Lists naming alleged rapists appear on Columbia campus

[Gingersnap]

Lists naming alleged rapists appear on Columbia campus

Posted: May 15, 2014 9:13 PM MDT
Updated: May 15, 2014 9:16 PM MDT
By DAN BOWENS, @danbowensfox5


NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) -
A night before the last day of final exams, the buzz on Columbia's campus is about much more than just books. This week, fliers appeared inside university bathrooms listing the names of four male students described as rapists.

The fliers appeared after the same names were written on the walls of a few bathrooms and later removed, according to the Columbia Spectator.

Students we spoke with didn't know who wrote the names, but speculated that the actions are part of a larger frustration on campus.

In April, with the backing of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal complaint about the handling of alleged sexual assaults on campus.

The university issued the following statement to Fox 5: "The University is mindful of the multiple federal laws that govern these matters and provide important protections to survivors of sexual violence and to students engaged in our investigative process. These laws and our constitutional values do not permit us to silence debate on the difficult issues being discussed."

Columbia also presented an action plan including better resources for victims and enhanced training during student orientation, and more. The university also created a new administrator position, the executive vice president for student affairs, whose job will include being responsible for these resources.

I must be missing something here. Surely the school would expel any convicted rapists. It seems like this list is compiled from some dubious administrative process.

Why don't crime victims go through the police and the courts instead of the school? Are they prohibited from this?

Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/story/2553232...#ixzz31tbuMOba
Follow us: @myfoxny on Twitter | Fox5NY on Facebook

[Adam]

I don't know about Columbia, but in this region, we've had a problem with campus cops thinking that they were a lot bigger and more important and better-trained than they really are. There have been a number of cases at Vanderbilt with some pretty serious sexual assaults were swept under the rug by the VUPD, which is not an accredited police force and has no more authority than you or me, but they do a really great job of intimidating students who have been victimized (and the VUPD are pretty well-known for victimizing students themselves).

This was a HUGE problem at MTSU, which does have a state-accredited police force, and they're a bunch of bungling thugs. It was considered routine that girls who had been raped in dormitories (not just date-rape, but some stranger coming into their room and forcibly raping them) were told that they "weren't really raped" and that they shouldn't try to file charges or even report the crime. And if that victim still went ahead and filed a police report (remember, with a state-accredited police agency), all such claims went first through the idiotic kangaroo court of the "student disciplinary council" or whatever the hell it was called. The entire thing was a complete farce. Only after someone was "convicted" in this laughable committee would the police (or the school itself) consider turning over anything to the DA.

Just to make matters extra-worse, the campus is officially considered state property and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the Murfreesboro police department (not exactly Manhattan SVU in their own right), but instead only state troopers or the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department, who employs such fine crime-fighting individuals as this guy:

(who, by the way, was cleared of any wrongdoing in an "internal review" , and then honored as "deputy of the year" later).

These, of course, are just the sorts of people you want investigating and prosecuting your rape when you're 19 and traumatized after some guy broke into your dorm room and held a knife to your throat while he forcibly and violently raped you.


So, at least when I was there, and I'm guessing still to this day, a lot of rape on the MTSU campus goes un-reported and/or un-prosecuted. Just to make matters worse, I know for a fact of at least two cases in which someone was charged and "convicted" of "sexual battery" when they were known and demonstratively proven to be innocent. Because the "student disciplinary council" is loaded with radicalized feminists, it's impossible to be certain of getting anything vaguely resembling a "fair trial." So, in one case, it was a guy who was my "lab partner" for a CADD class (technically, this wasn't a lab, but we were partnered up anyway for this particular class, which was on collaborative projects). I know for a fact that he didn't rape this girl with whom he had gone on one date before he decided she was crazy, because at the time she insisted that the rape occurred, he was on the other side of campus, sitting in the CADD lab, with me. There was even security camera footage, complete with timestamp, solidly proving that we had been in the CADD lab together for a solid hour before and a solid hour after this girl claimed that he raped her in her dorm room on the other side of campus, a good mile and a half away. Didn't matter to the two radicalized feminists who were two of the three deciding "jurors" on the panel. Rape is rape, and if a woman claims rape, she was raped, especially if the woman is Black and poor and the accused is white and relatively well-off. And even if he didn't actually rape her, he deserves to be punished anyway for being white and wealthy. So, they "convicted" him and suspended him for the remainder of that semester and all of the next semester.

They turned their "verdict" over to the D.A. (an evil little fuck) who pressed charges basically with no evidence whatsoever other than the sworn statement from the disciplinary council that they had determined that this guy had raped this girl at the time that she claimed. It took a a filing with the state court of appeals to force MTSU to turn over the security footage proving this guy was in the CADD lab at the time of the rape in order to ultimately secure an acquittal, of course at ENORMOUS expense to this guy and his family. They sued the girl, successfully, but of course she had no assets and immediately claimed bankruptcy, so he gets a check for $7 or something like that every month from the bankruptcy trustee, doubtless taken out of her welfare collection.


I don't know about other campuses, but I've certainly heard similar stories repeated in the past by others about other campuses, so it would hardly surprise me to hear about this being the case at Columbia. The one big difference there is that they at least have access to the NYPD, and I would certainly tell anyone going to Columbia to bypass the campus cops for any serious crime and go to the NYPD directly for any serious crime. I'd give that advice to most students going to college just about anywhere, actually.

[Gingersnap]

I've just never thought about it before but I can't see any reason why students should be forced to deal with an in-house quasi-legal system. They are all adults. I can see why a campus security force would assist the real police but I can't see why there's any need for a fake investigative/court system these days.

[Adam]

I've just never thought about it before but I can't see any reason why students should be forced to deal with an in-house quasi-legal system. They are all adults. I can see why a campus security force would assist the real police but I can't see why there's any need for a fake investigative/court system these days.

To bury the numbers. What university chancellor wants to be the one known as having the highest sexual assault rate in the country?