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Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

wsj.com

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Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#111

Post by shockeychap »

chaps wrote: post #109
shockeychap wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hell, I've seen complaints get dropped -- despite videos proof attached to the complaint -- that show cops slamming a kid against a wall and threatening to beat the kid up. Because the person getting slammed against a wall didn't know the badge number. If there was video evidence of a cop slamming a kid against a wall, why was this not used to identify the officer? This seems like a pretty outrageous claim that dem…

Your guess is as good as mine, man. But -- I saw the video, I saw the cop's face, I saw his partner's face, and the faces of the cops who were also dispatched, I saw the reports, I've seen the dispatch data, I've seen the assignment sheets, I've seen the car number, the GPS logs, etc etc. It should have been easy, but... Mind you, the only reason we have these docs is because a FOIA lawsuit that required their releas…

You’ve seen a lot of things. So can you provide sources for any of these things? Most importantly, where did this happen and when?

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#112

Post by chaps »

shockeychap wrote: post #111
chaps wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your guess is as good as mine, man. But -- I saw the video, I saw the cop's face, I saw his partner's face, and the faces of the cops who were also dispatched, I saw the reports, I've seen the dispatch data, I've seen the assignment sheets, I've seen the car number, the GPS logs, etc etc. It should have been easy, but... Mind you, the only reason we have these docs is because a FOIA lawsuit that required their releas…

You’ve seen a lot of things. So can you provide sources for any of these things? Most importantly, where did this happen and when?

I'm a reporter who works very specifically on policing and jailing in Chicago, and have spent years FOIAing these documents, and thousands of hours reading through them, and just as many in SQL/python. It hurts to the core reading it all. If you want me to share my reporting around these issues, I'm more than happy to. If you don't trust my reporting, I can share other reporters'.

It happened in Chicago outside of someone's home after the mom called the cops on her son. Her mom was the person who filed the complaint.

These stories are everywhere. https://cpdp.co is a good place to start looking.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#113

Post by freejazz »

stale2002 wrote: post #91
chowchowchow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument demonstrates absolutely no awareness of context and how a principle can be more important, or one might even say urgent to the point of needing to be spelled out in the constitution, in some contexts than others.

Edit: :( Bad faith arguments make me sad

They aren't posting in bad faith, you are incredibly confused and refusing to engage with responses to you.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#114

Post by wolverine876 »

WalterBright wrote: post #3

Anonymous accusations are a fine way to harass and intimidate anyone you disagree with or have a grudge against. As the article points out, it's a fine tool for oppression. A fundamental right we have in the US is the right to face our accusers, for good reason. Here's the text of it: > Sixth Amendment > In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…

It's an important principle and like anything it can't be dogma. Like anything, we need to take into account other important principles and also the higher purpose it serves - let's say 'liberty and justice for all'.

Powerful people often threaten those who are less powerful when they abuse them: If you tell anyone, I will ... ruin your career, kill you, hurt your family, prosecute you; harass, humiliate and persecute you (e.g., rape survivors), etc. That's why we have some anonymous reporting in some situations, to provide liberty and justice for all, not just for the powerful. It's the same reason anonymous speech seems an essential civil right to many at HN.

These days, a common reactionary rhetorical technique is to frame the desires of the powerful as if they are the vulnerable and powerless. What about their plight? ;) At the same time, insisting that anonymous reports - journalism, accusations, etc. - are invalid or violate their rights have long been a tool of the powerful: Make the vulnerable person expose themself to retribution, which also intimidates future victims from speaking.

There are no easy answers, but one approach is differentiating a report and a prosecution. For example, anyone can make an anonymous police report; if the subject of the report is to be tried and convicted, then the accuser needs to come forward.

How else do we protect the vulnerable without anonymity? How do we stop the powerful from running roughshod over them, unchecked?

> Anonymous accusations are a fine way to harass and intimidate anyone you disagree with or have a grudge against.

As discussed, that is not at all the only use for it. Do you have evidence about how common that is, for example at Stanford?

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#115

Post by wolverine876 »

pvaldes wrote: post #76
WalterBright wrote: post #3

Anonymous accusations are a fine way to harass and intimidate anyone you disagree with or have a grudge against. As the article points out, it's a fine tool for oppression. A fundamental right we have in the US is the right to face our accusers, for good reason. Here's the text of it: > Sixth Amendment > In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…

> A fundamental right we have in the US is the right to face our accusers I'm not so optimistic, there is an increasing pressure to erode this right slowly but surely. We had seen several cases of sexual harassment claims by groups of anonymous people that can avoid the right by the simple process of retracting in the last second and refusing to sue or show proofs. This is basically free for the accuser tagged instan…

Which cases? Is there evidence that it's different than before? And how do we protect victims from retribution?

