| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,448 Views) | |
| abb | Mar 25 2015, 04:44 AM Post #826 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/police-u-va-officials-pushed-for-investigation-of-gang-rape-allegation/2015/03/24/c4f23652-d257-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html Police: U-Va. officials pushed for investigation of gang-rape allegation By T. Rees Shapiro March 24 at 5:20 PM CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. — When the Charlottesville Police Department issued its independent investigation of an alleged fraternity gang-rape here on Monday, it did more than discredit a Rolling Stone article’s version of the events: The police report also showed that University of Virginia officials made efforts to bring the allegations to police six months before the article published. Police Chief Timothy J. Longo told reporters on Monday that detectives were “not able to conclude to any substantive degree that an incident occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house or any other fraternity house, for that matter.” Longo also noted that investigators concluded that the fraternity did not host a party the night of the alleged attack in 2012 nor were they able to find anyone matching the magazine’s description of the alleged attackers. [Police find no evidence of alleged sexual assault at U-Va. fraternity.] The police investigation was initiated at the behest of U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan immediately after the article was published online in November, an account that described a junior named Jackie who survived a vicious attack at a fraternity during the first weeks of her freshman year. The Rolling Stone account focused partly on what Jackie called a lackluster response from U-Va. officials regarding her alleged gang rape, and the article criticized the university for not alerting campus to the allegations. But the police report shows that university officials were aware of the allegations at least six months before the story published and that associate dean Nicole Eramo had proactively sought police assistance after learning of the gang-rape claim from Jackie in the spring of 2014. Rolling Stone’s account portrayed Eramo as indifferent to Jackie’s allegations; campus sexual assault prevention advocates reacted negatively to that characterization, saying that they believe Eramo is a force for good on campus. Eramo has declined requests for comment, and university officials did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. On Monday, Palma Pustilnik, an attorney for Jackie, declined to comment. The Washington Post generally does not identify victims of sexual assaults and has used Jackie’s nickname at her request. In multiple interviews with The Post, Jackie said that she never expected that a police investigation would result in charges related to her case. The new Charlottesville police report for the first time outlines the steps U-Va. officials took after learning of the allegations from Jackie, steps that appear to show U-Va. officials were not trying to hide from the allegations but rather wanted police to get involved. The report says that Eramo met Jackie in May 2013, after the student was referred to the dean’s office for academic concerns. It was then that Jackie disclosed she had been to a fraternity — she did not identify which one — and that she had been sexually assaulted there. But police say that Jackie’s description of the attack differed significantly from what was later published in Rolling Stone. In that meeting, Eramo told Jackie that she had a number of options available to her as a student if she wanted to pursue the allegations further. Eramo then met Jackie again almost a year later, on April 21, 2014, when Jackie identified Phi Kappa Psi as the fraternity where her assault occurred. The next day, Eramo joined Jackie at a meeting with both Charlottesville police and University of Virginia police, which Longo said was the first time his department became aware of the allegations. On May 1, 2014, Eramo and Jackie met with a Charlottesville detective to discuss the alleged sexual assault. But during both meetings with police and Eramo, Jackie would not provide information about the attack, police said. Longo said Monday that Jackie did not cooperate with their investigation into the case. U-Va. officials, including Sullivan, met with members of Phi Kappa Psi prior to the Rolling Stone account’s publication, and members of the house said they were stunned to learn of the allegations and knew almost immediately that they were false. In the days after the article appeared online in November, U-Va. officials said that privacy laws prevented them from commenting on Jackie’s case. In a November 2014 statement in response to the magazine story, Sullivan wrote that the Rolling Stone account included “many details that were previously not disclosed to University officials.” Sullivan at the time also called on members of the university community with knowledge of the attack described in the account to step forward. “There are individuals in our community who know what happened that night, and I am calling on them to come forward to the police to report the facts,” Sullivan said. “Only you can shed light on the truth, and it is your responsibility to do so.” In a statement after Longo’s press conference Monday, Sullivan said the police investigation validated the university’s efforts to help Jackie seek assistance. “The investigation confirms what federal privacy law prohibited the University from sharing last fall: that the University provided support and care to a student in need, including assistance in reporting potential criminal conduct to law enforcement,” Sullivan said. “Chief Longo’s report underscores what I have known since well before the publication of the Rolling Stone article: that we at the University are committed to ensuring the health and safety of all of our students.” Longo said Monday that university administrators, including Eramo, played a crucial role in their investigation. T. Rees Shapiro is an education reporter. |
