UNC Football Player Accused Of Rape.
 

UNC-Chapel Hill student says she was sexually assaulted by football player | News & Observer

School has a history of pandering to their athletes, I wouldn't be surprised if the officers were negligent.

Am I the only one that wonders why people go to campus police instead of real police?

I feel for this girl and the treatment she is getting the school, it's a fucking joke.

In some places they are the real police, or at least have full authority and jurisdiction in conjunction with the local authorities.

I'm watching the press conference in its entirety, and that is addressed. Because it happened on campus, the Chapel Hill PD does not have jurisdiction unless the Department of Public Safety (whose officers include the campus police) decide to share jurisdiction. They have not.

Here's the news conference in its entirety. Delaney is a sharp kid.

Web only: UNC student's news conference about alleged rape :: WRAL.com

Oh, the other piece of this is that the DA is not pressing felony charges, but North Carolina allows individuals to swear out misdemeanor warrants against other individuals, which is what has happened here.

fwiw, as I understand it (via my kid) that's pretty much the same as the Ole Miss campus. Oxford PD only allowed to act on campus if they're invited.

(point being simply that this situation isn't unique to UNC or anything)

Is this a new thread worthy post? Trying to figure out why this avoided a college football thread. Usc just had two players suspended while rape is being investigated.

Personal connection?

It's dumb to have a discussion that is likely to linger on in the "week x" thread.

Seems like the board will be cluttered with various athletes arrests, no?

There's like 5 active threads a day here these days. Maybe we cross that bridge when it comes to it?

Masina was not just suspended. Based on the investigation he has been kicked out of school permanently.

I'll jump in here and say that most victims don't actually report to the police, because the police don't do anything, and the DA's will say there isn't enough evidence.

Here is what I deal with in Baltimore. I have had multiple females report to me that they have been raped, only to have the police say that "you didn't fight hard enough, so its not a rape.

This Police Department Tosses Aside Rape Reports When A Victim Doesn’t Resist “To The Best Of Her Ability” - BuzzFeed News

The victim then feels that to get "justice" they have to go through the University process which as people can see isn't doing a wonderful job of dealing with it either. I know nobody in my field that went to school to handle rape cases. The entire thing is sad and very unfortunate and colleges are doing the best they can. It's real easy to shit on what colleges are doing until you have to be the one to investigate these things and see just how hard they are to deal with.

I've never understood why local PDs don't have jurisdiction on some college campuses. Aside from military installations, this doesn't happen anywhere else, does it? What's the rationale?

Random fact. I know/worked against the attorney that Ms. Robinson hired. She is in good hands in terms of a smart/aggressive advocate. Any hopes that UNC had that this would get swept under the rug are long gone.

Colleges have their own Police Departments that are just like the local police, so they have jurisdiction on their own campus.

It is an interesting question because there is some crossover at different campuses. For example, I am told at Maryland that the local PD can help and assist on campus, and that the UMD police can pull people over and things like that a bit outside of the University limits.

The rationale is that a college and university setting is looked at like a bubble. You make mistakes and learn from them in college while being surrounded by that bubble. If you have your own police department you can handle things in house. I.E you know the officers, you hired them, and they should know your students. That should be a different relationship between students and University police departments vs. the local police departments. Things like alcohol and drug violations the officers might be more understanding and give more chances vs your getting locked up this very second with the local police.

On the flip side, it makes it easier to deal with things. I don't need to wait 10 mins with a University police department for an officer to show up in an emergency like I might with local police. I don't need to call the local police when there are drugs that need confiscated, it gets taken care of immediately.

So this will vary by school/jurisdiction.
Just local to me the two closest Universities are Clemson and Furman and they couldnt be more different.

Furman has "University Security" which are rent a cops without any real authority. Glorified mall cops, though they do have a holding center where they can hold folks until Greenville County arrives.

Clemson University police on the other hand are a state jurisdiction. They are their own municipality and their officers are employees of the state not the University. They have their own university jail and their own university municipal court room. In fact the City of Clemson police do not have jurisdiction on anything that happens on campus. Used to be a pretty funny game for underage drinking/parties to run on campus/off campus as the two departments didnt rally get along and wouldnt do joint busts so if you were at certain frat houses you knew to run out the back yard and you'd be safe as University police couldnt pursue.

All that to say it isnt as cut and dried as you might think.

Private schools, at least put in California, don't have real police, but as CU said, essentially security guards. Public Schools have sworn police officers on campus. CSU or UC system police.

Bug and Tiger- Do you know off hand if those "rent a cops" are real police that work for the school as security officers?

