| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,468 Views) | |
| sdsgo | Dec 22 2014, 07:01 PM Post #526 |
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OK. Now all we need is a good window repairman for the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house ... and we can ... ![]() |
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 05:42 AM Post #527 |
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/22/activist-that-introduced-uvas-jackie-to-rolling-stone-made-numerous-white-house-visits/ Activist That Introduced UVA’s ‘Jackie’ To Rolling Stone Made Numerous White House Visits Posted By Patrick Howley On 9:32 PM 12/22/2014 In | No Comments Tweet The activist that introduced false University of Virginia rape accuser “Jackie” to Rolling Stone magazine worked with top White House advisers in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to craft websites and official documents on the White House’s college sexual assault policies. Emily Renda, who works in the vice president for student affairs office at UVA, put “Jackie” in touch with Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely for Erdely’s now discredited expose on a fictional fraternity gang rape. “You figure into the article as a survivor, activist and mentor/support for Jackie,” Erdely wrote to Renda in an email. (RELATED: Rolling Stone Failed To Vet Rape Accuser’s Claims). Though the fruits of Renda’s activism did not meet journalistic threshold, the young UVA employee has become a frequent White House visitor that counseled President Obama’s senior rape advisers. Renda recently made five White House visits and helped craft official White House publications as part of the White House Task Force To Prevent Students From Sexual Assault. Reached for comment by The Daily Caller, Renda declined to provide details of her work but noted, “For reference, all WH task force business is actually public record, so it should be accessible to you.” Let’s take a look at Renda’s White House jaunts: February 28, 2013 Renda participated in a large group meeting with White House Advisor on Violence Against Women Lynn Rosenthal in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as part of “National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month.” February 21, 2014 Renda trotted back to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for another meeting with Rosenthal and other activists, presumably for the 2014 iteration of the same “Teen Dating” awareness month. March 26, 2014 Now it gets interesting. In a room with five other people and White House intern Jai Retter, Renda started actually doing some kind of work. As the 28 Sherman blog noted, a photo Renda posted on her Instagram account reveals that she helped design a White House website at this meeting. April 11, 2014 Renda met with 24-year-old White House technology adviser Vivian Graubard and other activists to help prepare a “White House Data Jam on Protecting Students From Sexual Assault” document. April 29, 2014 Renda was in the House as part of a group of 200 led by White House intern Kelsey Pietranton. Follow Patrick on Twitter |
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 05:45 AM Post #528 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/22/rolling-stone-farms-out-review-of-u-va-rape-story-to-columbia-journalism-school/ Rolling Stone farms out review of U-Va. rape story to Columbia Journalism School By Erik Wemple December 22 at 2:49 PM Rolling Stone magazine has decided to enlist the Columbia Journalism School to audit its handling of a discredited Nov. 19 story about rape on the campus of the University of Virginia, according to a just-released statement from Editor and Publisher Jann S. Wenner, which reads as follows: In RS 1223, Sabrina Rubin Erdely wrote about a brutal gang rape of a young woman named Jackie at a party in a University of Virginia frat house [“A Rape on Campus”]. Upon its publication, the article generated worldwide attention and praise for shining a light on the way the University of Virginia and many other colleges and universities across the nation have tried to sweep the issue of sexual assault on campus under the rug. Then, two weeks later, The Washington Post and other news outlets began to question Jackie’s account of the evening and the accuracy of Erdely’s reporting. Immediately, we posted a note on our website, disclosing the concerns. We have asked the Columbia Journalism School to conduct an independent review – headed by Dean Steve Coll and Dean of Academic Affairs Sheila Coronel – of the editorial process that led to the publication of this story. As soon as they are finished, we will publish their report. In recent weeks, sources in that story have been contacted by Rolling Stone reporters as part of an attempt to piece together what went wrong with the story. Melissa Bruno, a spokeswoman for the magazine, wrote to the Erik Wemple Blog last week that Rolling Stone was “conducting a thorough internal review of the reporting, editing, and fact-checking of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s ‘A Rape on Campus.’ Once we have concluded this process, we will have comment on these and other questions.” It’s unclear at this point what prompted Rolling Stone to bring in the Columbia Journalism School. When asked about that matter, Coronel suggested that the Erik Wemple Blog ask the magazine. As to when the review would be completed, Coronel said that she and Coll will be cranking on it over the holidays but they don’t have a deadline. Work on the audit commenced just a few days ago, says Coronel. Key facts about the report: *Columbia Journalism School was approached by Wenner about this project, says Coronel — not the other way around. *Rolling Stone has already turned over “a lot of files” to the Columbia Journalism School team, which includes a researcher as well as Coll and Coronel. “They’ve given us the interviews, the e-mail, a lot of other things,” says Coronel. “We have a lot.” *The Columbia Journalism School team will conduct interviews with Rolling Stone personnel involved in the story. It’s not yet clear who or how many. *The report that results from the audit will be released to the public via the Rolling Stone website, and a smaller version will appear in the print version of the magazine, says Coronel. *Coronel and Coll will not be paid for their efforts. “We’re doing it on our own time,” says Coronel. *The ambit of the study covers the “reporting and editorial decision-making process,” says Coronel. When asked whether that means it’ll examine the text of the story in detail, Coronel wasn’t sure. “We don’t know what we’re going to do yet,” she said. Erik Wemple writes the Erik Wemple blog, where he reports and opines on media organizations of all sorts. |
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| kbp | Dec 23 2014, 12:43 PM Post #529 |
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Has Renda been subjected to any discipline? |
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| MikeZPU | Dec 23 2014, 01:15 PM Post #530 |
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and weren't their students already so traumatized by events in Ferguson and Staten Island that they couldn't even take their finals? I'd hate to see this added to the burden of those poor students at Columbia. Edited by MikeZPU, Dec 23 2014, 01:18 PM.
