U-Va. Reaction to Rape Claim: Worse Than at Duke?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Depressing similarities link the two highest-profile allegations of campus sexual assault in recent years -- the fraudulent gang rape claims against Duke lacrosse players in 2006, and Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely’s multiply discredited portrayal in November of a sadistically brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity.

Even more depressing is another comparison between the two cases. While campus journalists and many other students at Duke were refreshingly open to evidence and critical thinking as the case there unfolded, the vast majority of U-Va. students have been sheep-like. They have emulated -- or at least tolerated -- the anti-male prejudices of U-Va. academics and administrators. Some have even called for secret criminal trials in rape prosecutions.

As to lacrosse case similarities, the most obvious was the initial mob-like rush to judgment at U-Va. by left-leaning faculty, administrators, and news media in embracing the now-infamous claim by “Jackie” of being gang-raped on a bed of shattered glass. By presuming the guilt of college men accused of implausibly barbaric crimes against women and minorities, these academics were oblivious to the lessons from Duke.

Not unlike the 88 Duke professors who signed a public statement in 2006, which included a thank-you to protesters who had urged the team captains’ castration, those U-Va. professors who individually spoke up immediately after the Rolling Stone article were eager to see it as exemplifying a campus “rape culture” of which there is little hard evidence.'