Brown and date rape: I accuse;you lose

Here's a nifty item from the New York Times: A freshman from Wisconsin gets into an Ivy League school, Brown, and finds himself in a room with officials from that university who place on the table before him a one way airplane ticket back to Wisconsin; they execute expulsion from college, the ultimate penalty a student can pay.

Well, that was the ultimate academic penalty, but he was told it was either that or face criminal prosecution, a trial in Rhode Island courts and possible imprisonment. To a kid, who may or may not have had a lawyer (another one of those details we never get) this may have seemed an obvious choice.


He may or may not have been told about what happened to another Brown man, years earlier, who had been accused of rape after he found a naked, drunk, co-ed in his bed during a fraternity party and apparently considered this a gift from on high and took advantage of it. That frat boy was expelled on the basis he had signed a form during freshman week, one of those several thousand things you sign during freshman week, saying he would not take advantage of drunken co-eds.


The university never gives up details of exactly what happened in these cases, so it's impossible to judge. And if there was ever a case of the devil is in the details, date rape has got to be it.

In that earlier case, one detail did emerge: The drunk coed woke up the next morning, now sober and, for whatever reason, gave the fraternity brother her actual, real phone number, and exchanged pleasantries and only later, when she got back to her dorm, she decided she had actually been date raped. Again, you can only imagine.

In any case, both men were expelled from the college.

After the first case, there was plenty of outrage, but not enough to deter the university authorities from carrying out the sentence. The administration claimed they were helpless: The student court had spoken.

This second case apparently did not go before a student court, or a faculty court, or any sort of court but a sort of rendition occurred. If the administration at Brown had learn anything from the first case, maybe it was they were better off handling these things more like the CIA: You get the guy on a plane out of your jurisdiction and then whatever happens, it's not your problem.

One reason this headline caught my attention was an experience I had when I was a junior faculty member at the new medical school of that same university decades earlier. I the most junior faculty you could be and I was assigned to a faculty committee which considered a case of a third year medical student who had been having sexual intercourse regularly and at length with a sixteen year old patient on the psychiatric ward of the university psychiatric hospital. The question was how to deal with the medical student.


I thought, well, this ought to be a short meeting. This kid is history. The only difficult part was how do you explain to the police and the judge why it took a committee meeting to bring all this to their attention.

Date rape? This kid had never even asked for a date. The girl, in a sense, may have been a captive audience. Not to mention, underaged. Not to mention, likely mentally incompetent. I mean, it just went on and on.


Apparently, however, when the medical student was signing forms during his freshman week, he had not signed a form saying he would not have sex with underaged girls who were ensconced on the psych wards.

The student argued, he didn't know he had violated any code of behavior for doctors or medical students and the Dean, apparently, agreed.

No warning, no foul.

The decision of the committee, with a least one dissenting vote (I can remember because I cast it,) was this medical student did not deserve expulsion, nor even a letter of reprimand for his file and in fact he was to be told not to do that again because it was frowned upon and that was that.


When I asked the Dean what his lawyer thought about not reporting a felony, which is statutory rape, at a minimum, the dean asked me if I had a law degree.

I had neither a law degree nor tenure at the medical school, and after that meeting it was clear I was not likely to ever have either. Well, actually, the law degree was still a possibility.So, yes, a headline which had "Brown University" and "Rape" and "Student expelled," caught my eye, all these years later.

One thing I could not help but notice was the woman was referred to as "the accuser" not as "the victim," by the Times. This struck me because the woman who recently accused the Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback of rape was referred to as "the victim" by the prosecutor who had decided there was insufficient evidence to charge the quarterback with rape.

Again, details, but really.

 What is so frustrating about reading articles about date rape is they never give you enough details, just teasers: The woman involved did not want to press charges because she had a chemistry test she had to study for and she was afraid a public rape accusation would take time away from her studying.


Clearly, this is a pre medical student.

