits on the legal rights of the unborn child and dispels fears that women could become liable to prosecution for their lifestyles during pregnancy.

The claim was brought by a local authority in the north-west of England which now cares for the young girl, now seven, who is suffering from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She was not identified.

The council argued that the girl, known as CP, was entitled to payments from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The authority declined to compensate on the grounds that there had been no crime of violence.

Article here. Excerpt:

'...

Mr Hayes points to the recognition, both by Wall J, as he then was, and by the Court of Appeal in Re J (Specific Issue Orders: Muslim Upbringing and Circumcision) [1999] 2 FLR 678, 693, on appeal Re J (Specific Issue Orders: Child’s Religious Upbringing and Circumcision) [2000] 1 FLR 571, 573, 576, that male circumcision does involve harm, or the risk of harm. Given the comparison between what is involved in male circumcision and FGM WHO Type IV, to dispute that the more invasive procedure involves the significant harm involved in the less invasive procedure would seem almost irrational. In my judgment, if FGM Type IV amounts to significant harm, as in my judgment it does, then the same must be so of male circumcision...

Moving on to the second limb of the statutory test, Mr Hayes submits that in assessing whether the infliction of any form of FGM can ever be an aspect of “reasonable” parenting, it is vital to bear in mind that FGM involves physical harm which, it is common ground, has (except in the very narrow circumstances defined in section 1(2)(a) of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, not relevant in a case such as this) no medical justification and confers no health benefits.

The fact that it may be a “cultural” practice does not make FGM reasonable; indeed, the proposition is specifically negatived by section 1(5) of the 2003 Act. And, as I have already pointed out, FGM has no religious justification. So, he submits, it can never be reasonable parenting to inflict any form of FGM on a child. I agree.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Language is important. What would a movement under a gender biased name like masculism be about? Let’s say that somewhere it is “officially” stated it is about gender equality, and that the main purpose of this movement is to deal with the grave problem of male disposability. How long would it take for this movement to grow additional masculist “theories”, hyperboles, and engage in protracted struggle to skew the system into one direction? How long would it take before being anti-masculist was taken as being anti-male?

Article here. Excerpt:

'IN SOUTH Carolina, we breed men who kill women. There’s something wicked in our culture that says it’s OK to hit, abuse and, yes, kill our wives, girlfriends and ex-lovers.

It’s sinful. Reprehensible. Intolerable. Yet for years we’ve failed to do enough to purge this evil element from among us.

Which is why it’s been encouraging to see so many people — from politicians to law enforcement officers to prosecutors and oodles of others — join victims’ advocates over the past couple years to demand change.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The ongoing media onslaught against the college fraternity system in specific and young men in general has been dismaying to say that least. (To the point where I’ve mostly given up writing about it entirely.) The dizzying array of “facts” and figures being tossed about on every cable news channel which describe the campus rape culture have provided a convenient platform for new age feminists who are ready to go to war. But how much truth is to be found underneath this pile of coverage? At College Insurrection, we are treated to the latest in a series of videos from The Factual Feminist, in which Professor Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute takes on two common themes.

The first is the oft reported figure claiming that 1 in 5 young women attending college will be raped. Sommers locates the origin of this figure and reveals (yet again) that it was not a source to be taken seriously, but new, more accurate figures are available.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Princeton University has rejected a survey developed by the Association of American Universities to gauge the prevalence of sexual assault on its campus, opting to develop a survey modeled off one at Rutgers University instead.

Both surveys, however, are based on White House recommendations that seem to prejudge accused students.

According to The Daily Princetonian, Princeton is developing the survey to comply with its Title IX settlement with the Department of Education concerning sexual-assault investigations. It’s not the first to reject the AAU survey, whose secrecy has troubled researchers.

Princeton was forced by the government last fall to abandon its longstanding use of the “clear and persuasive” standard for assessing guilt, now using the “more likely than not” standard to decide whether accused students are guilty of sexual assault, as The College Fix reported.