That's the system my school has. For the most part all of our guys are retried police, active firefighters, EMT's, and state and local police. So while they don't act like sworn police for us normally, Maryland state law requires them to become "active and on duty" when they are a witness to a crime.

I know at Virginia Tech, the VT Police Department is an accredited police force with jurisdiction over the campus. An old college buddy of mine is a Lieutenant in the force and they work with the surrounding Blacksburg PD and the Virginia State Police just as any other PD would.

Here's the blurb for the Yale police:

The Yale Police Department has 87 sworn police officers with full powers of law enforcement and arrest. Our officers are armed and patrol the campus on foot, by motorcycles, on mountain bikes, and in cars equipped with computers and radio communications systems. If minor offenses involving University rules and regulations are committed by a Yale student, the police may also refer the individual to the Yale College Dean’s Office or other academic officials. Yale Police personnel work closely with local, state, and federal police agencies, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Justice, on campus events, regional law enforcement matters, training, and significant investigations concerning the campus community.

Well, I'm gonna say it and I'll get banned cuz many here are liberal communists who will say "great, blame the victim", but here it goes anyway:

(Note - I am a father of a 6 yr old girl)

Fathers, not mothers, need to have the "awkward" convo with their daughters before they go off to college. The conversation that consists of "you have every right to say no, but once you agree to go off alone with another boy, to his room, for a late night stroll, into his car, etc, you put yourself in a risky situation where a horny male who may or may not have control of his urges will interpret that as you being DTF. If there's any part of you that isn't interested in engaging in premarital sex (and I hope that is always the case) then you absolutely can not drink alcohol as that will make it likely you find yourself in a very bad situation."

You know the saying in professional fighting - if you don't want to leave it up to the judges to decide the fight then make sure you knock the other guy out? It applies here. If you don't want to increase your risk of getting raped then don't engage in the two factors that increase that risk - excessive alcohol/drug consumption and agreeing to be isolated with a college male. Don't leave it up to a young horny male to correctly interpret your not wanting sex.

What ever happened to the buddy system with females? I thought girls always travelled in pairs to avoid this? I blame parents for not teaching their kids better.

What a fucking moronic statement.

I've been in a situation where a drunk ass (and hot) girl jumped into a cab and came home with me. Granted, on the way home I thought maybe I was going to get lucky. But when we got there she could barely stand up. So I just put her on my couch and let her go to sleep and went on my way to my own bedroom (to assure there is no impression of anything happening). Woke up the next morning and she had no idea what happened so I explained and gave her a ride home.

Just because she was falling over drunk doesn't give me an excuse to shove my dick in her mouth or any other orifice of her body.

Eh, it's not either/or. It's both/and.

I'm teaching my daughters what they need to know to protect themselves (basically most of the practical stuff Ned said without the "you put yourself in a situation" piece that blames them). But if they don't heed my advice, it's not their fault that they get raped. It's the rapist's fault. Period. Put another way, if I leave the door to my house unlocked and you go in and steal stuff, it's not my fault. You're still a thief.

This isn't rocket science.

Man, it's too bad all these sons don't have parents to teach them to not be predatory.

1. I don't have sons so that's not my deal.
2. Just like I don't leave my doors unlocked and just assume everyone is honest, I don't want my daughters to assume everyone's parents have taught them not to be predatory.

Again, this isn't rocket science.

I've missed you, Franklin.

I'm fine with this. Women should be on guard.

Now, when do we get to the #notallmen whines?

Why in the hell is this so hard for people to understand?

If you take "rape" out of the equation it becomes easy. As a white male, it is not in my best interest to walk alone at 3 AM in the morning in certain areas of Detroit, Memphis, Miami or any other big city.

If for some reason I do end up taking a wrong turn and end up in one of those places, it isn't my fault if I get mugged and/or murdered. Even if you want to put it off as my fault, it doesn't just magically absolve the mugger/murderer from any charges because "I was stupid, had to many drinks and probably deserved to be mugged/murdered"

Why is this so hard for people to understand when it comes to rape?

Your beliefs are vile, Ned. No matter what happened in the leadup to the situation, when a girl says no, that's it. Game over. If she is too drunk to make a rational decision, game over. She falls asleep, game over. Period. Anything that happens without her rational, sober consent is not her fault. It is rape.

The questions are, frankly ... how many are saying no? How many are falling asleep? And if your standard is literal sobriety then sex on college campuses becomes virtually non-existent (since sobriety seems to be pretty scarce in & of itself).

