The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Victims Proliferate’ at Occidental: The Unfortunate Truth About Campus Rape

Posted on | June 19, 2014 | 60 Comments

“The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules or took a few liberties with our female party guests — we did.”
Eric “Otter” Stratton, Animal House

“Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (‘micro-aggressions,’ often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.”
George Will, June 6

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which was once an important and reputable newspaper, has announced it is dropping George Will’s column because of his comments about the alleged “epidemic” of rape on college campuses. Provocative language in opinion columns is apparently something that newspapers can do without in the 21st century. Losing readers and losing money, now they have decided to lose truth, too.

George Will’s provocation — his assertion that colleges have made “victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges” — may have been unnecessarily offensive to some readers, but the truth is not always pleasant, and the question remains to be answered: Is this true? Have the attitudes prevalent within academia incentivized false accusations of rape? Perhaps more importantly, we must ask, have college administrators deprived the accused of their due process rights? This was what George Will suggested in his letter to four senators who objected to his June 6 column when he said “sexual assault is a felony that should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, and not be adjudicated by improvised campus processes.” Hear! Hear!

This problem of sexual assault accusations being treated as school disciplinary matters, rather than being investigated as criminal charges, is central to the discussion of the alleged “rape epidemic” on college campuses. And it is also central to a pending lawsuit in California:

Los Angeles County Superior Court judge refused to seal portions of a lawsuit against Occidental College on Wednesday, denying such a request from attorneys for the liberal arts school.
Lawyers for Occidental had asked Judge Luis A. Lavin to make confidential an investigative report included in a case filed by a former student who was expelled after an internal school panel found that he had sexually assaulted a classmate while both were drunk.
Attorneys for the Eagle Rock college argued that documents contained “sensitive, confidential and personal information.”

(In other words, “information” that makes Occidental College look bad.)

Attorneys for The Times and the man opposed Occidental’s request, saying that the lawsuit had been filed earlier this year and that the college had made no previous effort to seal any documents.
The judge agreed, saying: “I don’t understand why [it] is so pressing in June when it wasn’t so pressing in February.”
The Times published a story earlier this month based partially on allegations contained in the documents.

(What a novel idea: Publishing the facts!)

The nearly 180-page investigative report, conducted by an outside firm, contained interviews about the incident with witnesses and the victim. In it, the students said: Both had been drinking, she went to his room, took off her shirt while dancing, kissed him and returned to his room later for sex, asking in a text message if he had a condom. When friends stopped by the room to ask if she was OK, she told them yes.
The crux of the case was whether she was too drunk to understand what she was doing — and whether he knew or should have known of her impaired condition.

(Friends don’t let friends get that drunk.)

The suit alleges that Occidental failed to provide the male student with a fair hearing, that it didn’t follow its own sexual misconduct policy and that it did not provide sufficient evidence for the finding. The [accused] student, who was a freshman, was expelled last year after the panel found that the woman, who was also a freshman, was too incapacitated to provide consent.

So, two freshmen — both of them teenagers, too young to legally buy alcohol — get drunk. According to witnesses, whose testimony is corroborated by evidence (e.g., the girl’s text message about a condom), the girl manifested enthusiastic consent to sex with the boy. Subsequently, however, the girl claimed that the boy had taken advantage of her “incapacitated” condition and, rather than treating this as a criminal accusation, Occidental College instituted a disciplinary “sexual misconduct” proceeding against the boy, violated its own stated policy in the process, and unfairly expelled him.

Of such flimsy stuff is the campus “rape” epidemic built.

The Dead Kennedys could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps this controversy — not just the situation at Occidental College, but also the situation with feminists shrieking at George Will’s alleged insensitivity to rape victims — could be mitigated by pointing to the “is”/”ought” distinction involved.

If we look at the “ought” side of the campus sex scene, if we ask what ideally should be happening, certainly conservatives do not advocate that students should get drunk and have sex.