She also said, at one point, she was reluctant to press charges because, she "Didn't want anything bad to happen." And she complained the university officials had been "yelling at her."

Other little teasers: The woman's father had been a "prominent donor" to Brown.
So nothing bad happened, except a kid who had been a straight A student in high school got expelled from his dream school in the Ivy League. I don't know--maybe he deserved it. Anything's possible. This kid apparently came from a family of modest means--he was on a scholarship based on financial need. The woman accuser, however was the daughter of a prominent donor.

I can believe poor boys have raped rich girls. But I can also believe rich girls with angry fathers have unleashed lightning bolts upon poor boys who the powers that be decided were easy to sacrifice.

I am especially willing to believe the powers that be may do what is in their own best interests, justice, nuance, truth be damned.

But, presumably, the university heavies stopped yelling, so everything turned out okay in the end.



The details of the case were so closely held, I was not even in a position to report it to the police myself. I didn't know names, dates. I could not be sure whether or not the girl's parents had been told, although there was some suggestion they may have been, then again, maybe not. The Dean was not saying. I had a pretty good idea of location, but that was it. It was something out of Russia when Russia was really creepy. (Not like now, when it is only as creepy as Gitmo.)

The Supreme Court and the Phantom

The phantom considers it most rude he has been excluded from the process of selecting the next justice for the United States Supreme Court. 

As  readers of this blog will know, the phantom has  opined on the place of the  Court in modern American life on many occasions.  Unfortunately, as of this date there is only one official reader of this blog, outside the phantom himself, so unless that reader is President Obama hisownself, it is unlikely the phantom will hold much sway with respect to the next Supreme Court justice.

Not to be discouraged, the phantom would like to profer a few names:  Gail Collins, whose unerring sense of what's wrong would certainly serve her well in any encounters with Justice Scalia, who almost always is.

Or, if Ms. Collins is unavailable, or more likely, uninterested in the position, Judge Robertson.  Know nothing more about him than what I heard on the Oberman show, which I saw for the first time the other day and became a big fan. Judge Robertson, apparently has ruled for several "detainees" which is what they call prisoners who have never been charged with anything and who have apparently done nothing illegal, but who are, nevertheless in a dungeon run by the United States because we are terrified of men with beards we find wandering around Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other places where men do not shave or bathe as regularly as we think they ought to. We are fighting a war to make the world safe for the clean shaven and unsafe for the unshaven.

The phantom would offer himself as a candidate but only if he can serve from  the state of New Hampshire and telecommute.  He sees no reason he need be in Washington except for those few days of the year when oral arguements are heard and, in the interest of saving jet fuel, he sees no reason he could not attend those via Sykpe or some form of video conference. 

But, in all modesty, the phantom admits there is a much better candidate: Alan Greenspan. Here is a man upon whose every word, every "um" or "but" markets soared or plummeted as analysts, legislators tried to microtome every word and look at it under microscopes for meaning because everyone knew that Alan Greenspan would tell us what was going to happen, would tell us the truth, if only we were smart enough to understand whatever it was he might be saying. And he did not make it easy.

Better yet, Chauncey Gardner. No, Alan Greenspan, he's the real life Gardner. It wasn't Greenspan's fault, all that deregulation and reversal of those safeguards put in place after the last Depresssion--after all, he was the god we made. He only played the role of the man who would be king. We made him king. Give the guy a break. Give him another chance. Put him on the Supreme Court. 

Let Justice Scalia try to figure out what he's saying. Now there would be poetic justice. 

This would mean the phantom would forgo the pleasure of discussing cases face to face with Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts and that other guy who seems to just phone in his opinions which are usually, "Whatever Scalia says."

The court has missed a golden opportunity in George Carlin, who would have been a splendid counter weight to the current four horsemen of the apocalypse, but let us not cry over spilled soy.

And one more thing, while we're talking about nominating worthy people to positions of prominent public display: Can you imagine Ronald Reagan on the ten dollar bill?  

