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Blog and Media Roundup - Friday, March 14, 2014; News Roundup
Topic Started: Mar 14 2014, 04:00 AM (267 Views)
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Mar. 13, 2014 @ 09:56 PM
Council gets mixed feedback on Durham police HQ

Moving the Durham Police Department to either of the new sites city leaders are eying for a new headquarters is likely to leave a key interest group or two unhappy, given what they heard during a forum on Thursday.
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Jameis Winston Phoned Lil Boosie in Prison Day After National Championship
3/13/2014 12:11 PM PDT BY TMZ STAFF

Lil Boosie got some high-profile support during his stint behind bars ... telling TMZ Sports he got a phone call from Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston the day after FSU won the title.

Here's how it all happened ...

Famous Jameis is a HUGE Boosie fan and during his Freshman year at Florida State, he would often quote Boosie's lyrics to his team, on social media and sometimes during interviews with reporters.

In fact, Jameis said he listened to Boosie in the locker room right before he took the field on Jan. 6.

Word got back to Boosie, who was serving time in Angola State Penitentiary on drug charges, and the rapper tells us he sent a message to JW that he'd love to talk with him when he had the chance.

So ... according to Boosie, Winston phoned the rapper the day after FSU won the National Championship and the two got along like old friends.

"We chopped it up ... I told him I was a fan of his also."

Boosie says he told Jameis to "stay focused" and let him know that he'll be continuing to root for the guy ... even though he's a die-hard LSU fan.

Moral of the story -- win a Heisman and a National Championship ... and you too can meet your hero.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2014/03/13/jameis-winston-called-lil-boosie-in-prison-day-after-national-championship/#ixzz2vvThD7Gp
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http://michiganradio.org/post/three-things-you-might-not-know-about-sexual-assault-campus

Three things you might not know about sexual assault on campus
By Kate Wells

Maybe you've heard 1 in 5 college women will be assaulted. Here's what you don't know about campus assaults.

Ok, first, the stats.

The bad news: the problem is rampant

For every 10,000 women on a college campus, as many as 350 could experience attempted to completed rape every school year.

Those numbers come from the U.S. Department of Justice, in a 2005 report on what schools are doing about sexual assault on campus.

If those stats bear out, then at a school the size of the University of Michigan, as many as 490 women will experience attempted or completed rape every school year.

More broadly, 1 in 5 women will be assaulted, but just 12% of them report it.

At a school the size of the University of Michigan, up to 490 women will experience attempted or completed rape every school year.

In fact, women are more likely to be assaulted if they're a college student than if they're in the military.

Both those last stats come from the White House, which put out a report about rape in January, just as President Obama kicked off a new task force on the issue.

Campus rapes have been all over the news in recent years.

Between the accusations against Heisman winner Jameis Winston at Florida State University, to alleged administrative foot-dragging at the University of Southern California, to complaints that the University of Michigan didn't sever ties with football player Brendan Gibbons for years after he was accused of rape, there's little question that schools could do better when it comes to sexual assault.

Michigan survey says 83% of schools need help sanctioning sexual misconduct

Right now, both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University are under federal investigation for complaints they mishandled sexual misconduct.

So there were a few eyebrows raised this week when the University of Michigan sent out findings to the press from its recent national survey, looking at how schools are handling sexual misconduct.

"We finished the survey January 3, and we presented the findings [to the academic community] on January 6," says Jay Wilgus, director of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan.

"We've had researchers from around the country request the results. They're being released because we believe they're important to the dialogue. They have nothing to do with our campus investigation at all," he said.

Bottom line: 80% of schools said they dealt with sexual misconduct issues last year. But they would really, really like some help with it.

Here's what may surprise you about what they found.

1) "Sexual misconduct" is not just rape. It could be a rude Facebook comment or a pat on the butt during football practice.

One of the first things I asked Wilgus boiled down to: why the heck do schools need help figuring out how to punish sexual misconduct? If someone rapes another student, expel them, right? It shouldn't be that complicated, unless schools are dancing around the issue.

Well, no, says Wilgus.

First off, he says there really isn't a generally accepted definition of what exactly is "sexual misconduct."

"If it's a onetime Facebook message, I don't think most folks would think that student should be expelled for that behavior."

But it's usually a catch-all for anything from sexual online messages to unwanted pats on the butt at practice.

Which, he says, is why schools need help figuring out how to sanction offenders.