It's conveniently glossed over that the "average girl" today is far more predatory about sex than the guys. And they're the first in the beer line. That's not about excusing rape, it's about legitimate questions of how many of these alleged cases turn out to be anything resembling rape as opposed to bad decision remorse. Regretting choices later does not constitute lack of consent at the time.

Sorry if that doesn't fit anybody's p.c. delusions, but that's the fucking reality.

Thank you for saving me the time to type this.

Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee but I have no idea what you mean by this. Can you explain a bit more?

Anyone else stop reading right here?

How are his beliefs vile? It seems to me that he's recognizing that there are rapists out there who will rape a girl given a chance, and he wants his daughter to know that information.

Am I misinterpreting something here?

No I kept reading but wish I hadn't.

No. But I didn't bother to respond. Prejudging reactions to your statements is intellectually lazy and a good way to remain ignorant. Why should I waste my time responding to someone who's already indicated he's not interested in learning anything?

Bingo. There are two points to be made to our daughters:

1. You are not responsible if someone rapes you. Sex has to be consensual, or else it's rape.
2. Not every man out there will behave honorably. Be aware of the risks that come with certain situations. It's not your fault if you get raped in these circumstances, but you can reduce your risk by avoiding those situations and/or exercising caution.

And there's two points to be made to our sons:

1. Unless she clearly gives consent, and is in a clear-headed state of mind that allows her to make that decision, it's rape. If it feels like a grey area in either of these aspects, then be safe and don't do it.
2. If you see other guys engaging in something that looks like rape, be a real man and intervene.

Acknowledging risk is not the same thing as accepting that it's OK.

If there's one guy on these boards who I feel like has his finger on the pulse of all things college-age girl, it's JiMGa.

Stealing that line for future discussions about this. :thumbsup:

Related reading: Judge could lose job for berating rape victim: ‘Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together?’ - The Washington Post

The thing that gets me about this story is how this guy was placed in a position to arbitrate cases where he admitted he didn't really have any experience, nor was he familiar with Canadian law on those matters.

Oh, I'm sure here in the states we've never elected judges who had sub-par experience.

He was appointed though, a situation where you'd hope that those making that decision would apply some level of diligence to his qualifications, more-so than the politicized situation of an election.

Yeah, I know. But I wonder just how worse our failure rate is there.

The part where girls can't drink or be alone with a guy without inviting rape. It basically absolves guys from making responsible decisions about whether a girl is capable of consenting/not consenting to sex. It puts all the responsibility on girls. Horny boys can't be asked to control themselves. We need to teach our sons to respect women and respect their choices with regards to sexual encounters.

Obviously, yes, in the real world, girls should take reasonable steps to limit their risk of being put in bad situations, but it is equally the responsibility of boys to back off it is not clear that the girl is capable of making a rational decision to consent.

I was in a similar discussion among runners last week. It's sad that women have to worry about being attacked by a male if they decide to run alone, especially at night or in the early morning. I run alone early in the morning without giving it a second thought. Women should be free to do the same thing without worrying that they might be attacked. Once again, reasonable steps can be taken by women, but men shouldn't be absolved of responsibility for their actions. We need to teach our sons to be decent men who respect women's rights.

The only thing I can see is since the campus police are usually employed by the campus it gives the campus more control over the handling of the case and for the school to control things to protect their investments... But that's just me...

Quoting because I don't want this to get buried. What a horseshit standard. Sorry you have to deal with this firsthand muns, and obviously what a terrible situation for the women in these cases.

I guess girls today want to bone more than boys... At least to John they do.

update:

UNC football player turns self in on sexual battery charge

Good answer, this is my problem as well. You can tell your daughter to put herself in good situations. But if she doesn't, the guy doesn't get a pass for raping the girl. Just like I said in my analogy above, if I do something stupid and get killed, the killer doesn't get to go free because I was asking for it. It's beyond stupid and we only seem to act this way in rape situations.

On the other side, it's CRITICAL in rape cases to give both sides the benefit of the doubt. just because Winston is a good looking guy who has did some incredibly stupid things, it doesn't mean he raped a women. Obviously, we've seen where things go completely off the rails in the Duke lacrosse case. The guy has every right to due process and to have his case heard before he's convicted.

As for the judge who made the comments above? I dont' care if he doesn't understand rape law, those were simply horrific comments to make about a violent act.

You'd probably be surprised at the variety of people I know. Have a teenager, live in a college town, know a metric half-ton of teens, have spent most of the past two decades with multiple teens/young adults in my close orbit with a number of them being close (or closer) than family.

At some point, well, you do pick up a few things.