Wowser. 

Or, we could get rid of that guy Grant (on the $50) who most Americans can barely recall anyway--all he did was win the Civil War after a half dozen Union generals tried very hard to lose it, and as President he did stuff like being sure the slaves weren't actually returned to slavery in everything but name only.  What's that compared to giving us eternal ringing phrases like, "Government is not the solution--it's the problem" or "The ten most frightening words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you"?

I mean those are words to live by.

President Reagan gave voice to that whole anti New Deal ideal that regulation and government are very bad. His most emblematic act was to fire all the air traffic controllers. I did not realize it at the time, but what a stroke of symbolic genius--I mean there it is all in a single nutshell. The ultimate regulators, telling planes when they can take off and land. You can't even get out and taxi on a runway without playing Mother May I with those government bureaucrats up there lording it over everyone in some ivory tower, looking down on pilots and patriots who are just trying to do their jobs as part of a deregulated free enterprise called the airlines, which are so much better off now than before they were deregulated that they haven't made a profit since.

So there we have it--let's nominate a dead white guy for the ten dollar bill and a living white guy  or white woman for the best court  in the land, a court where the men are beautiful the women smart and all the opinions are averaged.

The Certification Racket

Everyone wants to be believe his doctor is thoroughly tested, and if the doctor is over the age of forty, you want to be sure he's not completely senile, so don't we all like the idea of testing and retesting doctors with "certification" exams to be sure they haven't lost their edge?

On the other hand, how would  you feel about having to take your driver's license exam every other year?  Or suppose you had to take a written exam to be allowed to operate your lawn mower?  Now there's a potentially dangerous piece of machinery.  Or suppose we sat you down for a three hour exam to be sure you knew the fundamentals of raising your children--after all, what more vulnerable people are there than children who are totally dependent on their parents?

I was amazed how they just shoved our newborn babe into our arms and sent us home with him without even requiring us to take out a number two pencil and taking even a ten question multiple choice test.  When your child cries, you should:  A/ Turn up the music very loud  B/ Place him in a sound proof room   C/ Call your neighbor who has five kids and see if you can send your baby over to her house for a while.

A parent certification exam to be given when the children are one day, one year, three years, five years old. Sounds reasonable to me.

Got the point?

Qualifying exams are always a good idea, unless you are the one who has to take them or unless you look carefully at what's being tested and what questions are being asked.

The original idea of doctor's exams has been so perverted and corrupted, the whole process is now doing more harm than good. 

Where once you wanted an exam to simply demonstrate the physician has the basic facts well understood, now exams are being used as marketing tools so a physician who did his medical school in Iran, his internship in Nigeria and his residency in outer Osh Kosh and his fellowship at Florida Swamp Hospital can now advertize he's "Board Certified" in internal medicine, and furthermore that means he's a safer and better bet than the guy who went to Harvard Medical school and did all his training there, but has not passed his boards in internal medicine. And believe me, the more you know which is not in the standard textbook, or in the book the Board will sell you for another thousand dollars, the less chance you have of passing the exam.

Today,  every task you do, there is somebody looking to make some money "certifying" you. You want to read a bone density, there's an organization which, for less than a thousand dollars will give you a "course" and a diploma suitable for framing to hang on your wall saying you are not just safe to interpret that bone density test, but you are better than the guy who does not have that paper on the wall.

Organizations which long ago would have gone extinct, like the American College of Physicians, have struck gold giving "board exams" in all the medical specialties. And now the College is pushing to get physicians to be required to take those exams more and more often. Let's test yearly. Maybe monthly, to keep that cash flow going.

The College's lobbyists have been out there selling their pitch so now a state like North Carolina, which is an attractive state for retiring people, including retiring doctors, requires you pass your board exam within the past few years in order to be licensed to practice there. Now that's something new. This serves the interests of several special interest groups all at once--local doctors don't have to face competition from docs who have practiced in other states and now, in their sixties, want to move to North Carolina and practice their last decade there.  The College gets to press other states to "Protect" their citizens the way North Carolina does. And the citizens get sold the bill of goods that only the best doctors get licensed in North Carolina.