"If it's a onetime Facebook message, we look into that, that's an issue for us. But I don't think most folks would think, in that situation, 'oh that student should be expelled for that behavior.'

"Certainly, in the most egregious cases, I don't think schools are confused about what needs to happen. My perception is it's the other cases where schools are looking for evidence-based practices to guide their decision-making about sanctions," says Wilgus. "We want to know that what we're doing is effective, and I think that's what other schools want as well."

2) Mandatory punishment for offenders could backfire, hurt victims

OK, so colleges want help, or to be more specific, "national guidelines or model policies for sanctioning students who are found responsible for sexual misconduct," according to the U of M study.

But 83% also said that "national mandates were not desirable."

"Where schools have used an automatic expulsion provision, it can have the unintended consequence of reducing reporting rates."

Which is understandable. Except, what's wrong with a very basic mandate, like: if a student rapes another student, the offender gets kicked out?

Again, says Wilgus, it's more complicated than that.

"Where schools have used an automatic expulsion provision, it can have the unintended consequence of reducing reporting rates," he says.

That's because most sexual misconduct incidents happen between people who know each other, says Wilgus.

And if you think your boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, friend, whatever, is going to be kicked out if you say something, you may be less likely to report harassment, he says.

Overall, though, it does look like University of Michigan students may be more comfortable coming forward with assaults, according to the school's own explanation for why there's a rising number of assaults reported at Michigan.

3) Most schools never check to see if the victim drops out, or if the attacker strikes again on campus.

The survey found that fewer than 1 in 3 schools track students accused of misconduct to see if they "engage if further sexual behavior problems" on campus.

That's despite the fact that, as the White House reported, "one study found that 7% of college men admitted to committing rape or attempted rape, and 63% of these men admitted to committing multiple offenses, averaging six rapes each."

And fewer than 1 in 4 colleges actually follow up with victims to see if they stayed in school or graduated, the survey found.

Yet it's widely known that sexual assault victims can experience PTSD, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc.

Wilgus says: yeah, it's not great.

"I think these are really important findings, because one of the things we know happens when a student reports sexual misconduct, it's not uncommon for students not to persist through graduation.

"So we really need to be tracking students to make sure they're doing well. And I think another important takeaway, and I'm speculating here a little bit, that schools need support and resources to do this work really well.

"We're very fortunate at Michigan, but not all schools have that office or that support mechanism. So why aren't they tracking through [graduation?] We need to learn more," says Wilgus.
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http://chapelboro.com/news/higher-education/unc-president-attend-forum-college-athletes/

UNC President to Attend Forum on College Athletes
By Danny Hooley
Posted March 14, 2014 at 12:01 am

Next week, University of North Carolina President Tom Ross will take part in public discussions about college sports and academic values, at the invitation of the Knight Commission.

According to a press release from UNC, Ross will attend the sessions in Miami, Florida on Monday as an “independent participant.”

Panelists and Commission members will discuss proposed changes to the NCAA governing model.

They’ll also talk about the future of academic reforms for student-athletes.

The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics promotes academic values in college sports.

UNC has been taking a more pro-active stance in recent months, in dealing with a long-running academic scandal regarding athletes.

In late February, Ross and UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt hired former Justice Department Attorney Kenneth Wainstein.

He’ll review State Bureau of Investigation findings about the Department of African and Afro-American Studies.

That department is alleged to have offered courses to student athletes without holding the actual classes.

It’s also alleged that grades for athletes were changed without authorization.
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http://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2014/03/06/lacrosse-detectives-seek-dismissal-of-lawsuit-a-469966.html#.UyLHJoVgKRo

Lacrosse detectives seek dismissal of lawsuit
By Ray Gronberg, The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
March 06--DURHAM -- Two former Durham Police Department detectives say a 2013 N.C. Supreme Court decision should trigger the dismissal of a malicious-prosecution lawsuit against them in the Duke lacrosse case.

The ruling changed state law on the question of whether cops and other people can be liable when a prosecutor decides to charge someone with a crime, attorneys representing former Sgt. Mark Gottlieb and former Investigator Ben Himan said.

It also aligned state doctrine with the federal doctrine that in late 2012 prompted the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reject all of the federal civil-rights claims former Duke players David Evans, Colin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann had lodged against police and the city, they said.

The subsequent state Supreme Court decision created "a new standard of proof" for common-law malicious-prosecution claims that didn't exist when the 4th Circuit weighed in, the legal team for Gottlieb and Himan said.