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| abb | Mar 25 2015, 04:50 AM Post #827 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/24/rolling-stone-u-va-story-how-did-magazine-handle-alleged-hesitancy-by-jackie/ Rolling Stone U-Va. story: How did magazine handle alleged hesitancy by ‘Jackie’? By Erik Wemple March 24 at 4:42 PM University of Virginia students walk to campus past the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house last year. (Steve Helber/Associated Press) The Columbia Journalism School announced yesterday that its report on Rolling Stone magazine’s awful Nov. 19 story on sexual assault at the University of Virginia will surface on April 8. Here’s one issue that this report — months in the making — must address: How Rolling Stone editors handled the alleged reluctance of the story’s central subject — a U-Va. junior named “Jackie” — to tell her story. In a Monday news conference, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo laid out extensive detail about how Jackie’s statements to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the story’s reporter, and others defied corroboration over the course of a five-month police investigation. That investigation got its start after Erdely’s piece launched a national uproar over its central claims relating to a barbaric alleged gang rape at a campus fraternity in September 2012, when Jackie was a U-Va. freshman. Though the probe was thus quite necessary, it came off as a referendum on the credibility of a single student at U-Va. A press statement on the investigation’s results mentions “Jackie” 56 times, “Rolling Stone” seven times. Glamour asks, “Should Jackie Be Prosecuted?” And various Twitter users — surprise! — want to see her punished. It’s all enough to prompt a fantasy: What if Rolling Stone had decided not to publish Jackie’s story? Not only did the magazine fail to do the most rudimentary fact-checking of Jackie’s claims, but also it knew that the subject had concerns about telling her story. “Two years later, Jackie, now a third-year, is worried about what might happen to her once this article comes out. Greek life is huge at UVA, with nearly one-third of undergrads belonging to a fraternity or sorority, so Jackie fears the backlash could be big…” reads the story. There is more. The Post’s T. Rees Shapiro reported in December that Jackie had at one point asked to be taken out of the story and that Erdely had refused to comply with the request. Jackie told The Post that she “felt completely out of control over my own story.” Jackie had told “elements” of her story at a Take Back the Night event at U-Va., reported Shapiro. Here’s where Columbia can help. Did Rolling Stone, in fact, receive such a request? If so, did Erdely communicate Jackie’s reluctance to Rolling Stone editors? Did Erdely strong-arm a college student into having her life laid out in a prominent national magazine? The questions drill in on a key question in journalism ethics. Under what terms does a publication pluck citizens from the confines of a low-profile existence and thrust them into the public eye? There’s no pat answer, though it’s hard to maintain confidence in any aspect of Rolling Stone’s handling of “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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| Quasimodo | Mar 25 2015, 08:20 AM Post #828 |
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There must be a book about "how to respond to rape allegations", which is presented to each university president on taking office; filled with templates and blank forms to fill in, containing appropriate remarks like the one above... (Either that, or everyone is consulting with Brodhead about how to respond...) |
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| abb | Mar 25 2015, 08:41 AM Post #829 |