Though, honestly, the complaints -- literally -- from guys about the upside down male/female sexual roles from early/mid teens onward are something that I started hearing more than a decade ago. Virtually everything I've seen with my own eyes since then has been consistent with just what I was hearing and with just what I said here.

Have to say I wouldn't have minded some "upside-down" sexual roles. Was not a good pursuer.

I dont get the head in the sand attitudes of some of you. "If she says no, it means no"?
No shit. But there are probably more males out there that will take advantage of a girl, drunk or sober, than you think.

Why do many of you think that all males in college should be responsible gentlemen? That is not the case. There are going to be way more hormone hyped arseholes than we hope there are.

I think I have prepared them. But Im going to have the "Dont get yourself caught is a bad situation" talk. Because not every college aged male is like Lungs.

I think that they should be because that is the moral and legal way to behave.

It is largely not the case because, well, most of the time they can take want they want and there are few repercussions for doing so. I mean, that Brock piece of shit was found guilty and was out in three months. Three months! The public makes excuses for them, puts the onus on women to prevent the crime. It demonizes them for being in the position where they could be raped. Drinking, dressing "provocatively." In some cases, for having the temerity to have had sex before! Cops make it a difficult crime to report, if not outright dissuade victims from reporting it. The justice system puts the victim on trial as much as the perpetrator.

So no, it isn't a surprise that men don't all behave themselves. It might be nice if we tried to at least hold them to some standards.

Let's note here that I didn't say I entirely understand the reaction it frequently gets, I'm just noting that it exists.

I just can't shake something that a guy, around 17 or so, said to me one night more than a decade ago. A pretty normal guy for his area, football player, decent student, maybe above average in looks but not a threat to ever be on the cover of GQ or anything.

He'd gone with me to a HS football game in a neighboring town & on the return trip his phone was ringing constantly. I mean literally chaining one call to the next. I didn't say anything though I suspect I might have had an amused look after hearing him excuse himself from various party invitations for a good twenty minutes.

He apologized for the interruptions, fidgeted a little bit, and then blurted out "It's not that I mind the calls or anything, but ... well, getting laid is easy these days. You have to actively avoid it to miss out. But a good football game to watch is hard to find, y'know?"

I've seen not a single thing in the years that followed to lead me to believe he was exaggerating in the slightest.

And then there's this sort of thing, from this week right here in College Town, U.S.A.

Headlines read "student victim of attempted rape & kidnapping"
Smaller headlines followed up with the proverbial rest of the story

A day after sending out a timely warning about the attempted kidnapping and rape of a University of Georgia student, UGA police brought more clarity to the incident on Wednesday afternoon.

Because of the “overwhelming concern for public safety,” UGA police investigators sought to identify the victim of the incident, and upon finding her it “was determined that much of the information relayed in the anonymous data form was not correct.”

The UGA student said as she walked along the sidewalk she was approached by an unknown male who placed his hands over her eyes from behind, which prompted her to turn in his direction in an aggressive manner. The male immediately left and the UGA student said the male “did not make any additional physical contact with her, did not attempt to direct her in any way, did not pull her off balance and never spoke during the incident.”

She also said there was no force applied to her face, neck or other parts of her body, no pulling of her in his direction and no additional contact with other parts of either of their bodies. The UGA student was not injured.

The UGA police concluded in this case that “no information gathered during this investigation leads to the belief that there is any continuing threat to the community or any individuals.”

Cuervo, I agree with everything you posted. But thats not reality. Its terrible that it is put on the woman and not the male.
But as I have told my daughter since they were very young "Boys are stupid"

Its simple, but it is effective. And I hate that they are going into an environment where rape is culturally accepted.

I expected a banning from you, you're getting soft in your old age.

But anyway, #2 is what it's all about if you are a father of a daughter. That's what the awkward convo with her will entail. College age males are a silly bunch and while that doesn't excuse their behavior, it's one of those "it is what it is" sort of things. Not all parents will have the "no means no" talk with their sons. I can't help that. I also have a son and I'll have to have that talk with him. Although, and not to derail this convo, my talk with him will be 3 points: no means no, maybe means yes and yes means hell yes what took you so long. I digress....

You can't live in a fantasy world where you say "just because a girl gets blacked out drunk doesn't give some punk the right to rape her." That "punk" is a "punk" because he doesn't know any better and wasn't raised properly. That's not your concern, your reality and your daughter's reality is the fact the punk - and many like him - exist and walk the earth. We live in a world of predators who don't stop at no and don't care abou having sex with unconscious girls. That's a reality. So because this is reality unfortunately the responsibility falls back on to the girl/everyone's daughters.