Their dismissal request, dated Feb. 28, was directed to U.S. District Court Judge James Beaty Jr., the federal jurist who'd preside over a trial of the players' lawsuit.

Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann were the three members of Duke University's 2005-06 men's lacrosse team indicted in 2006 on rape charges after a stripper, Crystal Mangum, alleged she'd been attacked at a team party.

They were exonerated a year later, after N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper determined that Mangum's story simply didn't match the known facts. He said the players were the innocent victims of a "tragic rush to accuse."

The players sued later in 2007, alleging police and city officials conspired with former District Attorney Mike Nifong to frame them.

Although the 4th Circuit tossed the players' federal-law claims, Beaty retains jurisdiction over the lawsuit because they live in other states. But he's obliged to follow the lead of North Carolina's appellate courts on the common-law doctrines that define malicious prosecution.

City officials were able to get the federal civil-rights claims thrown out by the 4th Circuit because Nifong, it said, made his own, independent decision to pursue the rape charges even though the detectives had briefed him on the weaknesses of the evidence.

Police would've been liable under federal law only if they'd "misled or unduly pressured the prosecutor," an allegation the players never made, the 4th Circuit said.
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http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140313/FREE/140319945

Don't let brokers keep watch on themselves
The saga of Jill Wile, a former manager in the southeast regional office of Finra

By William D. Cohan | March 13, 2014 - 5:20 pm EST

In the cruel irony department comes the saga of Jill Wile, a former manager in the southeast regional office of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc., the self-policing group for brokerages.

She was fired in March 2013 after 25 years, stellar performance reviews and repeated clashes with a new boss who seemed determined to get rid of her. After getting the approval of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Ms. Wile recently filed a federal disability, age and sex discrimination lawsuit against Finra seeking unspecified damages.

Nothing terribly unusual so far. Many bosses find ways to make professional life more than a little uncomfortable for employees of a certain age (Ms. Wile is 52) to encourage them to move on or retire. Since the financial crisis, employment discrimination claims have increased by about 25%, to just under an average of 100,000 cases a year.

(See also: Finra bonus disclosure rule goes to the SEC)

What makes Ms. Wile's case truly stunning is that she supposedly was the Finra executive who, in June 2011, recommended the terminations of three Finra arbitrators after they awarded about $520,000 to the late Robert Postell and his wife, Joan. In her letter recommending that the arbitrators be fired, Ms. Wile wrote, “In my many years of experience, and after listening to the tapes [of the arbitration hearing] over and over again, I have never experienced something so egregious.”

Little in this case is what it seems. It turns out that what the three arbitrators had done egregiously wrong was to compensate the Postells, who were Merrill Lynch customers, with a large award. But because Finra is owned by — and run for the benefit of — the big Wall Street firms, this was unacceptable. The three arbitrators had to go.

Only they did not go quietly. In June 2012, one of them contacted me and I wrote a column about their plight. Another complained to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Eventually, Finra reinstated the arbitrators. But it needed a scapegoat, and that's where Ms. Wile comes in.

In her 2012 evaluation, for example, Ms. Wile's bosses, Manly Ray and Richard Berry, claimed that Ms. Wile's “error in judgment” in recommending that the arbitrators be fired “has damaged Jill's credibility with senior management” and that going forward, "Jill needs to exercise greater judgment and discretion in dealing with issues of this type. Jill tends to view things as either black or white and has difficulty in the gray area.”

(Don't miss: Finra's BrokerCheck comes under fire)

The problem, according to Ms. Wile's complaint (disclosure: she uses the same law firm that I do in a lawsuit JPMorgan Chase & Co. brought against me), is that she didn't recommend firing the arbitrators. Ms. Wile only suggested that they get counseling. But in a subsequent conference between Ms. Wile and her supervisors, including Mr. Ray and Mr. Berry, “senior management strongly encouraged Ms. Wile to change her recommendation from counseling to removal for all three arbitrators” and also “directed her” to write the memorandum that claimed the arbitrators' behavior was “egregious.”

It turned out there had been friction between Ms. Wile and Mr. Ray for years, especially after she turned 50. According to the complaint, Mr. Ray singled out Ms. Wile for wearing sneakers on casual Fridays, even though men in the office wore sneakers, too. Mr. Ray demanded that Ms. Wile speak in front of large groups even though she had a diagnosed anxiety disorder that public speaking exacerbated.