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http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/03/25/the-unravelling-of-the-uva-rape-story-is-bad-for-journalism-not-feminism/ The unravelling of the UVA rape story is bad for journalism, not feminism We should be anything but disappointed when stories of terrible crimes turn out to be false Alice Robb 03.25.15 Police announced on Monday that a four-month investigation had yielded “no evidence” to substantiate the story, reported in Rolling Stone in November, that a University of Virginia student had been brutally gang-raped at a fraternity party in 2012. According to Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a UVA freshman named Jackie was lured upstairs at a fraternity and raped by seven of its members in some kind of satanic initiation rite. The police investigation–which included interviews with more than 70 students and witnesses, and with which Jackie declined to cooperate–found no men on campus matching Jackie’s descriptions of the perpetrators, and revealed that the fraternity in question didn’t host a party on the night Jackie claims she was attacked. Erdely’s story began unravelling just days after it was published, but not before it had become an international sensation. It generated headlines in major media outlets around the world. University administrators, legal authorities and elected officials all reacted with appropriate levels of horror. UVA president Teresa Sullivan immediately introduced new initiatives to fight sexual assault and shut down all Greek life on campus. Local police launched the investigation they’ve only just suspended. As the cracks in the story began to emerge–Why hadn’t Erdely talked to the men Jackie accused? Why did she base a 9,000-word story almost entirely on one source? Why did many of Jackie’s friends, when questioned by journalists from other publications, seem skeptical of her account?–most mainstream journalists gave Jackie the benefit of the doubt as long as it remained possible, and many jumped on those who questioned her. When blogger Richard Bradley questioned the thoroughness of Erdely’s reporting, he was quickly denounced by Jezebel as an “idiot.” Feminists on Twitter expressed their support of Jackie in spite of the inconsistencies in her story, making the hashtag “#IStandWithJackie” go viral. As Jackie’s story comes to seem less and less plausible, we should be more and more happy and relieved: that Jackie probably was not beaten, raped and verbally abused by seven men for three hours; that ritual gang rape is probably not a regular event at the UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi. But many feminists seem disappointed instead. They’re worried that if one rape allegation turns out to be false, all other future rape claims will be viewed with greater suspicion. “Rolling Stone just wrecked an incredible year of progress for rape victims,” wrote Arielle Duhaime-Ross at the Verge, in December. At BuzzFeed, Annie Clark argued that the unravelling of Jackie’s story “could be read as a setback for an entire movement.” Other false rape allegations have been met with similar reactions. When Joanie Faircloth recanted her claim that she’d been raped by musician Conor Oberst, a writer at Bustle called the news “crushingly disappointing.” That’s perverse. On a human level, we should be anything but disappointed when stories of terrible crimes turn out to be false. Understandably, people are annoyed at the waste of time and resources, but we should still be grateful that someone wasn’t raped. And the fear that individual cases will discredit all victims is also misguided. The Duke lacrosse scandal didn’t stop us from believing Faircloth. Faircloth’s falsehood didn’t stop us from believing Jackie. If anything, the UVA case shows how sympathetic we are to victims of sexual assault. Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia student who’s been carrying a mattress around campus all year to draw attention to her alleged assault, is generally seen as a hero. She appeared on the cover of New York magazine and attended the State of the Union address as a guest of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. When the UVA story first came to light, everyone involved—from university administrators to fraternity members–reacted with outrage. We trusted Jackie for as long as we could, and we will continue to trust others who come forward. One incident isn’t going to change the climate. This whole episode is a disaster for Rolling Stone. It’s terrible, and perhaps career-ending, for Erdely and her fact-checker. It could even be argued that it’s bad for journalism as a whole. But it isn’t bad for feminism. |
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| Joan Foster | Mar 25 2015, 09:05 AM Post #830 |
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Crystal Mangum is a dangerous woman...we saw that early on in the Hoax. Dangerous to others but also to herself. This "Jackie" may be matriculating at a top tier school and having Daddy provide a comfortable subsistence that she does not need to turn tricks to supplement...but she is Magnum's scary equal in every way. Those who enable these women to promote their own agendas...Senator Gillibrand comes immediately to mind...are truly heartless...and shockingly irresponsible both to the welfare of the "survivor" and to those whose lives intersect with hers. Like Mangum, the lies did not begin with the whopper that initiated their respective Hoax. They both have a sorry and sick history. Yet, they cannot be given the help they need because the Useful Lie would therefore be undermined. We will hear about this "Jackie" again: it may be a suicide...or further havoc in the workplace that employs her, or in the life of the next man that rejects her. Mangum was taken to the bosom of the Black Studies department, Black churches, etc. That did not save her or her last victim. The Feminist Cabal will fare no better with their sick chick. Buckle up, Hooligans....it will take time, as it did in Mangum's case...but Jackie will be back in the headlines eventually. It's an inevitable tragedy. Edited by Joan Foster, Mar 25 2015, 09:19 AM.