Article here. Excerpt:

'T. Rees Shapiro, The Washington Post reporter who has done an amazing job covering the debacle of Rolling Stone’s story about an alleged rape at the University of Virginia, has gotten an interview with members of Phi Kappa Psi. This is the fraternity that was accused in the article of staging some sort of gang-rape initiation ritual. And the story its members tell is more than a little worrying.

The fraternity brothers say they knew within 24 hours that the Rolling Stone story was false — provably false, because their internal records and bank statements showed no party on the weekend in question, and no brothers matched the description of the alleged rapist. Yet the brothers kept quiet because they thought that fighting the story in the news media “would only make things more difficult.”

Think about that. They had evidence they could have shown to a reporter to demonstrate the problems with a story, and they decided not to because that might only get them into deeper trouble.
...
When people are in the grip of a moral panic, going up against them to question the extent of a threat, even by doubting so much as a single case, can become dangerous. Questioning any expression of the panic is not seen as a logical debate over statistics or the details of a particular instance, but as somehow defending the threatening behavior.

Note how careful many people who wrote skeptically about the UVA case were to say that they believe campus rape happens, and it is terrible.

People who write that they think an accused murderer may be innocent rarely feel compelled to affirm that yes, they sure do believe that murder happens, and boy, are they against that. This ought to go without saying, and unless we are in the middle of a moral panic, it usually does.

Article here. Excerpt:

'I write to you today to voice FIRE's strong support of [North Dakota] SB 2150 [see MANN item here]. This legislation provides university students facing serious, nonacademic disciplinary charges the right to be represented by an attorney or other advocate of the student's choosing in a campus hearing.

This legislation is sorely needed because today's colleges and universities operate what amounts to their own parallel justice system while failing to provide the meaningful due process protections guaranteed in our nation's courts.

Universities throughout the commonwealth hold hearings for a wide range of serious offenses including theft, harassment, assault, drug and weapons possession, stalking and rape. Until SB 2150 is passed, students in North Dakota's public universities accused of such serious misconduct will continue to be forced to represent themselves — alone — against experienced and professionally trained deans, administrators and university attorneys in proceedings that fail to guarantee core components of the right to due process.

The status quo is fundamentally unfair, and legislative action is required to rectify it.

The stakes are very, very high; the results of these hearings dramatically change the course of students' lives. An expulsion for criminal activity will have lifelong consequences for a student's education and professional career. Such a finding impedes a student's ability to secure jobs — even jobs that do not require a college degree.

After all, why should an employer take a chance on a "proven" rapist or thief?

Story here. Turns out the lawyers who sue on behalf of women don't like it much when men do the same thing. Excerpt:

'Boulder attorneys who represent victims of gender violence say they feel the recent string of male students suing under Title IX, the federal gender equity law, are distracting from decades of discrimination against women.

A number of schools, including the University of Colorado, are facing lawsuits from male students under Title IX, a law that has historically been used to protect the rights of women.

"John Doe," who is described in court documents as a CU junior, claims he was discriminated against when he was wrongfully accused and suspended for three semesters after a night of consensual sex.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Nearly two months after it became clear that a Rolling Stone article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia was mostly fabricated, school president Teresa Sullivan finally admitted on Friday that the story is “discredited.”
...
This is the first time that Sullivan has directly criticized the article, which told the story of a student named Jackie who claimed that seven members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brutally gang-raped her at a party in 2012.
...
... And even after the Charlottesville Police Department said that there was no basis to support Jackie’s claims against Phi Kappa Psi, Sullivan and the university required all fraternities to sign a contract full of new demands before they could resume social activities.

In her speech, Sullivan appeared to try to distance herself from those sanctions.

Interview here. Description:

'Is the answer to the threat of sexual assault that young women on a college campus should just stay inside? UVA student and Representative Body Chair Abraham Axler talks with Melissa Harris-Perry about the sorority and fraternity controversy at UVA.'