In terms of moral ideals, conservatives favor sobriety and chastity. However, when we consider the “is” side of the equation — the reality of student life — conservatives must acknowledge as a matter of fact that college kids do get drunk and do have sex. As an ex-Democrat, I speak with the authority of experience on this subject, and this is what I wrote in an American Spectator column last year:

The rhetoric of SlutWalk activists — “No means no!” — is obviously not directed at the lurking sociopath, the knife-wielding career criminal who pounces from ambush in darkened alleys. Rather, feminist harangues about the meaning and importance of consent are directed at otherwise law-abiding men who don’t cope appropriately with sexual rejection.
Nowhere is this problem more widely decried than at America’s colleges and universities. Date rape is an apparently common campus crime that usually involves two drunk young people, one of whom has an erect penis, and the other of whom is unable to avert what the erect penis typically does.

This is simply the fact of the matter and, however unfortunate the facts may be, if we are going to yell “rape” every time two college kids get drunk and have sex, we’re going to be yelling constantly. But the feminist Thought Police are deliberately confusing the issue, claiming that opinion columnists who use provocative language to discuss this phony “epidemic” are complicit in rape.

Absurd accusations of word-rape (“Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But George Will’s Column Raped Me”) are not going to subtract even a single rape victim from the tragic total. But the important question is this: Are we doing a disservice to rape victims when we describe as a “victim” the college freshman who gets drunk and has sex that she regrets after she sobers up the next day?

What about guys and their own regrets of drunken sex? Can’t we discuss the fact that teenage boys do things when they’re drunk that they probably wouldn’t do if they were sober? Isn’t this why we have laws against selling alcohol to teenagers? Couldn’t college administrators do a lot to reduce the frequency of these incidents by getting serious about punishing underage drinking on campus?

Where is Dean Vernon Wormer now that we really need him?

“You’re finished! No more Delta! . . . I’m going to
revoke your charter! And if you wise guys
try one more thing — one more — I’m going
to kick you out this college!
No more fun of any kind!”

It’s a sad thing when we become nostalgic for the Bad Old Days.

 

Comments

60 Responses to “‘Victims Proliferate’ at Occidental: The Unfortunate Truth About Campus Rape”

  1. Doug
    June 19th, 2014 @ 10:28 am

    The criminal law says that drunk women can consent to sex. Indeed, they do so by the millions every day. However, the law also says that extremely intoxicated women cannot legally consent. It labels this level of intoxication as “being incapacitated.” That’s a legal conclusion, not a condition. How do we know when someone is too drunk to consent? Well, typically we look for external evidence, facts that are observable to a third party: vomiting, falling asleep, slurring words, stumbling. The Occidental rule, by contrast, apparently requires men to figure out when women have crossed the line from “tipsy” to “drunk.” What are the external indicia that college men should look for? How are they to know when an enthusiastic “yes” is not a valid consent? Who knows? The bottom line in the Occidental case is drunk sex = rape if the girl later regrets the sex.

  2. ThePaganTemple
    June 19th, 2014 @ 10:36 am

    So what if she regrets having sex the next day, but she wasn’t drunk, or high? Can she claim that she was conned, that she was led to believe the guy was madly in love with her?

    Oh, and here’s the kicker? Can the guy then claim the girl was using him, inflaming his passions for money, for help with a difficult subject matter? Would not legitimately constitute a form of “rape”, be it psychic or emotional?

    Are young women who enter a convent being “spiritually” raped? For that matter, what about a Priest who has been told he must remain celibate in order to remain faithful to the church?

    If I turn down a woman, no matter how nicely I do so, because I am not attracted to her in the least, have I “raped” her (or him) mentally?

    Are we soon going to arrive at a point in time when yiu have to procure a license to “date”? Or even NOT to “date”?

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 19th, 2014 @ 10:42 am

    If it becomes illegal to have sex with drunk women, how will the Irish People survive?

  4. K-Bob
    June 19th, 2014 @ 10:56 am

    Add all of this into the pile with the marital-sex-is-still-rape BS and what you’ve got is the makings of a sort of Möbius strip argument, where eventually “not having sex” will be identified as rape.