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| Foxlair45 | Mar 25 2015, 10:28 AM Post #831 |
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This article appeared last week in the Daily Mail. Her parents' pain must be unimaginable.....but they knew she had mental issues and there is a reference to "escort services" and "massages" in her background: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2998808/I-know-s-selfish-no-way-Note-left-woman-23-killed-faced-trial-accused-false-rape-claim.html Is this what it will need to come down to? |
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| Joan Foster | Mar 25 2015, 11:16 AM Post #832 |
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Excellent article, Foxlair. Here in our country, there are interest groups now that use women with mental and emotional disorders for their own selfish interests....all in the guise of compassion. |
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| kbp | Mar 25 2015, 11:31 AM Post #833 |
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That sure looks like a lot of investigation that would require a complaint by an alleged victim along with some probable cause to order the evidence reviewed. |
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| dsl | Mar 25 2015, 11:43 AM Post #834 |
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NOBODY should ever be able to trash the reputation of another person by knowingly telling devastating lies about them. When you steal a person's reputation, you steal their present and their future. Sometimes you steal their lives. ANY person who knowingly perpetrates a lie, insinuating a crime that never happened, should be prosecuted. Rape is bad enough when it really happens. But it is equally terrible if such a crime is alleged and a young man's life, reputation, and finances are forever tarnished by the false allegation. In what way is that a lesser crime? We are way overdue in seeing this travesty of justice overturned. |
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| abb | Mar 25 2015, 04:08 PM Post #835 |
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http://www.redstate.com/diary/kimberly_ross/2015/03/25/uva-victimhood-beats-vindication/ UVA Rape Scandal: Quiet Vindication? By: kimberly_ross (Diary) | March 25th, 2015 at 11:30 AM From the diaries… We cannot be so eager to protect one segment of the population, at the expense of another, simply to prop up a narrative. This behavior not only assigns more worth to one side, regardless of evidence, but weakens claims of legitimate victims. Such is the case with the well-known University of Virginia rape accusation. While the alleged incident took place in 2012, the story “A Rape on Campus” didn’t appear in Rolling Stone until November 2014. After much speculation about the actual facts, and glaring credibility issues with the purported victim, the editor wrote a note of apology to readers. And that was that. Until this week, when the following was released: A four-month police investigation into an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia that Rolling Stone magazine described in graphic detail produced no evidence of the attack and was stymied by the accuser’s unwillingness to cooperate, authorities said Monday. To be sure, it is a good thing that there is no evidence supporting the horrifically described experience. That much we can all agree on. However, the fact that the accuser, Jackie, was so unwilling to work with police, yet clearly eager to share her story with Rolling Stone is inexcusable. The pop culture-obsessed audience a magazine like that enjoys is more than willing to run with furthering the idea of rape culture. Stylized retellings of victimhood are shareable and scandalous in ways an evidence-free result from months of police investigation are not. From a New York Times article in December 2014: But to some conservatives and critics of the news media, the Rolling Stone article underscored what they viewed as an overzealous movement to define and prosecute a national “rape culture” problem that is both politically infused and negligent of the rights of the accused. In a society where claims of benevolent sexim and microaggression actually exist, questioning anyone claiming anything is seen more as an intrusion than an attempt to establish truth. When did we become so steeped in establishing a movement which sees a potential predator in every man and only prey in every woman? There should always be a thirst for the facts. Carefully weighing the realities of both the accused and accuser should be a priority, and it is unclear to me why such a concept is so unattractive. Then again, truth is not the goal behind this “rape culture” idea. This brand of empowering women means demonizing men at every chance and removing accountability for the sake of celebrated survival. The (supposedly) investigative Rolling Stone article committed many journalistic mistakes in which, among many other things, the accused were not contacted. A review of the piece is forthcoming, and the author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, has been quiet on social media since the eyebrows began raising. The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity was reinstated early this year, and with the police finding no evidence for the claim, things are slowly calming down. Though no evidence of an assault exists, evidence of damage to not just the reputation of a fraternity and an entire school, but to future, legitimate victims is more than apparent. “These false accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault,” said Stephen Scipione, president of the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi. “We hope that Rolling Stone’s actions do not discourage any survivors from coming forward to seek the justice they deserve.” The power a situation like this has on those in the immediate vicinity and those in society as a whole is immeasurable. It is easy to cause harm, but to remove an affect and continuing stigma is challenging. The evidence-free UVA “rape” should bother us all, but this week’s new conclusion will barely cause a ripple, because vindication is never as popular as initial victimhood. |