Don't go taking a moonlight stroll in a dark forest, Red Riding Hood, I hear there's wolves out there.

I agree with most of this except the bolded part. This will get your son into some big trouble. When a girl says maybe, more likely than not there will be buyers remorse and then charges filed.

You better just teach him to hear the word "Yes".

Or you could teach your son to only do the things she consents to.

And who cares if a girl likes to have sex? Her no means the same thing as a virgin's no.

...And if that's the case then the "maybe" will become a "no" and then it turns into a "no means no" scenario.

Not to derail, but I'll also teach him the difference between "soft no" and "hard no". Hard no you stop everything and ask her if she'd like to be dropped off to her home. Soft no often means "you're moving too fast buddy". Regardless, any no is the indication to "stop what you're doing, I'm not comfortable with this."

Unfortunately, and this is why I'm not quick to hang college males accused of rape, is the interpretation of a hard no/soft no might differ from person to person and can be affected by the amount of alcohol consumed. This goes back to having that talk with my daughter where I'll inform her of the mindset of a horny young male and the fact that not every boy comes from respectable upbringing and that bad choices on her part can put her at the mercy of those low-character males who have bad agendas.

Franklin? That's an insult. Now if you called me Dean Houston that'd be a compliment.

There is no soft no.

This.

Fucking terrifying.
Insulting.
Unbelievable.
Disgraceful.

Any more comments furthering my opinion of your post will ensure the same restraint you praised won't be shown on me.

Some of y'all clearly aren't aware of how this affects women. Soft no? Buyer's remorse? GTFOH with that nonsense. When a woman's been raped, or even believes she's been raped, that changes her life forever.

I've had some students open up to me about their experiences in that type of traumatic situation. You don't ever completely recover from it. Yes, after time you're able to get back to as close to normal as you'll ever get (length of time varies from person to person), but there's a loss of trust in people. You become more aware - even hyperaware - and constantly are on guard and prone to fear, even if you already careful before that happened to you.

I'm not saying false charges don't happen. I'm saying they're far more rare than it seems like some posters are trying to insinuate here. And it's not difficult to avoid putting yourself in that situation. A woman gives a no of any kind? Don't. A woman says yes, but she's clearly trashed out of her mind? Don't. Learn some damned self-control and stop excusing it with bullshit like "interpretations".

I got emails like that from the university alert center all the fucking time when I was in college. No misleading subject lines or anything but pretty much a wall of text saying pretty much nothing happened but something could've happened so watch out!

So all of these girls that are "closer than family"... you noticed that they're all horny as shit all the time? Or what?

So at what point within these personal anecdotes of yours do you explain how this means girls are now far more predatory than guys when it comes to sex?

It was a toss-up between that and Anthony. I chose poorly, clearly. :D

Girls routinely get guys drunk and then take advantage of them. Don'tcha know?

And I'm not saying real charges don't happen. And I'm not saying that a lot of real one don't go unreported. I'm saying that situations like the ones under discussion here in the original post that I'd wager more than half are complete bullshit. I've seen & heard too much to believe otherwise.

Because over the past couple of decades, I've seen few guys willing to chase pretty much anything other than beer or video games. And I've watched some insane behavior from the other side that, frankly, guys would have killed to be subjected to just a couple of decades ago. And that's across multiple socio-economic spectrums, across multiple locations.

At least in the 13-23 age range, by the time you get to the mid-20s it seems less common AND I've not had the same amount of exposure to that demo (people move, life goes on, etc etc)

I've seen the same thing, but I still wouldn't call what you're describing as "insane behavior" as "predatory".

I'll chime in one data point - mine doesn't seem to be all that interested in chasing yet either. He has so much stuff to juggle that when he's not juggling he just wants to be in front of his computer monitor.

(That said, he has undergone a HUGE change in appearance in the last two years. I don't know all the factors behind that - other than health - but I imagine girls might be one.)

The "insane behavior" is apparently that girls like sex too and don't need to be prudish about it like it's the 1960s.

Girls like sex = they make up rape stories. WTF?

I'm not interested in schooling ppl in the behaviors of females. That having been said yes there are indeed "soft no's". Yes, no means no so you stop whatever you're doing that elicited the soft or hard no. But soft no means "let's revisit this" "I'm not comfortable yet". Either that means she needs more time later that evening or the next date. But if men stopped at every soft no, every "I have a boyfriend" every "I'm busy that night" then there'd be less ppl walking the earth. There's a difference between "I have a boyfriend" and "get the fuck out of my face you ugly troll!". One is a hard no, the other is a soft no.