  5. PGlenn
    June 19th, 2014 @ 10:56 am

    I was wondering if a male involved in the following scenario would be considered to have committed sexual assault under the new “standards” on college campuses:

    Young lady announces up front, “now, we’re only going to fool around . . we’re not going all the way!” In response to the seductive skill of her male companion, though, young lady gets excited and, without uttering any words, revises the proverbial contract. Afterward, she experiences a sharp feeling of regret. “I told you not to go all the way!”

  6. K-Bob
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:02 am

    Trick question. Obviously it depends on whether the male in question is a Democrat in good standing with the feminists on campus.

    If he’s a member of the Young America’s Foundation or College Conservatives, he’ll go straight into the electric chair.

    Illegal alien? The law (including the Campus cops and the Dean) can’t touch him.

    Biker dude? His OL will tear her up first. Then she’ll end up as one of his other OLs.

    Best bet for the typical campus male is to plead gay.

  7. PGlenn
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:15 am

    Good point. If any and all marital intercourse = rape, logically that means that any time a male penetrates a female – whether they’re married or not – either “naturally” (p –> v) or by aid of an object, it is rape (it’s not considered rape, by this definition, if a female penetrates a female or a male, or a male penetrates a male, etc.).

    So, if a woman who consents to be penetrated by a man – allow him to rape her – she ought not be considered to be in a rational, independently-functional state of mind. Therefore, there is no possibility of a woman legitimately consenting to be penetrated by a man. Traditional intercourse = rape becomes a tautology, is taken for granted, and therefore is no longer relevant to the discussion of where the appropriate v inappropriate boundaries lie.

    Thus, the ongoing project of expanding the definition of rape (and female victimization) must find new areas of concern. At that point, an awkward round of heavy petting between a male and female might be defined as the male having committed rape.

  8. That’s why the columnist is a misogynist! | Batshit Crazy News
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:18 am

    […] TOM: How Dare George Will Tell The Truth… […]

  9. Art Deco
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:21 am

    Date rape is an apparently common campus crime that usually involves two
    drunk young people, one of whom has an erect penis, and the other of
    whom is unable to avert what the erect penis typically does.

    What about guys and their own regrets of drunken sex? Can’t we discuss
    the fact that teenage boys do things when they’re drunk that they
    probably wouldn’t do if they were sober?

    You just don’t get it. Women have options. Men have obligations.

  10. Art Deco
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:25 am

    Reading the vapid remarks of the editorial page editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reminds one of one of the vectors driving the demise of newspapers: the mediocrity of the product. Public life will not be damaged when Tony Messenger is propelled into retirement or a different line of work.

  11. RKae
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:31 am

    Maybe it’s time these damned believers in “micro-aggressions” asked themselves why their lives are so miserable. It’s not as if college campuses are chockablock with conservatives. So apparently, even their fellow left-wingers can’t behave themselves.

    If they can’t be happy somewhere that’s overflowing with their own kind, then where CAN they be happy?

  12. Dana
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:35 am

    Our host wrote:

    What about guys and their own regrets of drunken sex? Can’t we discuss the fact that teenage boys do things when they’re drunk that they probably wouldn’t do if they were sober?

    The obvious, and completely sexist assumption is that the male has always consented, eagerly, enthusiastically, even if he is at least as intoxicated as the feminists claim makes female consent unobtainable.

    But if “He raped me!” is an acceptable response from a lady after drunken copulation, would such not also be acceptable from a gentleman, say after he discovered that their drunken fornication has resulted in pregnancy? After all, at the most, he was looking for sex; he was surely not looking for a son.

    Such a claim ought surely, surely! to absolve the male rape victim from child support, right?

  13. Mm
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:35 am

    Speaking of rape, did you see that renowned author, Marion Zimmer Bradley, who covered up her husband’s molestation of young boys, was just outed by her own daughter as a serial pedophile?
    See: http://www.teleread.com/writing/marion-zimmer-bradley-child-abuser-says-daughter/

    For more background re: her husband: http://www.sff.net/people/stephen.goldin/mzb/

  14. Dana
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:43 am

    What is a “micro-aggression?” Let’s say that our esteemed host’s Special Forces son, rugged heterosexual that he is, finds himself taking a college course and asks out a really cute redhead — and real redheads come in only two varieties: really cute or butt-ugly — but, not having a good gaydar, discovers that he has asked out a really cute redheaded lesbian.