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| abb | Mar 25 2015, 04:22 PM Post #836 |
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http://fortune.com/2015/03/25/uva-president-teresa-sullivan/ The unluckiest president in America by Patricia Sellers @pattiesellers March 25, 2015, 6:00 AM EDT University of Virginia chief Teresa Sullivan has persevered through an aborted coup, the aftermath of two student murders, a scandal over an alleged gang rape, and the recent fallout from the bloody arrest of a black student by white officers. Does that make her a good leader? When Rolling stone published a 9,000-word article last fall about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, it plunged the campus into turmoil. The story presented a frightening portrait of a school where sexual assaults were common. It pointed to disturbing deficiencies—going all the way to the top—in the school’s handling of the incident. How did UVA’s president, Teresa “Terry” Sullivan, respond to the brewing crisis? She left town. Just hours after the story broke and lit up the Internet, she boarded a plane to Amsterdam to attend an education conference. Three days later she suspended social activities at all UVA fraternities and sororities, a move that exposed her to new criticism: that she had swung from underreacting to overreacting. Before a consensus could be reached on her approach in the weeks that followed, she caught a break: Rolling Stone acknowledged that its article was full of holes. Now, a few months later, as Sullivan has taken long-term steps to prevent sexual violence at the school, she is starting to draw praise. Welcome to managing in the maelstrom. “We don’t get to choose our adversity,” says Sullivan, who has certainly faced plenty of it. In the five years since she arrived in Charlottesville as the first woman to lead the school founded by Thomas Jefferson, she has grappled with the effects of the Rolling Stone article, two high-profile murders of students, and most recently, demonstrations over the bloody arrest of a 20-year-old black student by white officers outside a local pub. That’s not even counting the most direct challenge she has faced. In 2012, UVA’s board of visitors ejected her, leaving her out of a job for 18 days until a grassroots rebellion returned her to the presidency. That she is still standing is extraordinary. Sullivan’s experience is proof that you can’t judge leadership without considering context. No leader aspires to tread water, but if you’re tossed into the Pacific when a tsunami strikes, merely surviving is an achievement. That’s the paradox of Sullivan: Critics, including board members, find her plodding and bureaucratic; even supporters would give her just a “B.” Still, she’d get an “A” if the subject were rebounding from disaster. There were many skeptics in 2010 when UVA recruited Teresa Sullivan to replace John Casteen, a charismatic fundraising powerhouse with a 20-year tenure. Sullivan, then provost of the University of Michigan, had never run an institution or raised money or reported to a board. She had been an eminent sociologist specializing in labor force demography. (Sullivan has written six books, including two on middle-class debt with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor turned senator.) Today Sullivan is in charge of a $2.8 billion budget, 17,000 employees, and some 21,000 students at 11 schools and a medical center. (I graduated from UVA in 1982.) At 65, Sullivan comes across more like a grandmother than a chief executive. Welcoming me into her office, she explains that Casteen kept his desk near the door; she put hers in the back corner. “Behind the jungle,” she tells me, pointing to a couple of big, leafy potted plants. Pleasant and plainspoken, Sullivan acknowledges that she prefers her privacy (though she makes a point of being omnipresent at campus events.) She also discounts the importance of leaders, herself included. “Sociologists are very suspicious of biographical explanations of leadership,” she says. “It’s a mistake to see leadership as a function of the individual.” Americans tend to have a destructive overemphasis on the individuals in charge, she says: “We do too much naming, blaming, and changing.” By contrast, Sullivan aspires to be what she calls “a sustainable leader who builds a team and leads collaboratively.” photographed at UVA. March 2015Teresa Sullivan, President of the University of VirginiaPhotograph by Patrick James Miller for Fortune Her view has been shaped not only by her time at UVA, but also by her childhood. Sullivan grew up an only child in segregated Little Rock. Her father was a criminal lawyer with many black clients. On weekends he would take her along as he called on clients in rural Pulaski County. “He usually left me with Pop Lloyd, who had been convicted of manslaughter for killing his wife,” Sullivan recalls. Her father led by example, showing her that empathy and trust can unite diverse groups. “Sometimes we’d have Sunday dinner with the Pulaski County jailer. He would let me in the cell with the female prisoners, and they’d braid my hair,” Sullivan says. “Today this would break a million laws.” Her dad died from a heart attack when Sullivan was 11. She and her mother, a VA hospital nurse, moved to Jackson, Miss.