But that doesn't mean that those who will be assigned as coordinators and committee members are experts like criminal investigators and their researchers.
New Title IX guidelines formalized by Betsy DeVos.
- Thread starter Schadrach
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I'll ask the same thing I've asked of others: Can you point to specifics in the new policy you disagree with? In addition, what would you prefer the system look like, and please be detailed and not some vague moral statement because that doesn't say anything about how you do things, and the devil is in the details.
Maybe. I think there is a point to that sort of comment.
Fundamentally, college is playground for the affluent with a worrying intersection of hormones, newly discovered independence and immaturity which will a breeding ground for indiscretion. Being caught committing sexual assault is bad for a person's prospects. There's an obvious benefit to protecting your social class from adverse consequences of their sexual assaults and harrassment. Of course, it does also mean subjecting some of your class to just sucking up the pain, humiliation and outrage of being sexually assault without any redress: but all in all, no-one's going to question your right to be a supreme court justice 30 years after you were sexually assaulted, but they will 30 years after you committed a sexual assault. The last thing the rich and powerful want is their little darling held back from the vibrant and enriching career that is his birthright because he shoved his cock into a drunk, unconscious person's backside when he was 20.
Conversely, the last thing I would want for my hypothetical son is to have their life and reputation ruined forever because he slept with a girl who later regretted it.
And then when your hypothetical daughter is raped, you can pat her arm and soothingly explain to her why her attacker getting away scot free is a price worth paying.
And when your hypothetical son is falsely accused, you can pat his arm and soothingly explain to him why his accuser getting away scot free is a price worth paying.
See, I can do it too.
My point with both of these posts is to point out that prejudice isn't a good argument. Implying that this law is only made to protect the affluent from the consequences of their actions is really just an accusation that stems from a presumption of guilt based on one's social status. That's prejudice.
Such a bad argument can be made invalid with a similarly bad argument that makes accusations in the other direction.
"The rich are rich because they're evil"
"the poor are poor because they're lazy"
"white people are ___ because they're ______"
"black people are ___ because they're ____ "
It's all just an -ism with a different prefix.
?
You already demonstrated you could do it with your previous comment. You didn't need to repeat the trick.
Everyone is inclined to protect themselves. It's not prejudice to note that the affluent have far more power to do so.
Ehhh, that might be true, but it also still sounds iffy. "Everyone is equally unethical, but this particular group won out and got to display their lack of ethics because of [characteristic]"
When you take that to its logical conclusion, you end up believing that, if, say, black people were in power, they'd stack the deck in favor of black people, and women would stack the deck in favor of women, for example. Is that prejudice, or is that just human nature? It's a bleak outlook, regardless.
Or maybe it's an argument for forced diversity, where you need people with conflicting interests to constantly make compromises, lest their inherent tribalism take over...
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Wealth isn't an innate characteristic, though, and cannot be compared to such. The connection between wealth and the means to protect oneself is demonstrable and undeniable: it confers enormous means. The acknowledgement of that means is not prejudice.
If you apply an argument to wealth, it isn't a "logical conclusion" to extend it to unrelated characteristics that have nothing in common. Wealth confers very specific advantages.
It's an required characteristic in the sense that one needs to be affluent to be a part of the affluent class, so I think it still counts.
I'm not suggesting it's anything inherent, like skin color, or anything.
I can see the "power corrupts" argument, but I still think it's prejudice to assume that the rich are corrupted.
That's kind of like assuming that, since poverty correlates with crime, the poor are criminals.
I don't know what your point is, but mine is that if a crime which should be reported to the police takes place, then it should be reported to the authorities. Whether or not it is false can be decided upon by experts, and not by staff members appointed by schools, unless they happen to be experts who are recognized by authorities.
The guidelines point out that it is the school which must gather evidence and not either party, decision-makers decide which content of cross-examination is valid or otherwise, and advisors may or may not be lawyers.
These make absolutely no sense at all as there is no assurance that assigned staff members or selected advisors are experts in investigation or trials. If any, there should be at least third-party arbitration and lawyers, with consultation with local authorities. And if the offense involves violence such as rape, then it should reported straight to the authorities, which will inform the school of the crime.
Poverty only correlates with the kind of crime that produces a rap sheet. Wage theft steals more money than all other kinds of theft combined, but enormous wealth shields the perpetrators from almost all consequence.
But nobody is assuming the rich are definitely corrupted. They merely have the means to act on it much more effectively if corrupt.
The world is full of injustice. It seems to me that the US justice system pours huge numbers of poor (and disproportionately BAME) people into its maw and spits them into prison, defended by crummy public defenders and copping plea deals even when innocent just to avoid heavy sentences. We all know it does. It's not that I disapprove of government tightening procedure to improve the accuracy of justice at all - I just think it's slightly telling that they think this is terribly important, whilst an ocean of injustice roils on elsewhere with seemingly little interest. I cannot help but think that reflects some degree of self-interest on the behalf of decision makers. Save a few of their children from the inconvenience of sexual assault and harassment accusations whether true or false, but carry on mass criminalising lower class black people... because they're just other people.
I don't mean to paint the world that dark a place. I am broadly of the belief that humanity has a great reservoir of compassion, care, and respect that alongside their self-interest, greed and malice. However, I think to prevent the worst abuses of the self-serving requires processes and oversight. Diversity, particularly in power, is one: the more different voices are heard in the corridors of power, the less likely it is that the different will be ignored.
While I agree with you in principle, it doesn't really apply here. These are Department of Education guidelines. It's not as if the Department of Justice, which is actually the most involved in guiding legal policy, has been the ones tied up in this over working on other things.
Basically, because someone argued and the court agreed that the school not having a process for handling sexual harassment/assault above and beyond simply passing it to the legal system was a form a sex discrimination.
It is noteworthy that the college Title IX process doesn't replace law enforcement, but can be done separate form or in combination with law enforcement.
When discussing changes to policy? Not really. It's like having someone call you asking for tech help and the only thing they're willing to tell you is "it's broke".
And by and large that's what I see with people taking issue with the new guidelines - a lot of folks taking issue with them, but being unwilling to articulate what they take issue with or why with any specificity.
...and then there's @ralfy whose primary complaint appears to be that there's a process other than "contact real law enforcement" at all. At least it's a firm complaint, even if one that would outright fail requirements set forth by the courts regarding Title IX procedures.
The department doesn't really matter. Sure, the DoJ has a certain limit to its administrative capacity, but if someone really wanted, they could just expand the DoJ (even if temporarily) to get a job done.
It's about political will, really. It's relatively easy, and a vote winner amongst a good target group.
All policy reflects the preoccupations of the people who carried it out. There's never any harm pointing out what some of them may be. It might not be exactly what you want to discuss, but no-one has to discuss what you want them to.
The idea that some of the policy (e.g. the unusually strict definition of sexual harassment, decrease in cases that the college must consider, potential increase in genuine victims dissuaded from taking action) have already been commented upon. There's not much we can do but wait and see how it turns out.