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.)
No comments:
Post a Comment