My point is when a girl compromises herself by getting severely drunk, going to a party alone without her buddy support system, agrees to be isolated with a drunk frat guy she now puts herself in a position where she's at the mercy of some guy who may have a loose interpretation between soft and hard no (or may not care about the difference). This is why you'll frequently here the (accused) rapist say things like "she wanted it", or "she was saying no but her body was saying yes" or "I thought she was playing hard to get" or any of their excuses. If you weren't raised properly your ability to know the differences between soft and hard no is gonna be off. That's a parenting (or lack thereof) issue. My talks with my little girl when she gets older will involve letting her know about the mindset of the typical frat guy (that is, someone who wouldn't frequent a text sim football message board). Many of you may have stopped at every "I have a boyfriend" or "I'm busy that weekend" but the typical male sure won't.

Why are you putting a "soft no" that would elicit a response of "I have a boyfriend" like a girl would say at a bar to an approaching guy, on the same level as a "soft no" that a girl would say to a guy as they are making out and he is hoping to have sex with her?

A soft no (to me and others):

In the backseat of your car. Making out. You've already groped the breasts. Maybe her top is off. You decide to escalate to next level and your hand/fingers make their way to a much more personal area of her body. She takes your hand away and says softly "I'm not that kind of girl" and continues making out with you. You can decide to zip up and take her home at that point if you like. Me? I'm gonna back up at her request and revisit that again in a bit to see if her mind changed.

That's a soft no.

Same scenario but instead of her taking your hand away she slaps it aggressively and says startled "what the fuck are you doing?! We're just making out I'm not that kind of girl!" And she sits up and covers herself instead of going back to making out.

That's a hard no.

I don't want to play devil's advocate for college guy rapists, but let me leave this discussion (cuz I've said much more than I was comfortable saying, I just wanted to get one point across as a father of a girl) with this:

From what I can tell/remember, all of these college rape stories never seem to start with the girl saying "I was walking from the library after a few hours of studying and some guy jumped out from the bushes and raped me." For some reason they all *seem* to start with "I went to a party and had too much to drink and blacked out and when I regained consciousness I discovered I was raped."

Food for thought.

So... coercion?


So?

So in all of this discussion of what women should do and what their fathers should advise them, there's been very little discussion about the most important thing: What fathers should be telling their sons. Namely, don't rape. When a girl says "no", then stop. If she's clearly drunk (and you don't already have a clearly established relationship where you can be certain she'd give consent), she's not in a position to give consent regardless of what she says.

Can we start focusing discussions of rape where it belongs, on changing male behavior and male thinking?

Fuckin'

A

This.
100x.

As a parent of a teenage boy and a daughter who will be 13 on the 24th...this.

There is a big difference between first time shyness, coyness, etc. and *hiccup* No *snore*.

Now I am all for a drunken romp between the sheets. If its an established relationship and a continuance of a behavior pattern(sexual activity) , then by all means carry on, and soft nos are things. If its your first time together, and either of you are too inebriated to think clearly. Then BOT parties should wait until clearer heads prevail.

THIS....................... Thank you for saying this Kirk

When I give my talk at orientation and what guys in particular don't understand is when its ok and when its not ok to go for it. The hard part about this is different states have different laws. You would think that No means No everywhere and unfortunately that simply is not the case.

There are laws out there that say once you have consented, you cant take it back, so in the middle of intercourse if a women says no or stop, there is nothing the police can do if you are in a state like that. This goes back to rape laws being so out of date, because way back when women were considered property of men. The law never saw a husband raping the wife, because the wife was the husbands to do whatever he wanted with.

So everybody with daughters on this board please be checking with state laws because there is no one simple definition that goes across the country and people get hurt because they think they understand when they really don't.

In Maryland, you cant give consent to any type of sexual act if you are incapacitated, or have a mental handicap. Where it gets confusing is who defines incapacitation. While its simple in terms of coming up with a definition, its not simple in application. At no time during a sexual assault investigation can I pull out a card and say well I have a BAC level here and at 1:30am you were a .09

On top of that witness testimony is so unreliable. So ill pull in 100 kids at a party and 50 of then will tell me "ohh ya she was wasted" and 50 will tell me "she was totally fine". Both the respondent and the complainant will tell me the exact opposite, and then I am basically stuck.

So while technically its not a crime in Maryland to have drunk sex, I teach men that if they have been drinking get her number and call her the next day, because you are putting at lot on my to prove something that is hard for me to prove.