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 01:18 PM Post #531 |
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/concha-jann-wenners-statement-on-uva-rape-story-self-serving-and-reckless/ Concha: Jann Wenner’s Statement on UVA Rape Story Self-Serving and Reckless by Joe Concha | 11:11 am, December 23rd, 2014 22 Finally, a mere 33 days after the most-poorly vetted and reckless story of the year became a celebrated cover story in Rolling Stone magazine, its publisher–Jann Wenner–finally got around to addressing the myriad of holes in it. However, despite being in the business longer than many of you reading this column have been alive (47 years), Mr. Wenner doesn’t appear to even understand how to even write a responsible statement around a disputed story, let alone run a magazine. Exhibit A can be found in the first two sentences of Wenner’s full statement below: In RS 1223, Sabrina Rubin Erdely wrote about a brutal gang rape of a young woman named Jackie at a party in a University of Virginia frat house [“A Rape on Campus”]. Upon its publication, the article generated worldwide attention and praise for shining a light on the way the University of Virginia and many other colleges and universities across the nation have tried to sweep the issue of sexual assault on campus under the rug. What a joke. As you may have noticed, Wenner doesn’t even bother to place the word “alleged” before writing about a “brutal gang rape” at UVA, as if it still somehow fact. But the more unsettling part occurs in the very next sentence, where Wenner decides to pat his writer (Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who can be found easier than Ed Snowden these days) and himself on the back by crowing about a largely-debunked story “generating worldwide attention and praise for shining a light on the way (again, the word “allegedly” escapes the vocabulary) the University of Virginia and many other colleges and universities across the nation have tried to sweep the issue of sexual assault on campus under the rug.” But no, Rolling Stone insists, we weren’t trying to desperately bend a narrative in the UVA case of “Jackie” to prove Wenner’s preconceived perspective or anything. Remember, Erderly didn’t even bother to talk to the accused at the frat house “Jackie” says she was assaulted at because she wanted to “honor her request” not to do so. How noble of her while potentially destroying lives and reputations in the process. And Wenner simply ignores it in his statement–along with everything else now falling into the “highly questionable” category (the fraternity says there was no party the night of the rape allegation; her date wasn’t even a member of the fraternity; Jackie’s friends who saw her afterward didn’t notice any blood or any of the injuries described in the story and aren’t even sure what parts of her story are true, etc.) and moves directly to accusing UVA without any evidence whatsoever that the institution is sweeping the issue under the rug, which is rich coming from Wenner considering his horrific handling of the massive pushback on this story to this point. If I’m running the show in Charlottesville, my legal council is preparing to sue Wenner and Rolling Stone for millions in damages right there alone. Because kamikaze declarations like that from Wenner–on top of the rape story–can inflict considerable damage on the university’s image and the business of admissions. Meanwhile, Erderly’s story is still up in its entirety on Rolling Stone’s website (complete with a convoluted disclaimer prior). Too many additional clicks to pass up instead of simply erring on the side of caution and taking it down altogether while an investigation is ongoing. And while all this is happening, actual victims of sexual assault suffer a huge setback. Speaking of investigations, Wenner went on to say that he’s outsourcing the investigation of the story to Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Here’s another gem from Rolling Stone per the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple: When the investigation is complete, will Wenner post its findings in another breathless edition of Rolling Stone’s print edition, just like the original rape exclusive? Of course not. It’ll only be posted online. After more than a month, Jann Wenner finally speaks and proceeds to step in it even further. Maybe silence is golden after all. Follow Joe Concha on Twitter @JoeConchaTV |
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| MikeZPU | Dec 23 2014, 01:20 PM Post #532 |
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/09/columbia-law-students-get-exams-delayed-to-deal-with-trauma-ferguson-garner/ Columbia Law students get exams delayed to deal with 'trauma' of Ferguson, Garner decisions This won't prepare them for tough judges, unscrupulous clients or merciless partners at the law firms they hope to work for. Columbia Law School has agreed to delay final exams for students who face "trauma" and disillusionment following two recent, racially-charged cases in which grand juries declined to indict white police officers in the deaths of unarmed black men. And now, students at Harvard and Georgetown want the same dispensation, also saying they just can't face their tests in the wake of the grand jury decisions in Missouri and New York. "For some law students, particularly, though not only, students of color, this chain of events is all the more profound as it threatens to undermine a sense that the law is a fundamental pillar of society to protect fairness, due process and equality," Robert E. Scott, Columbia's interim dean, told the school in an email Saturday. The cases involved Michael Brown, an 18-year-old shot by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in August after, according to witnesses, Brown fought for the officer's gun and then charged at him; and Eric Garner, a Staten Island, N.Y., man who died after an NYPD officer applied what appeared to be a chokehold while trying to subdue him last summer. The Ivy League law school's email came after a group of minority students called for the exams to be put on hold due to trauma in applying on exams the same legal principles that are used to "deny justice to so many black and brown bodies." |
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 02:33 PM Post #533 |