In another instance, according to the complaint, Mr. Ray humiliated Ms. Wile as she was making a presentation to the people she supervised. She alleges that Mr. Ray interrupted her by making immature jokes.

When Ms. Wile asked Mr. Ray about his behavior in the meeting, he denied doing anything inappropriate and blamed her. “I know this is harsh, but watching your meeting was painful,” he allegedly told her. “No one was even paying attention to you.” A month later, Mr. Ray fired Ms. Wile. Mr. Ray, who said he had no comment, referred me to Finra, where spokeswoman Nancy Condon said that Finra denies all of Ms. Wile's charges.

In a new book, "In Bed With Wall Street," Larry Doyle, who spent 23 years as a mortgage banker, takes Finra to task for many reasons, including being a phony self-regulatory organization controlled by the industry. He says that, in Finra, Wall Street has a forced arbitration system in which the chips are stacked in its favor, and that Finra makes life difficult for smaller brokerage firms by foisting on them boundless regulatory burdens.

Mr. Doyle also notes that Finra has a $2 billion portfolio that it invests in Wall Street hedge funds and private-equity firms. As an industry, Wall Street makes about $100 billion in profit in a good year. But in the first five years of Finra's existence (it is the product of a 2007 merger of the regulatory arms of the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc.), it imposed an average of $51 million in annual fines. (More disclosure: I wrote a “blurb” for Mr. Doyle's book well before the filing of Ms. Wile's lawsuit.)

Mr. Doyle worries that Finra has made itself “above reproach” and can't be reined in. “Wall Street effectively answers to nobody but themselves,” he told me in a recent interview. “This is like John Gotti having his own private police force and saying, 'Hey, we've got everything under control here, boys.'” Mr. Doyle thinks the SEC should take over Finra and eliminate the fiction that it is regulating Wall Street.

Finra's treatment of Ms. Wile shows that Mr. Doyle is right. Finra should be put out of its misery, once and for all.

William D. Cohan, author of the forthcoming "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities," is a Bloomberg View columnist.
Edited by abb, Mar 14 2014, 04:12 AM.
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http://www.laxpower.com/laxnews/news.php?story=37857


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Five Net Hat Tricks as No. 10 Duke Breezes by Davidson
DURHAM, N.C. – Balanced scoring and a stalwart defensive effort guided the 10th-ranked Blue Devils to a 21-2 victory over Davidson Thursday evening in non-conference action at Koskinen Stadium. The win moved Duke to 5-3 on the season heading into a meeting with Jacksonville Sunday, March 16 at 12:00 p.m. in Durham.

Nine different Blue Devils tallied goals against the Wildcats, with senior Maddy Morrissey, juniors Kerrin Maurer, Katie Trees and Taylor Trimble and sophomore Kelci Smesko all posting hat tricks. Defensively, Duke limited Davidson to just two goals on six shots, with the two scores marking a season-low output by a Blue Devil opponent.

"I was really happy that we had so many people contribute," said head coach Kerstin Kimel. "Our team played really unselfishly tonight. I thought we did a great job in all aspects of the game. That was our goal tonight – to come out and have a really clean performance."

Morrissey led off the scoring 20 seconds into the contest, successfully converting from the eight-meter mark to give Duke the early advantage. After the Wildcats' Mary Leonard responded with a goal, the Blue Devils took off on a 9-0 run to take a 10-1 lead into the locker room at intermission.

Smesko opened the second half with an unassisted tally to extend the scoring streak before Davidson's Erin Doherty worked her way inside to cut the lead back to nine. However, the Duke defense allowed only two more shots by the Wildcats the rest of the way. The Blue Devils continued to dominate at the draw and finished the game on a 10-0 scoring run to seal the victory.

"Our defense has been a work in progress every game," said senior Taylor Virden. "As a unit we're gaining more chemistry and we know how to move with each other. It's just a testament to how we're progressing throughout the season."

For the contest, Duke outshot the Wildcats 36-6 and won the ground ball battle, 12-8. Virden won five draw controls and Maurer added three to help the Blue Devils earn the edge in that category by an 18-6 margin. Duke also went a perfect 13 of 13 in clearing attempts on the evening.

Trees registered a career-high with her three goals while Morrissey also tallied three to match a career-best output. Junior Brigid Smith and sophomore Maddy Acton contributed two markers each and junior Chelsea Landon and freshman Caitlin Carey rounded out the scoring with one apiece.