I could write a book on all this stuff, but I wont, but THIS IS A MEN'S ISSUE

The thing that struck me from earlier was JiMGa's story about driving around with a guy whose phone was blowing up, who basically talked about how easy it is to "get laid".

I am NOT SAYING this guy is a rapist. But I think it is when certain guys get said "no" to who have had it that easy, and have an entitled attitude is when they can get into trouble.

There's a case that just ended today in El Paso where a former UTEP football player (he was a current player at the time of the incident) was accused of a dorm room rape.

Former UTEP athlete found not guilty in rape trial

From what I read she willingly went back to his room, kissed him, got undressed, but at some point decided she didn't want to have sex and according to her lawyer told him "no" several times. She came back to her dorm afterward and told her roommate that she just lost her virginity and that she was upset because "it wasn't special." A medical exam didn't find any evidence of forced penetration, though.

The football player was found not guilty.

What world do you people live in? You can't deny there are complete pieces of shit like the Brock kid at Stanford, but they are exceedingly rare. The "epidemic" of college sexual assaults* tends to involve two drunk people who don't know each other very well & the problems with figuring out implied vs affirmative consent under those circumstances.

* - I put that in quotes not because I believe that sexual assaults aren't happening on campuses, but because I have trouble believing the rate they're occurring is higher these days when teenagers are having less sex and there is more attention paid to this topic (though obviously there is still much more to be done.)
And therein lies the rub... Everyone except the true egregious outliers like the Stanford kid understand that No means No, and if the girl is too drunk to stand you shouldn't be making any moves, but that's not what's happening in the tougher cases. (And from my limited knowledge here, this case seems to fall into the tougher case category.) If a girl willingly goes to a room with a guy to hook up with him, doesn't want to have sex but doesn't verbalize it or make it physically obvious when he takes that next progression is that rape? When someone is putting the pieces of their night back together, knows they had sex but didn't think they would have agreed to it, does that mean they didn't give consent at the time? (And the answer in both cases is I don't know? Maybe? It depends? I need more information to go on?)

There aren't easy answers, I always personally erred on the side of caution and teach my kids that, and that doubt is terrible. But I'm not going to sit here in an ivory tower and say you should just make it easy and never have sex with someone who's been drinking... Because that's 90%+ of HS/college kids who hook up outside of relationships. And as dickish as it is for the DA to verbalize a standard that "unconscious sex is rape, but black out sex is not" or the campus police to laugh with the LB during their interview, it's not victim blaming to acknowledge that drunk people of both sexes tend to be more promiscuous and occasionally do dumb things they'll regret in the morning. (And again, I don't have the facts of this particular case.) But you can GTFOH with the idea that the accused in all these cases is crossing a clearly delineated line, that there's always an obvious answer when you're talking about the post facto recollections of two impaired people, or that someone like me who states positions along those lines doesn't also know girls who have been through that horror.

This is great, and when my son is old enough, I'll probably use something like this as part of the conversation about sex and rape. It does however skip over the difficult gray area of consent when the other person isn't sober, and I suspect that lack of sobriety is a factor in a majority of rape cases.

I think this thread shows that while parents definitely should tell their daughters about risks, that they should be clear (and society should too): rape is the fault of the rapist and the rapist alone.

To hedge and fudge and say soft no/hard no, or put the onus on the riskiness of the behavior of the woman is basically creating a pathway to blaming her for it in the end. We need to be clear that the rapist is to blame, regardless of telling your daughter to be careful of the risk involved.

...and as it so happens, this came across my feed today:

What Does Consent Look Like When You're Wasted

This article does a very good job illustrating the gray areas of drunk sex and how it relates to consent. It also hints at a broader issue, namely some of the difficulties of calling a regrettable drunken hook-up the same thing as a clearly violent sexual assault. While I get why some aren't in favor of distinguishing between any kind of rape, the reality is there are degrees.

What happened to Brock Turner's victim is a much more deplorable act than the one the author describes where it's hard to determine a level of drunkenness, and thus capability of consent. Yet by calling them both the same thing, it can actually inhibit the process of trying to bring some healing after the fact.

Nobody wants to be called a "rapist". But I'll bet a lot of people can look back on drunken hook-ups and find a time (or two) where consent was not necessarily clear due to one (or both) parties being too wasted to really make informed decisions.

Anyway, I thought this article was timely and insightful, and I like the comparison of whether to engage in sex after drinking as being similar to whether one should drive after drinking. And I agree with her that even then, that line is a tough one. I've certainly had sex myself when I've been quite a bit more drunk than I could legally drive.

As someone who works in this field, and does both the investigation and adjudication of sexual assaults on a college campus, I was in your camp at first.