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The Crusade Against "Rape Culture" Stumbles By Cathy Young - December 23, 2014 December has not been a good month for the feminist crusade against the “rape culture.” The Rolling Stone account of a horrific fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia, which many advocates saw as a possible “tipping point”—a shocking wake-up call demonstrating that even the most brutal sexual assaults on our college campuses are tacitly tolerated—has unraveled to the point where only a true believer would object to calling it a rape hoax. At first, when investigative reporting by The Washington Post revealed major holes in the story, activists as well as feminist commentators chastised those who were too quick to declare it discredited. Just because Rolling Stone screwed up its reporting, they said, doesn’t mean that Jackie was not sexually assaulted or that her complaint was not neglected by the university. Just because Jackie changed her story, they insisted, doesn’t make her a liar—merely a likely rape victim whose trauma-fogged memory caused her to get some details wrong. (Her story, let’s not forget, had changed from being forced to perform oral sex on five men to being vaginally raped by seven men, punched in the face, and cut on shattered glass.) “The man that Jackie describes, named ‘Drew’ in the story, is a real person on campus,” wrote leading feminist pundit Amanda Marcotte, referring to Jackie’s date who supposedly brought her to a fraternity party and lured her into a rape trap. “He just happens to belong to another fraternity on campus. Which means that, while there’s a chance she’s lying, there’s also a very big and very real chance that this all happened and she just forgot what frat house it was at.” Now, it turns out “Drew”—or “Haven Monahan,” the name Jackie originally gave her friends—doesn’t seem to exist after all, on the UVA campus, anywhere in the United States, or probably anywhere on the planet. His name is straight out of a particularly cheesy romance novel; his photo, which Jackie’s friends got in text messages, turned out to match a former high school classmate of hers who goes to a different college. It also looks like Jackie made up both “Haven” and the sexual assault he supposedly engineered in an attempt to get the romantic attention of Ryan Duffin, one of the friends she called for help that night. Tellingly, her lawyer has not commented on these revelations. The only alternate explanation is that Jackie is the victim of a diabolically clever frame-up by her ex-friends. Assuming Jackie is a fabulist, one can debate how much blame she deserves. It’s clear she’s a troubled young woman, and somewhat in her defense she did not falsely accuse any actual men (though it certainly seems that she falsely accused her former friends, two men and one woman, of treating her brutal rape as a minor unpleasantness far less important than invitations to frat parties). It is also clear that she was exploited by author Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and arguably Rolling Stone too, in pursuit of a sensational story. But some of the blame must go to the movement that encouraged her in turning her fantasy of victimhood into activism—especially when that movement is so entrenched in its true-believer mindset that some of its adherents seem unable to accept contrary facts. Katherine Ripley, executive editor of the UVA student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, continued to post #IStandWithJackie tweets for days after the “Haven Monahan” story broke. Two other UVA students made a video thanking Jackie for “pulling back the curtain” on campus rape and praising her “bravery.” Meanwhile, even as the UVA saga unfolded, the “women’s page” of the online magazine Slate, Double X, published an outstanding long article by liberal journalist Emily Yoffe examining the excesses of the campus rape crusade—from the use of shoddy statistics to hype an “epidemic” of sexual violence against college women to the rise of policies that trample the civil rights of accused male students. The piece was retweeted nearly 2,500 times and received a great deal of positive attention, partly no doubt on the wave of the UVA/Rolling Stone scandal. Some of Yoffe’s critique echoes arguments made earlier by a number of mostly conservative and libertarian commentators. But, apart from the extensive and careful research she brings to the table, the fact that these arguments were given a platform in one of the premier feminist media spaces is something of a breakthrough, if not a turning point. Just days after the publication of Yoffe’s article, the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics released a new study boosting her case (and based on data she briefly discussed). The special report, “Rape and Sexual Assault Victimization Among College-Age Females, 1995–2013,” shows that not only are female college students less likely to experience sexual assault than non-college women 18 to 24, but the rate at which they are sexually assaulted is nowhere near the “one in five” or “one in four” statistics brandished by advocates. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), from which the BJS derives its data, found that approximately 6 out of 1,000 college women say they have been sexually assaulted in the past year. Over four years of college, economist Mark Perry points out, this adds up to about one in 53. Still a troubling figure, to be sure, but it does not quite bear out claims that the American campus is a war-against-women zone. Journalists who embrace the narrative of campus anti-rape activism, such as The Huffington Post’s Tyler Kingkade and Vox.com’s Libby Nelson, have tried to rebut claims that the new DOJ report discredits the higher advocacy numbers. Kingkade asserts that the NCVS “doesn’t look at incapacitated rape,” in which the perpetrator takes advantage of the victim’s severe intoxication or unconsciousness. Nelson argues that because the survey focuses on crime victimization, respondents may underreport acquaintance rapes which don’t fit the stereotype of the stranger with a knife jumping out of the bushes. But neither criticism holds up. The standard question used in the NCVS to screen for sexual victimization is, “Have you been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by (a) someone you didn’t know before, (b) a casual acquaintance? OR (c) someone you know well?” In other words, respondents are explicitly encouraged to report non-stranger sexual assaults—and, while they are not specifically asked about being assaulted while incapacitated, the wording certainly does not exclude such attacks. Kingkade also suggests that the numbers are beside the point, since the effort to combat campus sexual assault is about people, not statistics—specifically, “about students who said they were wronged by their schools after they were raped.” Of course every rape is a tragedy, on campus or off—all the more if the victim finds no redress. But if it happens to one in five women during their college years, this is not just a tragedy but a crisis that arguably justifies emergency measures—which is why proponents of sweeping new policies have repeatedly invoked these scary numbers. (Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, has now had the one-in-five figure removed from her website.) And while the stories told by students are often compelling, it is important to remember that they are personal narratives which may or may not be factual. Only last June, Emily Renda, a UVA graduate and activist who now works at the school, included Jackie’s story—under the pseudonym “Jenna”—in her testimony before a Senate committee. Of course this is not to suggest that most such accounts are fabricated; but they are also filtered through