Sophomore goalkeeper Kelsey Duryea notched two saves in the win and junior Angel Thompson entered the game in the second half, recording one save.

The Blue Devils continue their homestand Sunday against Jacksonville, with the game slated to be broadcast live on Blue Devil Network.

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http://www.cotwa.info/2014/03/lawsuit-by-player-expelled-by-xavier-u.html

Thursday, March 13, 2014
Lawsuit by Player Expelled by Xavier U. After Rape Accusation Can Proceed
Another young man claims that a school bowed to a public outcry about rape to make him a scapegoat. Here is the story as reported here:

A judge has decided that most of the claims in a lawsuit by a former Xavier University basketball player, who has accused the Ohio university of damaging his reputation in a rushed decision to expel him after what he says was a false rape accusation, can proceed to trial, the Associated Press reported.

The university expelled Dezmine Wells in 2012 after another student accused him of raping her. But the woman later decided not to press charges, and a grand jury declined to indict Mr. Wells after hearing evidence in the case.

In a federal lawsuit filed in August, Mr. Wells accuses the university and its president, the Rev. Michael Graham, of sex discrimination, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and libel for injury to his reputation, among other claims.

Judge S. Arthur Spiegel of the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati dismissed two of the claims against Father Graham—those alleging sex discrimination and deliberate indifference—but let those claims against the university go forward.

Mr. Wells contends that the university and Father Graham used him as a scapegoat to demonstrate an aggressive response to sexual-assault allegations in the wake of two unrelated investigations of the university by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Xavier’s disciplinary hearing for Mr. Wells came one day after the university announced that it had reached an agreement with federal officials and would create new policies to protect victims of sexual assault and harassment. The following day, officials sent Mr. Wells a letter informing him that he had been found responsible for rape and was expelled.

The university has said that its handling of the case followed standard procedures for American universities. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the university said it was pleased that the court had dismissed some of the lawsuit’s claims and believes that Xavier will be vindicated once all the facts are known.
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Durham DA clears police in fatal shooting of Derek Walker
From staff reportsMarch 13, 2014 Updated 7 minutes ago

DURHAM — The Durham County district attorney has cleared police of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting of a man who pointed a gun at officers and himself during a downtown standoff last September.

“After reviewing over 38 eyewitness interviews, numerous 911 calls, statements by Emergency Medical Services personnel, the Medical Examiner's notes, crime scene photos and sketches, interviews with people who knew and cared for Derek Walker, and Mr. Walker's Facebook postings, the Durham district attorney has found there is no probable cause to charge a crime in this matter,” District Attorney Leon Stanback said in a statement.

Wednesday’s announcement marked the third time in recent months that Stanback has found no basis for criminal charges in a fatal officer-involved shooting in Durham.

Stanback earlier cleared police in the shooting of Jose Ocampo, a stabbing suspect who was shot four times in July outside his home in Old East Durham when police say he failed to heed instructions to drop a knife, and also in the death of Jesus Huerta, a 17-year-old high school student who police say shot himself in November while handcuffed behind his back in the back seat of a patrol car.

The State Bureau of Investigation and Police Department also investigated all three incidents, with the SBI giving its report to Stanback as is routine in such incidents. The district attorney recently announced he was reopening the Huerta case to investigate possible new evidence neither he nor the Huerta family’s attorney has yet described.

In the Walker case, police responded to a possible suicide threat Sept. 17 in CCB Plaza in downtown Durham.

They found Walker holding a black semi-automatic pistol. according to Stanback’s statement. “Some officers took tactical positions and another officer engaged Mr. Walker in negotiation. The standoff went on for over 45 minutes.”

Walker was alternately calm and crying, according to witnesses. He raised his gun in his right hand and pointed it toward his head several times, according to the statement.

“An officer was heard repeatedly encouraging Mr. Walker to put the weapon down. Mr. Walker raised the gun to his head one last time and then lifted it to almost shoulder-height, pointing it directly at law enforcement,” the statement continued.

Although several officers reported having engaged the trigger of their service weapons, one officer fired a shot from his city-issued rifle, according to the statement. Walker suffered a single penetrating wound to the chest and died on the way to Duke Hospital.

In a post on his Facebook page before the standoff, Walker had said he was ready to die because of a five-year custody dispute with the mother of his son.