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#116

Post by didericis »

chaps wrote: post #104

You hear this from police, too and it's one of the reasons police will often require you to go to a specific station, sign an affidavit, record an interview of you, and provide maximal information to show that your complaint is valid, and now your name is stored in their systems forever. Which, you know, leads to situations where a complaint is filed, but eg there's fear of retribution. So maybe they'll fill out an a…

The type of person that becomes a professor isn’t known for slamming kids against the wall. It’s the other way around. You see that frequently in those that go on to teach in troubled districts.

Academic types and teachers are some of the most agreeable and easily bullied people on the planet. They’ve already been severely gouged out of payment for the vast majority of the value they provide by administrators. The only real reason for that is personality profile. Colleges and schools get virtually all of their real value from high quality teachers. If teachers were less agreeable and less easily bullied by bureaucrats they’d have kicked the vast majority of the admins out by now.

Professors give their lives and turn down lots of money they could be earning on different high intelligence career tracks to teach students in classes where you’re lucky if only 50% are ungrateful, disrespectful and/or incompetent. They do that because they genuinely love teaching and mentoring and research/learning, even if only a fraction of their students absorb it. A lot of them also do it because they have a kind hearted but soft-spined personality profile that’s never left the Alma Mater.

The profession doesn’t have a power tripping cop like problem, at least for the majority of teachers. And the types of professors that do go on power trips often turn classes into cults and use their students as weapons. Look at Evergreen.

These kinds of anonymous complaints are just another tool for the types of bullies that have already destroyed a lot of the value of the university to get student followers to use against people they don’t like, and a tool for immature students (which colleges are full of, since the main impetus of college is to guide young adults to intellectual maturity) to attack their professors on a whim with zero consequence.

I don’t see any world in which they don’t do way more harm than good.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#117

Post by chowchowchow »

stale2002 wrote: post #96
chowchowchow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is a gap in your argument as stated then. Like, you need to do some work to explain why principles which are important in extreme circumstances, dealing with the use of force by and punishment power of the government, apply in less extreme ones like workplace disputes. You don't get to just point at the constitution and go "a ha!" and have everyone applaud your brilliant argumentation.

Edit: deleting comment due to the worthlessness of dealing with someone who is intentionally engaging in bad faith. I can't argue against intentional misphrasings.

Alright bud. I see the self righteous ego defense. Good luck to ya.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#118

Post by chaps »

didericis wrote: post #116
chaps wrote: post #104

You hear this from police, too and it's one of the reasons police will often require you to go to a specific station, sign an affidavit, record an interview of you, and provide maximal information to show that your complaint is valid, and now your name is stored in their systems forever. Which, you know, leads to situations where a complaint is filed, but eg there's fear of retribution. So maybe they'll fill out an a…

The type of person that becomes a professor isn’t known for slamming kids against the wall. It’s the other way around. You see that frequently in those that go on to teach in troubled districts. Academic types and teachers are some of the most agreeable and easily bullied people on the planet. They’ve already been severely gouged out of payment for the vast majority of the value they provide by administrators. The on…

Is it, though? To be blunt, run a news search for:

  professor rape for years "complaints" "ignored"
Tons of distinct cases there. Many of them ignored until after the victim(s) filed suit. Edit: and at Stanford! [1]

[1] https://stanforddaily.com/2022/06/19/a-stanford-professor-se...

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#119

Post by anigbrowl »

prepend wrote: post #97
anigbrowl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But police operate anonymous tiplines and investigate separately. Some people reporting crimes have a fear of retaliation, and sometimes that retaliation might even be rooted in corruption within the police force. The Supreme Court has ruled (as recently as 2014) that anonymity of report is not a barrier to an investigative stop by police, if the report includes sufficient detail to seem credible (Navarette v. Califo…

Anonymous tips cannot be used as evidence at trial.

Nobody is asserting that they can.

What I am saying is that they can be a valid basis for a police investigation, and the Supreme Court says this is Constitutional. It's possible that this shaped the design of Stanford's complaint handling process.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#120

Post by uoaei »

version_five wrote: post #54
Nifty3929 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. And I understand that you are not suggesting that Stanford is violating the 6th amendment, since this is not a criminal prosecution. What you're saying is that Stanford should adopt the same line of reasoning embodied in the 6th amendment, to the extent that being accused in this fashion is a very high cost, and that the accuser should not be able to escape accountability for making false or misleading…

This is a good clarification - there are so many "it's not the government, constitution doesn't apply" comments that ignore that fact that the constitution is generally good advice for large institutions and it's a valid criticism when their policies differ, even of there is no legal requirement

The point is, in the context of law, you can't just advocate for an agreement over a gentleman's handshake: you have to be in a position to enforce it. And enforcing restrictions on speech of this sort affects far more than just college professors with unpopular opinions. The 1st Amendment also covers anonymous speech.
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