When this first blew up everything hinged on a study that was done with 2 tiny small colleges, and even the authors of the study were cautioning people not to use the 1 in 5 stat. For those that don't know that stat was 1 in 5 college women will experience some form of sexual assault by the time they graduate college. Simply a mind blowing stat.

The federal government jumped all over it, with Biden leading the charge and then every state and local politician trying to make a name for themself started proposing bills on how colleges should be doing things. Yes, things needed to change, but the stuff I have to do now to comply with regs when honestly it shouldn't be my job to begin with is also mind blowing. Trying to comply with both state and federal regs, when sometimes they are in direct opposition of each other only makes it harder on colleges.

Colleges shouldn't be getting regulated they way we are, it should be the police departments, but that's a different conversation all together.

Anyways, part of the regulation requires colleges to do whats called a campus climate survey of their population. As more and more of these surveys came back, and more and more data came in, the 1 in 5 stat held true, and continues to hold true.

My campus did the survey last spring, and I used it for my grad school work, and our data also came back with 1 in 5.

So this is happening. The issue is that these women aren't reporting it. Technically, I should have had something like 800 some cases last year, and only 26 got reported.... Even less got reported to the police department.

Its actually pretty easy to see if you work on a college campus. You should see our homecoming dance. I view it like a porno with clothes on. Pretty disgusting honestly, and the amount of women I see that decide to "twerk" upside down on the wall with full thong and ass cheeks hanging out is also mind blowing..... Young people's values and morals have gone to shit, and because of it, these assaults are occurring at an alarming rate.

At the last Wake homecoming I went to (3-ish years ago), there was a young couple basically having anal sex (they would claim they were "dancing") while 20 feet away children were playing volleyball. Couldn't believe this is the level society has sunk to. :(

Everybody else has chimed in here, but I did want to tell you this. If you had a son that was accused of a sexual assault, and he walked into my office or anybody else's office on another college for that matter, and he gave that speech to a hearing officer, or a board, about a hard no or a soft no, I can assure you, he would be found responsible for violating a sexual assault policy and wouldn't be attending that college anymore. He also would have a hard time getting into another institution because that would follow him.

There isn't a difference between a hard or a soft no in these circumstances. Its a clear line. Don't set him up for failure even if you believe what you believe in 100%.

The standard that college hearing officers, or hearing boards go by is called the Preponderance of evidence standard. That means more than likely than not to have occurred. Put another way, its 51% of me believes it occurred vs. 49% of me.

That soft no stuff wouldn't fly at all.

(At least amongst my social circles) no one disputes that rape is the fault of the rapist. The "hedging & fudging" is about what defines rape.

Fwiw, the #1 thing I try to impress on every young girl or boy who comes into my sphere of influence is to be proud of yourself and own your own actions. Considering the context of this thread I suppose it's necessary to clarify that bad things that aren't your fault can still happen whether sober or not, but "I was drunk" is an explanation, not an excuse, for your own actions.

I liked it. Idk if I entirely buy this story because I feel there's a LOT of background info missing and I'd be interested to see how exactly he phrased things in that email, but yeah that framework happens too often, and it's why so many of these incidents are brutal to adjucate.Yeah, we agree there too. I just think the few who are reporting it are a few more than were doing so a generation ago, not that the rate of incidences is rising. I'm shocked by the lack of decorum at times as well, but 15 years ago my HS cancelled dances due to lewd behavior & excessive alcohol consumption by girls, and this whole time the rate of teens engaging in sexual activity has been dropping, so I don't buy the values and morals argument. It's just more public. And just wait until the media starts catching on to what's happening on Snapchat etc... (Let's just say that part of the the USC LB story doesn't surprise me one bit.)

That's why it's so important that universities stay involved in student discipline in cases like this, instead of deferring to the police and prosecutors and waiting out the criminal investigation - which is a popular opinion right now. Because what he described wouldn't be rape or any crime in my state, but a university, like any organization, certainly should be able to regulate that conduct.

It is interesting to see how quickly we've gone from the primary media narrative of colleges not doing enough to stop this stuff, to now universities being criticized and sued for being too aggressive in expelling students, using a process that is, of course, much less friendly to the accused than the criminal justice system. A lot of people are really butthurt about that right now, but of course an organization should be allowed to regulate the behavior of its members. Subject to the civil law limitations, and I guess Title IX, though I'm not sure it's being interpreted correctly now in this context.

Careful. By mentioning what you see with your own eyes on a regular basis you're probably going to be accused of all sorts of heinous character flaws.