Boulder's Rolling Stone
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, December 10, 2014
The past few weeks have not gone well for those fighting the War on College Sex that began in 2011. That's when the Obama administration threatened to withhold federal funds from American colleges that do not do everything in their power to ensure that "all students feel safe in their school," meaning free from sexual conflict between men and women. Anyone who passed through puberty and young adulthood knows that's a tall order under the best of circumstances. However, when the bias tilts as far as it has in the past few years, unintended consequences are bound to start showing up.
These past few weeks saw two noteworthy events on this front, one nationally and one locally. Both offer insights about what doesn't work if you want to prevent sexual abuse in America today.
Starting with the national news, this week saw the unraveling of a story published a few weeks back in Rolling Stone about a frat house gang rape at the University of Virginia (UVA). On Nov. 19, Rolling Stone published a lengthy and lurid story about UVA's "culture of hidden sexual violence" featuring the tell-all story of "Jackie," an alleged victim of a gang rape at a fraternity party. The story played to all of the awful stereotypes of predatory male behavior by describing a group of privileged frat boys with no apparent sense of humanity engaging in the most vile behavior imaginable. The story had immediate national and local impact, including prompting the president of UVA to suspend Greek life on campus.
However, inquiring minds noticed that the Rolling Stone article showed none of the standards of investigative journalism that one might expect given the severity of the allegations. For example, no one tried to contact the men accused of the rape to see if they might add some clarity or even confirm the basic accuracy of the story.
Apparently, Washington Post journalists were having a light news week, so they decided to do the work Rolling Stone should have done, and the story fell apart. It now appears from all accounts (including Rolling Stone's) that Jackie's story was largely fabricated. It also came out that the reporter had shopped around looking for the best story to fit her narrative of the pervasive rape culture on American college campuses. To get Jackie's sensational story, the Rolling Stone reporter had to agree not to contact the men accused of the rape. In the interest of telling a story to make a point, journalistic ethics were sacrificed and, along with them, the reputation of UVA.
However, the real losers in this story are the people who have worked across America to stop sexual violence on college campuses. Rolling Stone's attempts to score cheap points in an ongoing culture war will now cast unfair doubt on every honest story of college rape we hear for some time.
Closer to home, this past week saw another chapter in the Case of the Ogling Philosophy Department at CU that has been under fire from charges of rampant sexual discrimination and harassment. This past summer, a female philosophy graduate student was paid $825,000 by CU to settle her allegations that David Barnett, a philosophy professor, had retaliated against her after she reported being sexually assaulted by a fellow student. Barnett's great crime of retaliation was that he compiled a report arguing that she falsified some of her story of the assault.
Apparently, Barnett's exercise of his First Amendment rights in the interest of defending a male student he thought was unfairly accused of a crime can get you fired at CU, academic freedom be damned. In August, CU issued a notice of intent to dismiss Barnett, which would make him only the fourth tenured professor dismissed by CU during its 138-year history. Right now, Barnett's case is being considered by a faculty panel that will recommend next month whether or not he should be dismissed.
So, David Barnett's academic death sentence is being built around the same mistaken belief that got Rolling Stone into such deep trouble — that it's better to just believe the victim of alleged sexual assault than it is to ask hard questions that might shed more light on the truth, whatever that may be.
Where sexual misconduct thrives in American society, we should do everything we can to help stop it. But obscuring the truth, as Rolling Stone and UVA can now attest, doesn't help at all. I wonder if anyone at CU noticed.
The past few weeks have not gone well for those fighting the War on College Sex that began in 2011. That's when the Obama administration threatened to withhold federal funds from American colleges that do not do everything in their power to ensure that "all students feel safe in their school," meaning free from sexual conflict between men and women. Anyone who passed through puberty and young adulthood knows that's a tall order under the best of circumstances. However, when the bias tilts as far as it has in the past few years, unintended consequences are bound to start showing up.
These past few weeks saw two noteworthy events on this front, one nationally and one locally. Both offer insights about what doesn't work if you want to prevent sexual abuse in America today.
Starting with the national news, this week saw the unraveling of a story published a few weeks back in Rolling Stone about a frat house gang rape at the University of Virginia (UVA). On Nov. 19, Rolling Stone published a lengthy and lurid story about UVA's "culture of hidden sexual violence" featuring the tell-all story of "Jackie," an alleged victim of a gang rape at a fraternity party. The story played to all of the awful stereotypes of predatory male behavior by describing a group of privileged frat boys with no apparent sense of humanity engaging in the most vile behavior imaginable. The story had immediate national and local impact, including prompting the president of UVA to suspend Greek life on campus.
However, inquiring minds noticed that the Rolling Stone article showed none of the standards of investigative journalism that one might expect given the severity of the allegations. For example, no one tried to contact the men accused of the rape to see if they might add some clarity or even confirm the basic accuracy of the story.
Apparently, Washington Post journalists were having a light news week, so they decided to do the work Rolling Stone should have done, and the story fell apart. It now appears from all accounts (including Rolling Stone's) that Jackie's story was largely fabricated. It also came out that the reporter had shopped around looking for the best story to fit her narrative of the pervasive rape culture on American college campuses. To get Jackie's sensational story, the Rolling Stone reporter had to agree not to contact the men accused of the rape. In the interest of telling a story to make a point, journalistic ethics were sacrificed and, along with them, the reputation of UVA.
However, the real losers in this story are the people who have worked across America to stop sexual violence on college campuses. Rolling Stone's attempts to score cheap points in an ongoing culture war will now cast unfair doubt on every honest story of college rape we hear for some time.
Closer to home, this past week saw another chapter in the Case of the Ogling Philosophy Department at CU that has been under fire from charges of rampant sexual discrimination and harassment. This past summer, a female philosophy graduate student was paid $825,000 by CU to settle her allegations that David Barnett, a philosophy professor, had retaliated against her after she reported being sexually assaulted by a fellow student. Barnett's great crime of retaliation was that he compiled a report arguing that she falsified some of her story of the assault.
Apparently, Barnett's exercise of his First Amendment rights in the interest of defending a male student he thought was unfairly accused of a crime can get you fired at CU, academic freedom be damned. In August, CU issued a notice of intent to dismiss Barnett, which would make him only the fourth tenured professor dismissed by CU during its 138-year history. Right now, Barnett's case is being considered by a faculty panel that will recommend next month whether or not he should be dismissed.
So, David Barnett's academic death sentence is being built around the same mistaken belief that got Rolling Stone into such deep trouble — that it's better to just believe the victim of alleged sexual assault than it is to ask hard questions that might shed more light on the truth, whatever that may be.
Where sexual misconduct thrives in American society, we should do everything we can to help stop it. But obscuring the truth, as Rolling Stone and UVA can now attest, doesn't help at all. I wonder if anyone at CU noticed.