subjective experience, memory, and personal bias. Yet, for at least three years, these stories been accorded virtually uncritical reception by the mainstream media. When I had a chance to investigate one widely publicized college case—that of Brown University students Lena Sclove and Daniel Kopin—for a feature in The Daily Beast, the facts turned out to bear little resemblance to the media narrative of a brutal rape punished with a slap on the wrist. Now, in what may be another sign of turning tides, the accused in another high-profile case is getting his say. The New York Times has previously given ample coverage to Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student famous for carrying around a mattress to protest the school’s failure to expel her alleged rapist. Now, it has allowed that man, Paul Nungesser, to tell his story—a story of being ostracized and targeted by mob justice despite being cleared of all charges in a system far less favorable to the accused than criminal courts. No one knows whether Sulkowicz or Nungesser is telling the truth; but the media have at last acknowledged that there is another side to this story. Will 2015 see a pushback against the anti-“rape culture” movement on campus? If so, good. This is a movement that has capitalized on laudable sympathy for victims of sexual assault to promote gender warfare, misinformation and moral panic. It’s time for a reassessment. // Cathy Young writes a weekly column for RealClearPolitics and is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine. She blogs at http://cathyyoung.wordpress.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter at @CathyYoung63. She can be reached by email at CathyYoung63@gmail.com. Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/12/23/the_crusade_against_rape_culture_stumbles_125049.html at December 23, 2014 - 11:32:35 AM PST |
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| kbp | Dec 23 2014, 04:51 PM Post #534 |
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They say the majority of people grow more conservative as they age. I too had noticed Dershowitz appearing to lean more right the last couple years. Maybe it has something to do with Barry's ideology, accompanied with his stand on Israel. |
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 07:32 PM Post #535 |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/rolling_stone_investigation_why_we_still_need_to_investigate_the_magazine.single.html Why We Still Need to Investigate the Rolling Stone Rape Story It’s not to get the truth from Jackie. It’s to scrutinize the larger story Sabrina Rubin Erdely tells about sexual assault on campus. By Hanna Rosin This week, Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner asked the Columbia Journalism School to review Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia. As it became clear that the story’s central incident—a gang rape of a freshman at a fraternity—did not happen as Rolling Stone claimed it did, the magazine’s editors initially said they would reinvestigate the piece themselves. Now, they have turned the project over to Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, as well as the school’s dean of academic affairs Sheila Coronel. Coll, who said Rolling Stone would give Columbia “unfettered access” to staff and materials, indicated that he would focus mostly on the editorial process, but that he would move “in any direction along the way that we believe would be germane and of public interest,” which leaves the door open to re-reporting the story. This is a classic crisis management move by Rolling Stone. When your own reputation is at stake, call in a big name brand to assure everyone that you’re doing the right thing. (See the NFL asking FBI Director Robert Mueller to look into its handling of the Ray Rice case.) In this case, it seems like a good move, for the magazine and for readers who care about what happened at UVA—the man who tracked down the Bin Ladens can surely figure out what went wrong at a magazine’s fact-checking department. Other reporters, particularly T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post, have done a lot of the work already to find out what happened on the night of the alleged gang rape. While that information is valuable, there’s another reason the Columbia investigation is important. We need to find out what University of Virginia officials knew and when they knew it, because that’s the only way to verify or debunk the larger story Rubin Erdely presents of a school that’s indifferent to sexual assault. In the last two weeks we’ve learned a lot more about Jackie, the woman at the center of the story. In a critical scene, Rubin Erdely describes her meeting up with three friends after the alleged incident, two of whom she describes as behaving in a callow and indifferent fashion. Rubin Erdely, it turns out, never spoke to those friends, but other reporters have tracked them down and started to piece together another story. It seems that Jackie had a crush on one of those friends, who is called “Randall” in the Rolling Stone piece and is the only one who is portrayed as behaving heroically. Randall’s real name is Ryan Duffin, and in the version he tells, Jackie might have liked him so much that she went catfish, adopting the identity of another guy to make Duffin jealous and, ultimately, creating a space for Duffin to walk in and rescue her. Duffin says Jackie told him she was dating a junior in chemistry class named Haven Monahan. (The best details are in this CNN story.) There was never a person by that name registered at UVA. Jackie gave Monahan’s cell number to Duffin, and Monahan then texted Duffin that Jackie was “super smart” and “hot.” On the night of Sept. 28, 2012, she called Duffin to come get her and, according to Duffin, told him that Monahan had led her to a room at a fraternity where she’d been forced to have oral sex with five men. Duffin now thinks there probably was no Monahan and he was texting with Jackie. Even at the time he thought it was fishy, because just after the alleged assault he got an email from Monahan titled “About You,” which contained a pagelong essay, written by Jackie, about Duffin and how great he was. That “seemed really weird to me,” Duffin told CNN, “because here's somebody who allegedly just led a brutal sexual assault on a friend of mine, and now he's going to email me this thing about me?” The one thing that seems to confuse Duffin is his memory of how distraught Jackie seemed. He still thinks something bad happened to her, “only because the reaction she had on that night seemed so strong, and seemed so genuine, that I still think it’s difficult to believe that she would have been acting.” Rubin Erdely’s larger point about university negligence is built on a case the school may not have even known about. At this point, the only person who actually knows these answers is Jackie. The local police are investigating, and the university has interest in knowing the truth, as does the accused fraternity. There’s a lot of pressure on Jackie to speak