    Since she isn’t interested in heterosexual copulation at all, would PFC McCain have “micro-aggressed” against her?

  15. PGlenn
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:53 am

    What if the young lady misuses some prescription drugs, which effectively lower her inhibitions and ability to think responsibly to a level roughly on par with being “drunk” (more than tipsy) on alcohol, but without the signs of drunkeness? If that’s okay, but drunken sex not okay, that suggests that the problem isn’t actually impairment, but the signs of impairment. Therefore, a completely sober girl acts drunk, consents to sex with a male, and later regrets it, that = rape, too.

  16. robertstacymccain
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:54 am

    His older sister being a redhead, the PFC in question is immune to their attractions.

  17. lawrenceperson
    June 19th, 2014 @ 11:55 am

    Indeed. Did you see that absurd Ms. piece on falsely accused men daring to fight back? I gave it a light fisking here. Turns out they only overstated the incidence of campus rape by 42 times…

  18. 29Victor
    June 19th, 2014 @ 12:10 pm

    So a drunk woman cannot be held responsible for her actions but a drunk man can? Sounds sexist to me.

  19. Phil_McG
    June 19th, 2014 @ 1:03 pm

    Women aren’t capable of taking responsibility for their own actions, because of the Patriarchy.

    It’s the Patriarchy that brainwashed them into thinking they want heterosexual intercourse (rape) in the first place.

    Lesbian feminist scientists have conclusively proven that all women are naturally lesbians.

  20. Phil_McG
    June 19th, 2014 @ 1:07 pm

    Sometimes it’s hard not to sympathise with General Pinochet’s policy of free skydiving lessons for leftists. Parachute not included.

  21. Zohydro
    June 19th, 2014 @ 1:07 pm

    He must be a truly remarkable man if he can resist the cute ginger… I didn’t think such was possible!

  22. Jeanette Victoria
    June 19th, 2014 @ 1:11 pm

    Collective liberal finger in ears and saying I can’t hear you. Truth is the new hate fact

  23. NeoWayland
    June 19th, 2014 @ 1:17 pm

    It’s not sexist, it’s merely the Cult of Perpetual Victimhood. It’s members can’t be held responsible for anything they say, do or think. What they say, do, and think (and more importantly mean) is subject to change as needed.

    But that’s not the only benefit. No, it’s members have to power to criticize you for what they say you say, do, and think. Of course you are also responsible for every single thing that you ancestors did (or at least what the cult members say they did) and any “injustice” within seven hundred miles of your location.

    Your only hope for redemption is to renounce your evil ways with a press event.

  24. K-Bob
    June 19th, 2014 @ 2:06 pm

    I see I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about the logic involved!

  25. Dana
    June 19th, 2014 @ 2:26 pm

    If he’s a Democrat in good standing with the feminists on campus, he won’t be able to get an erection anyway.

  26. Dana
    June 19th, 2014 @ 2:27 pm

    It really isn’t.

  27. JeffS
    June 19th, 2014 @ 2:44 pm

    Beer goggles might be banned? That would ruin the weekends of many beta males.

  28. John Kerry: ‘I was for working with Iran before I was against working with Iran…’ | Regular Right Guy
    June 19th, 2014 @ 3:08 pm

    […] ‘Victims Proliferate’ at Occidental: The Unfortunate Truth About Campus Rape […]

  29. Kirby McCain
    June 19th, 2014 @ 3:21 pm

    Once again, let me remind everyone that the mere utterance of the word abstinence will send any feminist into a fit most resembling the demon possessed girl in The Exorcist .

  30. gastorgrab
    June 19th, 2014 @ 3:49 pm

    Is there a law against ‘micro-aggressions’????

