Columbia University: if they scribble your name and call you a rapist on a women's bathroom wall, it's as good as a conviction

Ultramegasaurus · 2014-05-15T20:12:27+00:00

Truly scary how principles of a constitutional, civilized state are thrown overboard so recklessly by feminists and all the people who are poisoned by their ideology, without any significant protest. As a male, you're basically standing with one foot in prison when attending an American university or college it seems.

mattsingz · 2014-05-15T22:19:46+00:00

I'm a columbia university student, and I gotta say, I've actually been pretty impressed with the response of the students to this graffiti. Even some of my most feminist friends were appalled by these actions. As for the actions of bwog, its not really too big an injustice, although i see where you are coming from, but after all its a student-run blog, not a paid newspaper job.

PS. This is one of the most upvoted comments on the thread. Trust me, guys at columbia are not taking this witch hunt lightly.

Newbosterone · 2014-05-15T22:30:32+00:00

Were I that student, I'd be tempted to put the names of everyone else on the masthead on bathroom walls, with similar allegations, and demand their dismissal. That would address the conflict of interest.

Ps - PierceHarlan is commenting turned off?

2014-05-16T00:03:39+00:00

[permanently deleted]

IcyTy · 2014-05-16T08:34:48+00:00

Yo Pierce

Found http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-08/local/me-18595_1_prior-sexual-activity for your Dershowitz quote. Would be a good policy to link a source when quoting people in case some don't believe you.

KillJoy575 · 2014-05-16T17:41:41+00:00

Wow, crazy.

2014-05-17T03:27:30+00:00

I think the best course of action is for the MRAs to write their name in along with those accused, rather than point at other people.

It's one thing to put your own name down to stand in solidarity with the accused and to point out how the system can be abused, and another to hand ammunition over to the american-taliban to use against the MRM in a hyperbolic way. I am sure they can try and twist the action as some kind of "confessional", but we at least get to frame the debate and action from that point on if we should come under fire.

I can't see a university dismissing 100s of people or opening themselves up to the lawsuits that would come right after.

But that's my suggestion. I'm not there, so I can't. But I would consent to my name being used on the wall all the same.

TheGDBatman · 2014-05-17T14:30:44+00:00

And yet somehow, "For a good time, call..." numbers are the height of misogyny. Go figure.

PierceHarlan · 2014-05-15T22:05:29+00:00

We often see companies or public bodies dissociating themselves from members who get caught up in controversy (such as an unproven criminal charge).

This story, however, goes one step further. There are official channels to make this kind of accusation.

There are the police, and there are campus tribunals (which have been overreaching enough already). But to scribble names on bathroom walls suggests that these accusations have too little credibility to be taken seriously through any official channel.

I personally think that MRAs vastly overstate the incidence of false accusations. I personally believe that for every false accusation, there are ten real sexual assaults that do not result in a conviction. I also believe that the ratios don't matter - because false accusation and sexual assaults are both wrongs which deserve proper attention.

But if someone were to make a false accusation, I imagine that they'd be far more inclined to scribble it anonymously in a bathroom than report it to authorities. To take that kind of anonymous accusation with any degree of seriousness is shameful

CMOS222 · 2014-05-15T21:19:05+00:00

One way to counter this would be to hijack the campaign. Collect the name of every member of the university board of governors, every "mangina" on the university newspaper, add a random selection of 5 percent of the male faculty and student body, and begin a six-month campaign of plastering their names in the bathrooms anonymously. Accuse them of rape and make it look as much like the original campaign as possible.

Then get the name of every women's studies professor or graduate student and start plastering messages that they are the ones plastering the graffiti.

Get everybody running in circles. Use the campus man-hater's own weapon against them.

stopsayingfaggot · 2014-05-16T06:49:38+00:00

A few things:

You repeatedly state, including in your title, that the staffer was fired. They weren't; the editors asked the staffer to resign and they agreed. A subtle but important distinction.
You said that:

We assume that the fired staffer's name was scribbled on some bathroom wall by some unidentified woman using a toilet.

While this by itself is a reasonable assumption given what's happening at the school and their own reference to the bathroom lists later in the statement, it's unreasonable to further assume (as you seem to do so) that this was the only information received by the editors. Their statement referred to an anonymous tip, which implies some sort of communication between the informant and the publication. There's a link labeled "Submit a tip" at the top of their website, for heaven's sake. Regardless, you can't know what information or allegations the editors are acting on, so assuming that it's limited to just an anonymous bathroom scrawl is unjustifiably sloppy.
You said that:

Ah, no, not exactly. Here is what the editors said: "Our decision does not reflect a position on the innocence or guilt of this former staff member, nor does it comment on, take a position on, support, implicitly or explicitly, any allegations of fact or law made against such person." (Read the editors' statement here.)

The import is as clear as it is chilling: the editors' decision to dismiss the staffer had nothing whatsoever to do with the merits, validity, or strength of the allegations lobbed at the staffer, or with the staffer's guilt or innocence. The staffer deserves to be fired, the editors think, because of an unfounded accusation that the editors of Bwog haven't been able, or haven't bothered, to verify or confirm.

The second paragraph doesn't follow from the first, nor was it what the editors were saying. That their decision doesn't reflect a (public) position" on the innocence or guilt of the staff member doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't based at least in part on an internal assessment of the strength of the allegations. The quotation you included from the editors was meant as a disclaimer to protect them from accusations of libel or defamation, it didn't mean that consideration of the "merits, validity, or strength of the allegations lobbed at the staffer" literally had nothing to do with their decision. They say as much in their statement, having gone as far as to consult with legal counsel and university administrators, and reiterating that the allegations were merely that, allegations.
Even granting that the editors' decision didn't take into account the merits of the allegations against the staffer, you have to understand that assessing guilt or innocence isn't really their primary consideration. They're a news blog, not a court of law; their main concern in such personnel decisions is to protect the integrity and credibility of their organization and further their journalistic mission, not to be fair and impartial, give due process, and fire only guilty (or probably guilty) parties. Insofar as it's their mission to oppose a culture that endorses or condones rape, it goes counter to that mission to retain on staff someone who has been accused of sexual assault and is implicated in a controversy that has received national attention. It's not unreasonable (if somewhat cowardly) for an organization in that position to protect their name by dissociating themselves from such a person, even if they privately believed, or even knew for a fact, that the person was innocent. You could make a reasonable case that terminating the employment of a presumably innocent person would hurt their credibility even more than it would to retain the accused person on staff, but it's naive to think that the decision has to be based on the person's guilt or innocence in either case.

Title	Columbia University: if they scribble your name and call you a rapist on a women's bathroom wall, it's as good as a conviction
Author	PierceHarlan
Upvotes	47
Comments	59
Date	May 15, 2014 8:01 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/25nixv/columbia_university_if_they_scribble_your_name/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/columbia-university-if-they-scribble-your-name-and.1000632 https://theredarchive.com/post/1000632

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