up, but it’s important to remember that she’s not the villain here. She surely doesn’t know much about journalism or fact-checking or what it means to have your story be the centerpiece of a blockbuster investigative article. The responsibility is still largely Rolling Stone’s, to account for why the reporter and her editors did not figure any of this out before they published, especially since Duffin says he would have been happy to talk to the reporter if she’d contacted him. In his editor’s note, Wenner still hangs on to the notion that the story accomplished an important goal even if the central narrative was false. Before mentioning the inaccuracies, he points out that “the article generated worldwide attention and praise for shining a light on the way the University of Virginia and many other colleges and universities across the nation have tried to sweep the issue of sexual assault on campus under the rug.” The problem is that the story’s central narrative and Rubin Erdely’s assessments of the university’s behavior are interwoven, so it’s impossible to fully trust her conclusion. The media has mostly been focused on Jackie, but in some ways this is the more important question: How accurate is Rubin Erdely’s description of what the university did or didn’t do? A few days ago, emails between Rubin Erdely and university officials, as well as a taped phone conversation with UVA President Teresa Sullivan, were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from several news outlets. Jezebel titled its story on the emails, “How UVA Stonewalled Rolling Stone on Rape Story,” and there is a teeny bit of truth to that. Rubin Erdely made several requests to speak to Nicole Eramo, the associate dean of students who heads the school’s sexual misconduct board and who met with Jackie to discuss her sexual assault claims, but the university would not make her available. The school did, however, grant Rubin Erdely an interview with the president, which is not exactly stonewalling. In her article, Rubin Erdely says Sullivan’s most frequently invoked answer is “I don’t know,” but this is an exaggeration. In fact, some of Rubin Erdely’s most damning information comes from that interview, such as confirmation of her statistic that 183 students have been expelled for honor-code violations such as cheating on exams while not a single UVA student has been expelled for sexual assault. The bigger omissions are on Rubin Erdely’s side. She doesn’t mention Jackie’s case during the entire 40-minute conversation with Sullivan. The conversation happened late in her reporting, so she must have known that the incident was going to be the centerpiece of her story. If she had told the university about Jackie, it’s possible their reaction would have been different. They might have, for example, made Eramo available to the reporter if they knew the gravity of what she was about to report. They might have panicked. They might have immediately investigated. They might have tried to minimize the incident or refused to talk, which would have revealed something significant about how they handle such cases. But Rubin Erdely never mentioned it, so we don’t really know. (It’s possible that Rubin Erdely did mention Jackie’s story to the university at another time, but based on listening to her interview with Sullivan, it seems this was her big chance to air her major allegations and get the official response. Also, the emails cover six months of interaction between the university and the reporter, and Rubin Erdely doesn’t lay out the details of the incident there either.) In the Rolling Stone story, Rubin Erdely builds her case of university negligence around Eramo. Several times she puts words in Eramo’s mouth, expressions on her face. “As Jackie wrapped up her story, she was disappointed by Eramo's nonreaction. She'd expected shock, disgust, horror,” she writes. Also: “If Dean Eramo was surprised at Jackie's story of gang rape, it didn't show.” There is also a too-perfect quote in Eramo’s voice. When Jackie asked the dean why UVA doesn’t publish statistics on sexual violence, “she says Eramo answered wryly, ‘Because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.’ ” Whether Eramo actually reacted or nonreacted or said anything like this, we don’t know. As this batch of emails shows—and as Rubin Erdely acknowledged in the Rolling Stone piece—Eramo never spoke to the reporter. Because Rubin Erdely only knows those interactions from Jackie’s point of view, we still don’t know what exactly Jackie told Eramo—if she indicated that she’d been gang raped or said something else—and what in turn Eramo told the university. Rubin Erdely mentions another friend, Alexandria Pinkleton, who accompanied Jackie to a meeting with Eramo. But Pinkleton told me she doesn’t know what Jackie originally told Eramo, because she came with her late in the process, when the student and the dean were discussing ancillary things. The central thesis of the Rolling Stone story is that the university failed to respond to even the most terrible accusation of rape. Rubin Erdely has a potentially important insight into how universities handle sexual assault. She illustrates how deference to the sensitivities of rape victims also serves the university’s needs. Nobody presses victims to report and few do, which is better for the school’s reputation. That may be a crucial dynamic in underreporting of assaults, but we can’t trust Rubin Erdely to make that connection. Her accusation, after all, is built on a case the university may not have even known about. That means we don’t know what it is that Sullivan and UVA failed to react to. A couple of times in the interview, Sullivan tells Rubin Erdely that if Eramo or anyone else hears about something criminal, they take it to the police. She says the disappearance of Hannah Graham—the student who was later found murdered, allegedly by someone who’d earlier been accused of sexual assault at two different universities—made that mission even more urgent. Maybe Sullivan is full of it. Maybe the university would sweep the most heinous criminal case under the rug, just so they wouldn’t be known as “the rape school.” If that’s the case, we certainly didn’t learn that from Rolling Stone. Maybe now, with Columbia launching an investigation, we’ll get closer to the truth. |
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 07:33 PM Post #536 |