“If there is really a true and living God and Jesus he wouldn’t put me through this … all I know is that I am a DEAD MAN WALKING,” Walker, 26, wrote. “I’m done … don’t call me and don’t talk to me because I am not responding. I hope I die very soon and a fast death because this world I am living in is sorry …”


Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/13/3697821/durham-da-clears-police-in-walker.html#storylink=cpy
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Mar 14 2014, 04:12 AM
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140313/FREE/140319945

Don't let brokers keep watch on themselves
The saga of Jill Wile, a former manager in the southeast regional office of Finra

By William D. Cohan | March 13, 2014 - 5:20 pm EST

(snip)

In a new book, "In Bed With Wall Street," Larry Doyle, who spent 23 years as a mortgage banker, takes Finra to task for many reasons, including being a phony self-regulatory organization controlled by the industry. He says that, in Finra, Wall Street has a forced arbitration system in which the chips are stacked in its favor, and that Finra makes life difficult for smaller brokerage firms by foisting on them boundless regulatory burdens.

Mr. Doyle also notes that Finra has a $2 billion portfolio that it invests in Wall Street hedge funds and private-equity firms. As an industry, Wall Street makes about $100 billion in profit in a good year. But in the first five years of Finra's existence (it is the product of a 2007 merger of the regulatory arms of the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc.), it imposed an average of $51 million in annual fines. (More disclosure: I wrote a “blurb” for Mr. Doyle's book well before the filing of Ms. Wile's lawsuit.)

(snip)

William D. Cohan, author of the forthcoming "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities," is a Bloomberg View columnist.

I hope Cohan appreciates Doyle's opinions:


Quote:
 
-1http://www.moneynews.com/Robert-Feinberg/Doyle-regulation-Wall-Street-JPMorgan/2014/01/21/id/548030

Larry Doyle Takes on Wall Street

Tuesday, 21 Jan 2014 06:38 AM
By Robert Feinberg


Former mortgage-backed securities trader Larry Doyle spoke recently at the law firm of Cuneo, Gilbert and LaDuca in Washington, D.C., about his book, In Bed With Wall Street: The conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

After a long career on Wall Street, Doyle has decided to share what he has learned with the public, prompted by the response to his blog, which in turn led an author to suggest that he should write a book.

(snip)

Doyle defended the culture of Wall Street as one where reputation, based on friendships and relationships, is paramount, and he credited Kevin Finnerty of Bear Stearns for instilling high ethical standards and an understanding of risk at that firm. He asserted that the overwhelming majority of workers on Wall Street meet high ethical standards.

(snip)

Doyle praised his fellow author Bill Cohan as an "aggressive" critic from the sell-side perspective, and Gary Aguirre, a whistleblower at the SEC, as an example of someone who told the truth but was ignored and intimidated.

(snip)



(Finnerty isn't mentioned in Doyle's book; but Doyle worked with Finnerty for fifteen years, and his opinion
should count for something...)


Edited by Quasimodo, Mar 14 2014, 08:23 AM.
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http://nypost.com/2014/03/13/a-porn-star-is-born-with-support-from-duke/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow

A porn star is born — with support from Duke University
By William McGurn

March 13, 2014 | 10:24pm

Since the first headlines about the Duke University freshman making her way through college by making porn, we have learned many details about her life.

We’ve learned, for example, that being paid to have sex on camera is “freeing, it is empowering, it is wonderful, it is how the world should be.” We’ve learned she aspires to be a lawyer for women’s rights. And we’ve learned that she regards waitressing as more degrading than, say, being choked and slapped around in a skinflick.

Yet perhaps the most indecent detail in this tale is a tidbit about her university that has received almost no attention. It appears near the end of a profile that ran in The Chronicle — Duke’s student paper — which refers to her as “Lauren.” Here’s what it says:

“Lauren reached out to Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. Moneta affirmed that the University’s policy was to be supportive of all student identities.”

Note: He didn’t say “supportive of all students.” He said “supportive of all student identities.”

When this reporter e-mailed Moneta to ask if his words mean Duke really makes no judgment on a student who has become a porn actress, Moneta replied that federal law and Duke policy preclude him from talking about a student’s case. But he didn’t take issue with the Chronicle characterization.

Neither does the young woman. Her name is Miriam Weeks, and in a recent CNN interview with Piers Morgan, she affirmed that Duke had been “very supportive” of her.

