America’s New Sex Bureaucracy • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#81

Post by wnoise » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

paggle wrote: post #36

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

Sometimes an organization needs to act with less power to punish, but also less standard of proof. For example, NFL player Ray Rice was caught on video punching his girlfriend unconscious. The NFL can’t put him in prison, but they did suspend him from the league, because he was a toxic brand even though his girlfriend did not press criminal or civil charges. These universities are government organizations, but also l…

Many of them are not government organizations. Even the ones that are, are state organizations, not federal.

They do all take federal money though...

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#82

Post by throwaway2048 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #76

jayd16 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters its a civil vs criminal distinction.

The government is imposing penalties for criminal behavior. Classifying that as "civil" is a farce.

You can be sued in civil court for criminal actions.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#83

Post by nkurz » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

drewrv wrote: post #30

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

Ideally that makes sense to me, but unfortunately courts take a long of time and don't always pursue cases thoroughly. Given that reality, I don't know how an institution is supposed to handle the following scenario without their own tribunal system: Student A and Student B have a class together. Their dorms are next door to each other. Student A rapes Student B. Is Student B expected to attend class every day with t…

While that would clearly be an uncomfortable situation for Student B, I'm not sure how that is different than when someone accuses their non-dorm neighbor of rape. Is it reasonable outside of school to have to live next door to your rapist while the police and courts slowly do their job? While the hope would be that if the evidence is clear, the suspect would quickly be taken into custody, obviously this doesn't always happen. And obviously, sometimes the evidence isn't clear.

Outside of universities, we've decided on a particular balance between the rights of the accused and the psychological well-being of the accuser. Perhaps we should change the system everywhere to more greatly favor the accuser and to lower the standard for guilt in cases of sexual assault, but I don't see why universities should have a different standard than the rest of society.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#84

Post by thefj » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:06 AM UTC

drewrv wrote: post #30

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

Ideally that makes sense to me, but unfortunately courts take a long of time and don't always pursue cases thoroughly. Given that reality, I don't know how an institution is supposed to handle the following scenario without their own tribunal system: Student A and Student B have a class together. Their dorms are next door to each other. Student A rapes Student B. Is Student B expected to attend class every day with t…

What happens in that scenario when it's just two people living in the same building? Why are colleges different?

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#85

Post by jancsika » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

How in the world is the conversation not about the lack of ethics of the teachers and faculty who agree to serve as the amateur judges/questioners in these tribunals?

Hello, I spent a decade of my life learning just how difficult it is to become an expert in my very narrow field. In fact I spend most of my time helping undergrads refine their rank speculation into tractable problems to potentially guide them to a deeper understanding of even a tiny slice of my narrow specialty.

What's that? You'd like me to serve on a jury for the school? No not on a jury, but instead to serve as a kind of combination panel judge and amateur lawyer? For what may be criminal allegations against a student? And you say there's no actual trained judicial expert to lead and constrain the process, but instead a handbook that will teach me in about an hour how to question a witness?

Sorry, it's my minimal sense of civic and academic integrity calling. I really have to take this...

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#86

Post by rubbingalcohol » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

Fellshard wrote: post #6

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

My guess is that it enables them to spin up their own experimental judicial systems that they believe should exist. To them, relegating to proper courts would be giving up their stake in determining how things 'ought to be'. Consider, for example, the premise of 'rape culture' which was popularized a few years ago. If such a claim concerning culture is to be made, then it implies the judicial systems external to the…

Could you elaborate how it follows that the judicial institutions themselves would be reinforcing 'rape culture' in your example? Wouldn't it be more plausible that factors external to the judicial systems might be to blame?

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#87

Post by Fellshard » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #41

Fellshard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it enables them to spin up their own experimental judicial systems that they believe should exist. To them, relegating to proper courts would be giving up their stake in determining how things 'ought to be'. Consider, for example, the premise of 'rape culture' which was popularized a few years ago. If such a claim concerning culture is to be made, then it implies the judicial systems external to the…

That ridiculous claims smacks of conspiracy theory. Any number of institutions have their own committees to judge bad behavior - civil courts of all sorts multiply in a bureaucratic society and colleges just one example of a bureaucracy and one strongly connected to many others in this society.

This is true that bureaucracy breeds judicial systems. My observation is more related to the /why/ of this particular common case. It does not take a conspiracy theory to observe what is said by those enacting Title IX policies and the ensuing results that follow as a natural consequence.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#88

Post by Fellshard » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:14 AM UTC

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #86

Fellshard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it enables them to spin up their own experimental judicial systems that they believe should exist. To them, relegating to proper courts would be giving up their stake in determining how things 'ought to be'. Consider, for example, the premise of 'rape culture' which was popularized a few years ago. If such a claim concerning culture is to be made, then it implies the judicial systems external to the…

Could you elaborate how it follows that the judicial institutions themselves would be reinforcing 'rape culture' in your example? Wouldn't it be more plausible that factors external to the judicial systems might be to blame?

The reasoning being, 'if we let the external systems deal with it, they would not judge rightly by our standards.' If they believed it would judge rightly, they would have no reason to institute their own.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#89

Post by scarmig » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:14 AM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

The court system is a very rigid structure. It's costly, and in the USA inherently has components that make it ineffective to addressing rape accusations, particularly the right to cross examine the accuser and how a good defense attorney will use that right. Oftentimes a victim doesn't want to go through that process and is mostly interested in not having to be confronted with their rapist every day.

That doesn't mean anything, one way or another, about how well these university tribunals work. It's just pointing out deficiencies in the existing court system.

Another way to think of it is balancing false negatives and false positives. The court system, ideally, errs on the side of minimizing false positives, because of how damaging they are for the accused. That inherently means more false negatives, and aspects of the process that are also much more burdensome for victims to navigate. Universities are trying to create an alternative system, where more false positives are accepted and consequences are less severe, and more focused on making sure the victim doesn't have to confront their rapist in day-to-day life than on life-altering consequences for the accused or protecting the public more generally from repeat offenses.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#90

Post by FakeComments » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #60

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

If I run a startup, and one of my employees is making other employees uncomfortable, and he keeps getting accused of harassing other employees, and is generally just making some of my best engineers unhappy, hurting productivity, and ruining our carefully constructed culture... ...I can fire him. I mean, obviously I need to go through the proper HR procedures, follow local employment law, respect the terms of his con…

Universities aren’t always a business, they’re often government institutions.

A state organization is legally bound to offer certain equal rights and due process protections, which is one of the trade-offs of having state schools.