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/23/emails-show-uva-coordinator-hoped-to-put-positive-people-in-touch-with-rolling-stone-reporter/ Emails Show UVA Coordinator Hoped To Put ‘Positive People’ In Touch With Rolling Stone Reporter Posted By Chuck Ross On 6:03 PM 12/23/2014 In | No Comments Tweet The initial idea for a bombshell — but now debunked — Rolling Stone article about a gang-rape at the University of Virginia departed drastically from its original intent, university emails show. The emails, obtained by The Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information request, show UVA campus sexual assault awareness project coordinator Emily Renda informing the university’s PR department about her communications with Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter. “I’ve been contacted by a reporter who wants to do a long-form article on campus culture, and wants to use U.Va. as a jumping off point for that discussion,” Renda wrote in a July 16 email to UVA spokesmen McGregor McCance and Anthony Paul de Bruyn. “She wants to speak primarily with survivors, so I do not anticipate her reaching out to any office for official comment,” continued Renda, who has visited the White House several times to work on campus sexual assault issues and who testified at a Senate hearing on the issue in June. “I’ve been talking to her and focusing her in on positive people to speak with.” The email shows a far simpler plan for an article than the final product, which was entitled “A Rape on Campus,” and published on Nov. 19. The 9,000-word article landed like an atomic bomb. The piece began with a story told by a UVA student named Jackie who claimed that on Sept. 28, 2012, she was gang-raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. The article was met with public outcry — both at the school and across the nation. But the story fell to pieces in ensuing weeks. If Renda considered Jackie one of the “positive people” mentioned in her email — and it is known that Renda served as the liaison between Jackie and Erdely — evidence now suggests that was a bad call. Renda was not available when TheDC called to ask about how she initially came into contact with Erdely. A UVA spokesman said he could not comment on the matter, since the school is still investigating Jackie’s claims. Renda has admitted, since the article began falling apart under scrutiny, that certain aspects of Jackie’s story had changed over time. (RELATED: UVA Rape Activist Worked At White House) During her Senate testimony in June, Renda told Jackie’s story — referring to her using the pseudonym “Jenna.” Except in that version, there were only five alleged gang-rapists. Renda has said since the article’s publication that Jackie changed her story. Three of Jackie’s friends mentioned in the Rolling Stone article also came forward after publication and said that several key parts of her story had changed. They said that on the night in question, Jackie claimed that she was forced to perform oral sex on five men while another man she had gone on a date with looked on. (RELATED: Emails Indicate Rolling Stone Failed To Vet UVA Rape Accuser’s Claims) Jackie’s date also presented a problem for her story. It appears that Jackie fabricated the man, who she said was named Haven Monahan, out of thin air. Phone numbers Jackie claimed belonged to Monahan were linked to an online service that allows users to send text messages from the internet. A picture allegedly of Monahan turned out to be a man Jackie had gone to high school with who said that he barely knew her. In the Rolling Stone article, Jackie said that a third-year Phi Kappa Psi member named “Drew” was her date and the ringleader of her gruesome rape. Jackie claimed she knew “Drew” from her job at the school’s swimming pool. But the fraternity later said that none of their members were working in that job at the time of the alleged incident. The glaring holes in Jackie’s story only came to light after Erdely’s reporting was found to have been the product of gross journalistic malpractice. Erdely was forced to admit that she did not attempt to contact the fraternity members because Jackie did not want her to. Jackie’s friends, who were portrayed as uncaring and selfish for convincing Jackie to not report her alleged rape, said that they were never contacted by Erdely or anyone at Rolling Stone before the article was published. Another part of Renda’s July email undershot the initial scope of Erdely’s article. Rather than focusing only on survivor’s stories, as Renda initially believed was Erdely’s goal for the article, Erdely expanded the scope of her piece over the next few months. Emails released by UVA last week show that Erdely began contacting university administrators to find out more about the school’s policies for the handling of sexual assault complaints. Erdely’s end product portrayed UVA as a hotbed of campus rape — a culture aided and abetted by the school’s willingness to turn a blind-eye to victims. Emily Renda Emails |
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| abb | Dec 23 2014, 07:34 PM Post #537 |
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http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/23/student-suspected-of-smashing-windows-at-uva-fraternity-house-over-rolling-stone-story-nope-not-sorry/ Student suspected of smashing windows at UVA fraternity house over Rolling Stone story: Nope, not sorry posted at 5:01 pm on December 23, 2014 by Allahpundit Some yuletide cheer from the Washington Times, whose reporters are picking through the rubble of the left’s busted “campus rape culture” narrative. Not just metaphorical rubble, either: One night soon after the Rolling Stone story came out, bricks started flying through the windows at Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity named by Jackie and Sabrina Rubin Erdely as the site of her gang rape. That was grimly foreseeable given how horrendous the story Jackie told RS was; the fact that Erdely took that story to print without talking to people who could have challenged it tells you how much she cared about the consequences to the accused. Oddly enough, cops haven’t made any arrests for the window-breaking even though a Times reporter apparently had no trouble tracking down the ringleader, who admitted his role in it on the condition that the paper not reveal his name. Why the impunity from local PD? Does Charlottesville have a vandalism culture? Part of me wishes this guy didn’t really exist but was concocted by the Times as a lesson to the left. The RS story is itself based on a fictional person, after all, a fact that better reporters had no trouble uncovering, but it was received uncritically by its target audience because it supported a narrative about rape, fraternities, and privilege that they’re politically invested in. If they’re going to invent not just facts but people to bear out their suspicions about designated villains, righties could respond in kind by inventing the most comically repulsive Social Justice Warriors they can imagine. But why do that when people like this evidently do exist, right at the scene of the non-crime, and are willing to let the media quote them at length? The young man, the progeny of a privileged family, readily and unrepentantly admitted his role and described the attack his friends carried out in details that match police and eyewitness reports. He also said he knew his actions would be considered illegal. “I texted one of my friends and I was like, ‘Let’s throw bottles at the Phi Psi house tonight,’ and she said, ‘Yes!’ I think that the article made it clear that victims at the university have no legitimate channels to take action, and I think vandalism is a completely legitimate form of action when like, legitimate authority is corrupt. I think it was justified,” he said in an interview with The Times… The student who claimed to participate in the attack said he had no regrets despite the fact that the accuracy of Jackie’s story in Rolling Stone has come under significant doubt, including the name of the fraternity where the alleged attack occurred. Asked whether he felt at all bad about attacking the wrong fraternity, he showed no remorse and justified the attack on the broader woes of “social injustice.” “I’ve done some thinking about that, but the answer is no. Everyone knows this is a house that does not respect women. They are part of the problem, and I do not feel bad. We have an objective set of laws that empowers the police to kill black men with impunity and protects white rapists at U.Va. from prosecution. The laws are only legitimate when they work. This is not a particularly radical campus, but we’re mad. Phi Kappa Psi may not have deserved to be vandalized for a gang rape that didn’t happen, in other words, but they must have committed lesser offenses against Progress that went unpunished. Bricks through the window are belated rough justice for those other offenses. That’s the thing about the “privileged” — they’re always guilty of something even if they’re not guilty of the particular thing you’re accusing them of, so there’s no sense sweating the details. And the ringleader here wasn’t the only student to make that point to the Times: A sorority sister whom they spoke with reportedly told them that worrying about the vandalism to Phi Kappa Psi will only draw attention away from the more important problem of rape on campus. That’s “fake but accurate” reasoning in practice, and that’s how the Rolling Stone story will inevitably be salvaged by the people who embraced it. The ends was to raise awareness about college rape and the means was running a sensational bogus rape story without checking it. When the Times asked the ringleader of the PKP vandalism whether he believed that the ends generally justifies the means in fighting “injustice,” he told them sure, up to and including “armed revolution.” QED. Awareness has been raised. Fake but accurate. Speaking of “fake but accurate,” Rolling Stone’s going to go the same route that CBS went after the Rathergate fiasco by bringing in outsiders to figure out what went wrong. Seems pretty straightforward to me — Erdely didn’t talk to the accused or to Jackie’s friends and no one on the RS editorial staff insisted that she do so — but the “outside review” is less about usefully identifying errors than about the magazine making a show of accountability to try to repair its reputation. Joe Concha notes that Jann Wenner’s statement announcing the review doesn’t even refer to Jackie’s rape as “alleged,” and that the story is still posted on the RS website with a disclaimer. That’s good but cynical politics by Wenner: In spite of everything, he has more to fear within his own social and political circles from taking the story down too early than he does from taking it down too late. So he’ll stand by it until he gets the official word from Columbia Journalism School that, yes, his staff farked up badly, and then he’ll take it down. I think? |
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| abb | Dec 26 2014, 05:22 AM Post #538 |
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http://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/31380/ Prof. Jeff McCall '76 on Rolling Stone's "Misguided" UVA Reporting and its Fallout December 26, 2014 "Journalism enters dangerous territory when reporters look to tell 'stories' that are more dramatic, more sensational and more confrontational than what is provided by real life," writes Jeffrey M. McCall in the Providence Journal. "Rolling Stone magazine found this out with its recent misguided story about sexual assault at the University of Virginia." The professor of communication at DePauw University adds, "This reporting mess is yet another setback to the journalism profession ... News consumers can read solid reporting by local newspapers and broadcasters for weeks, but still develop a heck-with-them-all attitude toward the media -- largely because of highly visible examples of unprofessional performance." Dr. McCall states, "A lesson to be learned from this matter is that media outlets need to more careful when reporting another outlet’s work. Print and broadcast outlets were quick to give the Rolling Stone story legs, repeating the charges and sordid details and giving the story immediate credibility. A more thorough 'sniff test' might have prevented the massive media bandwagon effect, which then contributed to the anger and chaos on the Virginia campus. "The media vetting process should have started with a look at the writing style of the article in question. It smacks of a writing style now becoming popular at many universities called 'creative non-fiction.' This kind of writing uses the tools of literature to tell news. It has nothing in common with The Associated Press Stylebook. Such a dramatized account of news should have raised caution flags among the traditional media. Additional vetting would have found that the reporter was challenged by the Catholic League three years ago for inaccuracies in a story about the Archdiocese of Philadelphia." McCall's column concludes, "Once confusion from the UVA incident fades, the news media should responsibly revisit the sad topic of sexual assault in America and cover it from multiple perspectives that go beyond college campuses. In addition to the judicial and criminal angles, the story needs to analyze broadly how America’s entertainment media have created a culture in which women are dehumanized. Jokes are made in sitcoms about women bed-hopping. Crime dramas too often show women as victims of gross violence. This will be difficult reporting, but it can accomplish more good than a fact-challenged screed in a music magazine." A 1976 graduate of DePauw and a former journalist, Jeff McCall is author of Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of Mass Media Influences. The professor is regularly quoted in news stories looking into media matters. Just yesterday, he was cited in several California newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times, in a story on the new film, The Interview. |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 26 2014, 07:50 AM Post #539 |
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The media learns nothing; it did the same thing during the lax case. It loved the narrative fiction. |