I suppose it comes down to knowing what good is--and clearly the bureaucrats on the board of licensing in NC have a problem with that.

But in the information age, when high paying jobs go to the well educated, we want to be sure our accountant, our physician, our lawyer, our Congressmen know what they are doing. 

Funny thing is, you notice, the lawyers and Congressmen have not been rushing to retake their bar exams, or to institute a licensing exam for legislators.

Ever think about that?

Alumni Giving: Even crazier, after all these years

The National Gallery of Art, in Washingto, DC held a private, invited guests only party one night, after hours. My wife and I stood there in front of famous paintings, holding our cocktails, thinking, "Wow, this is what happens when you go to an elite private college."

The shindig was thrown by the alumni association of my alma mater on the occasion of a visit to Washington by the president of the college.

After the cocktails were consumed and the glassware collected, we were herded into a lovely auditorium, where the president, opened his remarks with remarks I remember as if it were yesterday, "We are so happy you could all find time in your busy schedules to join us and it's a joy to see so many members of the college family here tonight. You know how important you all are to us, how much we enjoy seeing you whenever you make it back to campus, especially around commencement to walk with your class, and you know how we continue to delight in your progress through life, and we want to continue to do anything we can to foster the success you began as undergraduates--just don't ask us to accept your children as legacies."

There was a nervous tittering among the family and I felt a heavy pull on my right arm, which was my wife, who instinctively grabbed it, knowing I was reflexively raising it and she knew what I would blurt out: "Well, why the hell did you think we came here tonight?"

It was one of those moments of clarity, where the truth was unmasked: We were members of the family when we opened our checkbooks, but not when we asked the college to reciprocate by accepting our children.

Now, I understand about meritocracy. Why should some feckless son or vapid daughter be handed an admission to the college when some kid who had knocked himself out getting good grades and going to Kaplan courses to get high SAT scores, who had studied violin, cut throats to get the lead in the school musical, been the star of the volleyball team and worked tirelessly in soup kitchens among the less fortunate, why should someone who had done all that before the age of 18 be spurned just so some fortunate son or daughter of an alum could walk away with the glittering prize?

Well, actually, there are reasons.

A meritocracy is based on several assumptions: First, you know what good is, i.e. you can define merit. Second, you have some reasonably reliable way to identify this thing called merit among individuals in a large pool of applicants. Third, merit has nothing to do with the quality or behavior of the applicant's parents, but only with the 18 year old in question.

Some years after drinking the college's wine at the National Gallery, I got a phone call from my wife, very amused. We had received a letter from the college informing me it had been 20 years since my graduation and to mark this milestone, the college had calculated, given my current financial circumstances as an esteemed professional in my community, they thought I ought to write them a check for $20,000.

My wife found this very amusing. I had written the college a check for about $200 each year and she had written the same to her college and I had written one to my medical school and to her professional school and obviously my college had a secretary who was decimal point challenged.

But no, a few days later I got a phone call from one of the few people I had known in college. I knew most of the pre med students, a few of kids who lived in my dorm, but for the most part, being a pre med in college does not allow for much socializing, bonding with classmates or idle chatter. But the college somehow managed to identify one of the few people who I would actually know: And he was now a radiologist in Dallas. He said he gulped hard before writing his check, but after all, think of all we owed to the college for setting us on the path to medical school, for really launching our lives, financially. We kind of owed them. It was pay back time.

Now this is a radiologist talking. Radiologists tended, in those years, to make between $300,000 and $500,000 a year, which is why Radiology, Opthalmology And Dermatology was called "The ROAD" to happiness. So $20,000 was not a budget wrecker for him. For me, it would have been more than 20% of my gross adjusted income. That's a pretty big tithe.