  31. OrangeEnt
    June 19th, 2014 @ 4:00 pm

    The only way to solve this increasingly horrible problem is to ban women from school after the sixth grade….

  32. concern00
    June 19th, 2014 @ 4:08 pm

    It seems that a woman is free to declare rape or otherwise simply on her whim. Said whim is subject to change on a daily basis and the criminal implications of such can only be constrained by the statute of limitations, however, she reserves the right to ruin a man’s reputation indefinitely.

    This is analogous to the concept of ‘choice’ as it applies to slaughter of her unborn – this ‘choice’ is of great gravitas and significantly life affecting, particularly to the unborn, but ultimately her choice to kill is undertaken on a whim.

    In both instances her whim is cheered on by feminists everywhere as empowering.

  33. Guest
    June 19th, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

    lol

  34. Guest
    June 19th, 2014 @ 4:31 pm

    nope.the door only opens one way. to the left.

    😛

  35. Guest
    June 19th, 2014 @ 4:40 pm

    gingers are a weakness of mine. i rue the day i meet a cute redhead on campus who likes me, because on that day i will likely be set up for future criminal charges in this micro-aggression economy we live in =/

    sometimes i think the homos have it easier.

  36. Zohydro
    June 19th, 2014 @ 4:52 pm

    I fell in with a ginger once during my misspent yoot—it didn’t end “happily ever after” and I was a mess for a solid decade!

    Oh, I was warned—Granny Zed always used to say that there are three things a man never gets over: Eating bad ‘possum, eating good ‘possum, and his first ginger…

  37. pabarge
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:09 pm
  38. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:19 pm

    The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which was once an important and reputable newspaper

    Showing off your good memory?

    Of course, all these campus rules, aided and abetted by Obama’s Education and Justice bots, are designed to comport with the radical feminist anti-male agenda.

    In order for the claim that 20% of college gals are sexually assaulted to be true, it would mean that on campus they are 40,000 times more likely to be raped than in the country at large. That is of course preposterous.

    But if colleges are such hotbeds of crime, let’s cut off all funding until they start reporting crimes to the police as required by law.

  39. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:22 pm

    They’ve been putting out steady mediocrity for decades.

  40. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:23 pm

    I recoil in horror at the thought of the carbon footprint.

    Hang ’em, I say. Reuse the rope and call it a “green project.” Everybody wins.

  41. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:24 pm

    That post should require a

    ***TRIGGER WARNING!!!***

  42. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:27 pm

    Actually, you don’t have to say anything at all. Just wait long enough, they go into the fits on an almost predictable schedule.

  43. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2014 @ 5:30 pm

    Signalling the fully successful dufusification of the newspaper business.

    I think it officially died when Warren Buffett bought nearly all of Media General’s papers, including the flagship Richmond Times Dispatch.

  44. Quartermaster
    June 19th, 2014 @ 7:52 pm

    RSM is still suffering residual effects of those ‘shrooms back in college.

  45. Dana
    June 19th, 2014 @ 7:53 pm

    You do, huh? That great American philosopher, Sam Kinneson, put it very succinctly: we’ve got a really great choice here, we can either love women, or suck a big dick.

    I’m thinking that loving women is by far the superior alternative. And redheads, real redheads, redheaded toward the strawberry blonde side, not the auburn side, are just a major, major, major turn on for me. If they have green eyes, and are 6 feet tall and slender, they could make me do anything they wanted me to do.

  46. Quartermaster
    June 19th, 2014 @ 7:56 pm

    There are times I could not care less about the carbon footprint. Be sure Gore is one of the first for the free skydiving lessons.

  47. Quartermaster
    June 19th, 2014 @ 7:59 pm

    So much rape-rape, so little time.

  48. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 19th, 2014 @ 8:04 pm
  49. K-Bob
    June 19th, 2014 @ 8:13 pm

    Not one they’d notice, anyway.

  50. K-Bob
    June 19th, 2014 @ 8:36 pm

    Too many question marks definitely puts you in danger of prosecution.