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| abb | Dec 26 2014, 02:36 PM Post #540 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/26/why-didnt-rolling-stone-tell-readers-about-u-va-denial/ Why didn’t Rolling Stone tell readers about U-Va. denial? By Erik Wemple December 26 at 2:06 PM As a small team from Columbia Journalism School investigates the discredited Nov. 19 Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus,” it’ll want to take a look at one curious aspect of the piece. The lede of the story, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, stirred national outrage, depicting a September 2012 gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house suffered by a then-freshman named Jackie. Deeper in the piece, however, is a case of sexual assault that drew far less attention, and it was apparently the topic of some disagreement between the magazine and the university prior to publication. A first-year student identified as “Stacy” last spring brought allegations against a “male friend,” according to Erdely. Stacy “filed a report stating that while vomiting up too much whiskey into a male friend’s toilet one night, he groped her, plunged his hands down her sweatpants and then, after carrying her semi-conscious to his bed, digitally penetrated her,” says the piece. According to Rolling Stone, Stacy discovered “two other women with stories of assault by the same man.” She drew encouragement to pursue a disciplinary case against the man because of a policy prescribing expulsion for “multiple” assaults by a single offender. The university’s Sexual Misconduct Board, reports Erdely, found the man guilty of assaulting Stacy. Erdely quotes Stacy as reacting, “I was like, ‘He’s gone!’ ‘Cause he’s a multiple assailant, I’d been told so many times that that was grounds for expulsion!” Yet Stacy was “stunned” after learning that he’d drawn a mere one-year suspension. It’s unclear whether Rolling Stone attempted to reach the accused assailant. At the tail end of the anecdote, Rolling Stone drops in this parenthetical: “(Citing privacy laws, UVA would not comment on this or any case.)” On first read, that appears logical and pro forma. Universities, after all, cannot and should not discuss the particulars of sexual assault incidents with reporters. The paper trail from this story, though, raises questions about the parenthetical. According to e-mails secured last week by the Erik Wemple Blog and other media outlets under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the university attempted to warn Rolling Stone about a line of inquiry that resembles the incident involving Stacy. In an Oct. 9 e-mail, university spokesman Anthony P. de Bruyn told Erdely the following, among other things: “As we said during our phone interview, federal privacy laws prohibit us from disclosing details of any sexual assault report, investigation, or hearing. That said, your characterization of the facts of the spring 2014 case you referenced during our interview is incorrect.” A month later, on Nov. 13, de Bruyn sent a similar message to a Rolling Stone fact-checker, only this time with greater detail: As I mentioned to you, we have expressed our concern to Sabrina regarding what we believe to be her mischaracterization of facts about a case that occurred in Spring 2014. I recall I mentioned this to you on the phone. It has been brought to our attention by a few students that Sabrina has spoken to that she is referencing an incident where a male student raped three different women and received a one-year suspension. This is in fact objectively false. As I told Sabrina at the time, federal privacy laws prohibit us from disclosing details of any sexual assault report, so we can’t say more. Time for caveats: *It’s possible that the incident referenced by de Bruyn in the e-mails is different from Stacy’s story. *It’s possible that, in response to de Bruyn’s warnings, Rolling Stone refined its characterization to comport with the university’s position. Consider that in his Nov. 13 message, de Bruyn was concerned about a set of facts in which “a male student raped three different women.” Erdely’s reporting doesn’t go that far; it cites Stacy’s allegations as well as two other “stories of assault.” Sexual assault can include instances of unwanted touching or fondling. (Stacy is quoted as alleging “two rapes and an assault.”) *It’s also possible that the university was quibbling about some narrow and insignificant aspect of the case in order to push Rolling Stone away from an important set of facts. For instance, the Rolling Stone piece does contain the following paragraph, which delivers a fine point on the adjudication of the case: Turns out, when UVA personnel speak of expulsion for “multiple assaults,” they mean multiple complaints that are filed with the Sexual Misconduct Board, and then adjudicated guilty. Under that more precise definition, the two other cases introduced in Stacy’s case didn’t count toward his penalty. Stacy feels offended by the outcome and misled by the deans. “After two rapes and an assault, to let him back on grounds is an insult to the honor system that UVA brags about,” she says. “UVA doesn’t want to expel. They were too afraid of getting negative publicity or the pants sued off them.” Yet the story of Stacy and the anecdote referenced by de Bruyn align on the broad outlines. For some reason, however, Rolling Stone decided not to tell its readers that the university had judged Erdely’s reporting on (what appears to be) the case of Stacy “objectively false.” Why? In an attempt to straighten out this matter, the Erik Wemple Blog asked U-Va. whether the case that de Bruyn cited in his e-mails was, in fact, the same as Stacy’s experience, and whether Rolling Stone had amended its reporting to take into account the university’s pushback. De Bruyn responded, “The University respectfully declines to comment on the records released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The University remains focused on the well-being of all students, and especially any survivor of sexual assault. There is important work ahead regarding our efforts to strengthen student safety.” Rolling Stone didn’t respond specifically to similar questions, though earlier this week it did pass along its announcement that Columbia Journalism School would be auditing its work on “A Rape on Campus.” Dean Steve Coll and Dean of Academic Affairs Sheila Coronel will examine the “editorial process that led to the publication of this story,” according to the Rolling Stone announcement. That’s a lot of work, in light of the magazine’s decision to defer to Jackie’s wishes not to contact the alleged assailants; not to contact three friends of Jackie’s who responded to her call for help after the alleged incident; to apparently rely entirely on Jackie’s testimony to allege two other gang-rape incidents; and to publish the entire investigative piece in spite of its reportorial shortcomings. Let’s hope the Columbia Journalism School people find that Rolling Stone correctly abridged the case of Stacy, though they’ll find little supporting documentation from the story itself, which lacks reporting from the accused as well as specifics on the other assaults allegedly perpetrated by Stacy’s assailant. In that sense, the Stacy anecdote resembles other key points in “A Rape on Campus.” Erik Wemple writes the Erik Wemple blog, where he reports and opines on media organizations of all sorts. |
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9:16 AM Jul 11