This week she expanded on this on TMZ Live. Asked specifically if any Duke officials have a problem with what she’s doing, Weeks replied Duke’s administrators have been “firm” that what she’s doing is legal and “not breaking any rules,” and they are working with her to ensure she’s “safe” and can get her Duke education.

Some may remember Vice President Moneta from an earlier controversy on another campus. Before coming to Duke, he worked at Penn, where 20 years ago he played a lead role in the university’s unconscionable decision to prosecute a Jewish student with racial harassment because late one night he’d yelled “shut up, you water buffalo” at a group of mostly black students who had been making noise as he tried to study.

Now Moneta is at Duke, voice of a modern campus orthodoxy that recognizes only two questions about sex: Was it consensual? And, was it safe?

In practice, this means the universities have punted on any larger questions about human sexuality. Only the cops and docs can have anything to say. If it’s not rape and you’ve protected yourself against an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, who can object?

In the Miriam Weeks case, we see the flip side of this ethos. Because Duke’s support for whatever identity she chooses turns out to be not much different from the support offered by her porn agent.

Weeks herself is explicit about this support, as she made clear to Piers Morgan when she explained why she had come out to LA to shoot even more porn after her identity became known at Duke:

“The really cool thing about being out here is I’m surrounded by people in my industry,” she says. “So I’m surrounded by support. I’m surrounded by people who I can talk to about the stigma that I face every day. So that’s why I came out here . . . to have that support that you can’t find anywhere else.”

These supporters include John Steven, described by the Daily Mail as her agent. Steven told the paper Weeks’ parents were to blame for not providing her the money she needs for college. He, by contrast, is the white knight helping a gal achieve her dream of a Duke degree. “It’s a legitimate business I run,” he says.

Steven’s business, it helps to remember, is an agency called Matrix Models. According to its Web site, the firm’s “main focus is locating amateur models who have never taken their clothes off in front of a camera” and transforming them into “Hustler centerfolds and more.”

In other words, this man’s line of business is looking for innocence so he can debauch it on camera for profit. No doubt he’s figured out that however humiliating all this attention may be for others, especially Weeks’ mother and father, for him it’s free publicity he couldn’t buy.

As for the young Blue Devil making blue movies, the public arguments she advances for her career as “empowering” illustrate how well she has absorbed the language and logic — not to mention the aggressiveness — of the new order. Then again, we expect a certain naiveté from a 19-year-old on campus, even one caught up in something making her old beyond her years.

What we don’t expect are university officials adopting the same definition of support as the young lady’s porn agent.
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http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-editors-note-20140315,0,1134632.story#axzz2vzFOD0B0

latimes.com
Editor's note
The Times acknowledges errors in three articles about Occidental College's reporting of sexual assault allegations.

4:39 PM PDT, March 14, 2014
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A front-page article in the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 7, 2013, was incorrect in reporting that Occidental College failed to disclose 27 alleged sexual assaults that occurred in 2012.

The article ("College shelved more assault reports") dealt with Occidental's obligations under the federal Clery Act, which requires schools to publish statistics annually on reported crime on or near campus.

Occidental representatives approached The Times early this month to seek a correction. Documents reviewed by The Times this week show that the 27 incidents did not fall under the law's disclosure requirements for a variety of reasons.

Some were not sexual assaults as defined by the Clery Act. Rather, they involved sexual harassment, inappropriate text messages or other conduct not covered by the act. Other alleged incidents were not reported because they occurred off-campus, beyond the boundaries that Occidental determined were covered by the act. Some occurred in 2011, and the college accounted for them that year.

Subsequent Times articles published Dec. 20 in the LATExtra section and Jan. 23 in Section A repeated the original error regarding the alleged underreporting of sexual assaults.

The Times regrets the errors in the articles.

Separately, as they began looking into the complaint, Times editors learned from the author of the articles, staff writer Jason Felch, that he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with someone who was a source for the Dec. 7 story and others Felch had written about Occidental's handling of sexual assault allegations. Felch acknowledged that after the relationship ended, he continued to use the person as a source for future articles.

Times Editor Davan Maharaj dismissed Felch on Friday. Maharaj said the inappropriate relationship with a source and the failure to disclose it earlier constituted "a professional lapse of the kind that no news organization can tolerate."

He added: "Our credibility depends on our being a neutral, unbiased source of information — in appearance as well as in fact.
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