Rape and the College Brand

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2014-05-10 23:53

Article here. Excerpt:

'IN last week’s column, I wrote about the connection between college social life and socioeconomic stratification, and the way the party scene at many universities, oriented toward heavy drinking and hooking up, creates distinctive challenges for working-class students, whether they’re attracted to its thrills or alienated by its excesses.
...
But the modern university’s primary loyalty is not really to liberalism or political correctness or any kind of ideological design: It’s to the school’s brand, status and bottom line. And when something goes badly wrong, or predators run loose — as tends to happen in a world where teens and early-twentysomethings are barely supervised and held to no standard higher than consent — the mask of kindness and community slips, and the face revealed beneath is often bloodless, corporate and intent on self-protection.

I glimpsed this face, and saw it reflected in my friends’ eyes, at various moments of crisis during my own four years in higher education; I doubt that anything has changed for the better in the 12 years since. This seems to be what the anti-rape activists — victims, friends, sympathizers — are reacting against so strongly: the realization that an institution that seemed to make one set of promises had other priorities all along.

That the activists’ moral outrage is justified does not mean, again, that their prescriptions are correct. Their fatal conceit in many cases is the idea that by sweeping away misogyny they can resolve the internal contradictions of social liberalism, and usher in a world where everyone can be libertines together, and a hard-drinking, sexually permissive culture can be experienced identically by male and female, rich and middle class and poor.

This is a utopian, ahistorical vision, and its pursuit is fraught with peril: like many revolutionaries, today’s campus activists might well end up toppling a corrupt order only to install a kind of police state in its stead.

But the regime they’re rebelling against still deserves — richly — to eventually be overthrown.'

Like0 Dislike0

Comments

... he seems to be assuming the claims of campus feminists are correct, but that colleges are merely trying to placate them to maintain their image/brand/ability to charge gross sums of $ for what are mostly questionably marketable degrees.

On the second point, he's spot on. On the first point... nah!

Like0 Dislike0
Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2014-05-11 04:20

"a world where everyone can be libertines together, and a hard-drinking, sexually permissive culture can be experienced identically by male and female"

The problem is that a sexually permissive culture and a culture safe from sexual assault go together like fire and gasoline. We're about the only society that has ever promised women both complete sexual freedom and complete sexual safety. Most societies have realized this is an impossible goal.

Also, the legal situation for schools has become difficult because Title IX requires them to protect female students. Sounds reasonable at first hearing, but here's the rub: the school can be forced to pay a female student for any assault. The University of Colorado has already paid two female students. So the University and the alleged assailant are now on the same side: if the assailant is found guilty, the University is also found guilty.

But the University must conform with Title IX. So they'll do what is necessary to save their own behind--because if they don't, the payouts get bigger. The university is being squeezed. It's hard to imagine a happy ending here. But it's about more than protecting a "brand."

Like0 Dislike0
Submitted by el cid on Mon, 2014-05-12 02:33

Well, I have been following MRA groups and have noticed that it ultimately comes down to action. True, there are many petitions and protests everywhere against the injustice but, the idea is to realize that we cannot fight battles on all fronts. So, we need to find and focus our attention to one aspect of solution which can change the balance for good.
To start with, lets see where the change in the status of men started to happen. Did it happen at work place, home, courts, streets, .. where? What most people don't realize that the effect started to shape up at Schools. The idea of treating boys and girls as one and catering the system to serve the girls properly actually messed it up for the boys. It did not show immediately, but as time progressed, the effects were visible.
On the same note, it is important that we understand that the effect of segregating the education will not be immediate but a long term and permanent solution. All the rest can fall in place when boys are taught to understand the situation in the world.
There will be rebuttal that co-ed is better. But, the truth is that boys aren't interested so it doesn't matter if they are better as they will not end up serving the disinterested boys.
So, lets start a campaign in the media, make this a social issue and achieve the first goal of separating the Boys and girls in education.

Like0 Dislike0
Submitted by Kaka81k on Tue, 2014-05-13 03:02