One thing he said really impressed me: He said he knew, given my specialty, my income from the practice of medicine might not allow for a 20 K check but after all, I had written all those books. The reason this was such a surprise to me was each time I had written a book, the publisher had called the alumni magazine to put a notice in the alumni monthly--a little free publicity to a group which might be interested. The alumni magazine never responded.

I guess, as a family, we were not all that close.
So, I wrote a check for $300 that year. It was probably a total coincidence three years later my son was rejected from the college. My son with his perfect SAT score but less than perfect grades--it is a meritocracy, after all. There were probably, always are reasons to not admit any individual.

My wife, being a cynic suggested the college was simply saying it made more sense to look for a family which would contribute $20,000 annually than to stick with one which contributed $200 a year--$300 on a big day.

Maybe I hadn't done enough pay back, I thought. After all, this college gave me my start.

On the other hand, no. Like most colleges, the faculty there seemed to be intent on weeding out undeserving pre meds. Professors who themselves never got closer to a medical school door than delivering a paper, were now intent on selecting against the unworthy. Professors of biology, organic chemistry and math threw trick questions at us on exams, piled on hours of make work work and generally created havoc, paranoia and no small degree of misery much as the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket did, all in the name of weeding out the weak and undeserving.

I did have some wonderful professors who opened up new ways of thinking for me, who delivered ideas I still think about today, but on balance, I did not like the place much at the time.

As years went by, I actually became fonder of the idea of the college. And it was a social card in some crowds, as my kids were growing up and other parents hearing where I went to school became suddenly my new best friend, hoping I could write their kid a letter.

But, really, that whole marketing ploy of family, pay back? I don't write Honda a check every year because I so loved that car, which served me so well for years after I made my last payment. I don't get letters or phone calls reminding me I'm part of the Honda family, write a check.

And when I really think about it, there was a lot of talk in college about life long learning, but most of the life long learning I do is through public radio, public television or at work. I write checks to the public broadcasting people, but not to the folks at work who teach me about computers.

And computers. When I was in college, computers were in early gestation. I learned about computers on my own, after college and not because college had prepared me for lifelong learning but because computers offered me something.

How many people have jobs today for which college did nothing to prepare them? People who went through college in the 60's, 70's and early 80's learned computers after college and this learning became their careers. If they were out to pay back, they would not be writing checks to their colleges.

Families do provide an ongoing connection to the past, which, despite miles of separation, despite the passage of time endure. Parents continue to brag about their children, tell the world about how well they've done.

Colleges as families, actually don't really do that. Yes, there are the notes in the news of the classes in the alumni magazine, but the college doesn't really bother itself with success stories--the college's interest in tracking success is strictly financial. This guy make a ton of money. Maybe we can get him to give us some. Some alumni magazines run articles about alumni who have become prominent in their fields, but it all has the feel of marketing.

Face it, the college has only one interest in you, once you graduate. You are a source of pay out. You buy love with money, and that's really all she cares about.
But, if there is no rational case for writing checks to the alma mater, there is the emotional case. It's an act of righting wrongs. Most people feel they missed their chance in college. Didn't study hard enough. Didn't play hard enough. Didn't take full advantage of all the college offered. And by writing that check, you place a warm glow over those college years. You turn a failure into a success. You say to yourself, "I really had a great time there."

Reminds me of when I went back to my high school to interview applicants for my college. I had not liked high school at all. I felt defeated, rejected, beat up by high school. The colors of the high school were black and white and that struck me as perfectly appropriate: Those years were colorless, dreary and best put behind me.

Walking back into the same old hallways, for the first time in years, I saw cheerleaders, all bouncey and excited, flirting with boys and kids who looked a lot like my friends had looked at that age. Lockers were slamming, kids were shouting to each other. nAd I looked around and thought, "God, I loved this place."

Later that day, I wrote a check to help the high school build a new gym.

Go figure.