The Rolling Stone / UVa thing: what did the UVa President do wrong?

[Recursion]

Last edited Wed Apr 8, 2015, 01:29 AM - Edit history (2)

Since this is back in the news, I wanted to ask something that's been bothering me since last year. Leave aside the journalism shitshow and who does or doesn't deserve to wear a hairshirt for eternity: people keep saying the real point was how the university administration treated Jackie.

That's what I don't get. Jackie went to the Dean's office and told her story. The Dean (in person) told Jackie she could talk to the police if she wanted criminal charges pressed, and separate from that she could at her discretion initiate either a "formal" or "informal" campus discipline procedure, and that the administration would accept her decision about which of those (or neither) she wanted to initiate. Jackie even wrote a letter to the university paper praising the Dean's response to her.

What did UVa actually do wrong here? Is that not what you want a college administrator to do?

EDIT: it was the Dean of Students, not the university President.

[DonCoquixote]

1. let's be blunt

The conservatives want to intimidate public education of all sorts, including colleges, so this is a "y'all better leave our boys alone, because we got lawyers" Same thing about SAE.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. How does that even relate to this story? It is physically impossible for events to have transpired

in any fashion resembling the story the woman in Rolling Stone told.

This isn't about "leave the frat alone", the frat factually didn't have anything to do with it, they weren't pledging during that fall, they didn't have a pledge party on the weekend Rolling Stone claimed... and "Jackie" invented the guy she went on the original date with, before she claimed she went out with him (and then afterwards said he - "Haven Monahan", the guy who didn't exist - assaulted her).

She showed pictures- before the 'date'- of this dashing upperclassman who she said was interested in her and texting her; she took the pictures off the social media page of some guy she went to high school with that she didn't know, and she invented everything else about the guy, including his name- totally out of whole cloth.

AND she did this before the incident took place, so.... it's not a question of "misremembering the details".


I'm no big fan of fraternities, but if they didn't actually do anything or have anything to do with anything involving this woman, yes, leave them alone is a reasonable position to take.

[Recursion]

6. It's still inexplicable to me, though: Jackie praised the administration's response

That's the part I'm still scratching my head about: why pick this story when it precisely doesn't show an administration handling a sexual assault allegation badly?

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/letter-advocating-for-dean-eramo

That's Jackie's letter to the UVa student paper talking about how much she appreciated everything the Dean did.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. I suspect the story got more fantastical every time it was iterated.

I mean, you read the article Rolling Stone originally printed, and it's flat-out horrific. It's like something out of A Clockwork Orange, it's so awful.

Presumably Erdly thought she was sitting on an Earth-Shaking scoop, one that would rip the lid off the festering diseased University and Fraternity culture. And if was anything resembling even remotely true, she would have been right.

Obviously there were a lot of red flags that were ignored on the road to press.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Did she ever reinstate fraternity activities?

If you truly can't wait until receiving proof before applying discipline, at least stop the collective punishment once the allegations were disproven.

The fraternity in question is suing Rolling Stone. I think I'd add UVa and Teresa Sullivan to that list.

[Recursion]

3. They were only "suspended" over winter break to begin with

Once WaPo picked the story apart UVa undid the party ban.

[Warren DeMontague]

5. The thing that bugs me is the attitude that the fraternities still need to "watch their backs" etc.

I mean, the story was pretty clearly fabricated from the ground up, starting with the name of the nonexistent guy Jackie went on the nonexistent date with.

I'm not some big fan of fraternities, but accusing people of doing something they didn't do is wrong, I don't care who they are- and doubly so is still acting like they must be guilty of something even though they've been proven innocent.