—on the day in 1963 when a white supremacist killed civil rights leader Medgar Evers there. Sullivan went to school a few blocks from the state capitol, where she saw crowds demonstrate for and against integration. Sullivan graduated first in her high school class, then went to Michigan State, where she fell in love with her future husband, Doug Laycock, and a field of study. Sullivan got a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago and then a job teaching at the University of Texas, where she later moved into management. “I didn’t have a burning desire to be an administrator,” she says, “but I did have a burning desire to solve problems.” Analytical and adept at working the system, she quietly pushed for changes, including the creation of a maternity policy when she was pregnant with her second child. At the University of Michigan, where Sullivan moved in 2006, she was provost under then-president Mary Sue Coleman. “Terry is an enormously complex individual and very, very smart,” says Coleman, explaining that she provided a steady hand in helping the school navigate the financial crisis. Sullivan arrived at UVA three months after 22-year-old student athlete Yeardley Love was killed by George Huguely, her ex-boyfriend and a star on the UVA lacrosse team. So from day one, Sullivan was forced to react to events. She staged a “day of dialogue” that brought more than 1,500 students together to discuss how to prevent violence. She also implemented voluntary sessions on “bystander intervention training.” But Sullivan was thoroughly unprepared for a different kind of challenge: the hard-driving business types on UVA’s board of visitors. It’s like a company board, except that the members are appointed by Virginia’s governor, typically as a reward for campaign contributions. The members choose the rector, who is equivalent to a board chair. The incoming rector when Sullivan arrived was Helen Dragas, who has a BA and an MBA from the university. Dragas, 53, heads a real estate development company that her father founded. She is, by all accounts, impatient, iron-willed, and used to running her own show. Sullivan and Dragas are the first women to hold their posts at UVA—which didn’t graduate its first class of female students until 1974. That’s about all they have in common. Opposites in personality, they’ve never found a way to get along. As Dragas fretted that rivals were leaving UVA in the dust in online education and other new potential sources of revenue, she pushed Sullivan to come up with a fresh strategy. Sullivan resisted, failing to deliver anything detailed enough for Dragas and the board. They viewed Sullivan as an able administrator, but worried that she had an awkward public presence and lacked the social finesse critical to courting wealthy donors. Sullivan sensed the tension, but she had no clue what was coming when Dragas asked for a meeting with her and vice rector Mark Kington on a Friday in June 2012. “They handed me a letter of resignation,” Sullivan recalls. “They said I had lost the confidence of the board. The faculty didn’t like me. The students didn’t think much of me. And I had not developed connections with alumni.” Sullivan disagreed, but she didn’t resist. “They had their minds made up,” she says. “It was not a negotiation.” In 2012, Helen Dragas and Paul Tudor Jones viewed Sullivan as too passive and not a visionary. They wanted a different president.Photographs by Mark Gormus — Rrichmond Times-Dispatch/AP; Eduardo Munoz — Reuters Critics piled on. Hedge fund titan Paul Tudor Jones, an alum and UVA’s biggest living donor, published an op-ed in the Charlottesville Daily Progress, citing a “few alarming facts” including that the university’s rank in U.S. News & World Report had fallen to No. 25 from No. 15 in 1988. “UVA needs proactive leadership to match the pace of change,” Jones wrote. But the story quickly turned. Dragas had worked behind the scenes to persuade board members to agree to push Sullivan out. The board’s bylaws did not require a formal vote or public disclosure. The sense of secret maneuvering infuriated faculty and other supporters. Ten days after her ouster, as Sullivan went to deliver a farewell address to the board, thousands of people—faculty, parents, alums, townies, students attending summer classes—converged on UVA’s Lawn. As Sullivan walked up the steps of the Rotunda, a woman behind her held a purple umbrella as a signal to clear the way. “The crowd parted like the Red Sea,” recalls Sullivan. She calls the entire experience “weird.” Sullivan insists she had no desire to ask for her job back. She just wanted to defend her record. “Corporate-style top-down leadership doesn’t work in a great university,” she told the board that day. “Being an incrementalist does not mean I lack vision.” Eight days later, after Virginia’s governor said he’d ask the board members to resign if they didn’t unite on a plan for UVA’s leadership, they unanimously reinstated her. (Dragas says the board wanted “a concrete strategic and financial plan. Had we received even a reasonable approximation of that, the drama of 2012 would never have unfolded.”) Some people were amazed Sullivan would return after the upheaval. “A lot of people put their jobs on the line for me,” she says, “and I couldn’t turn my back on them.” (There’s also the job’s pay, $675,000, and its prestige.) She showed no hint of public anger. “The most important thing was how I behaved,” Sullivan says, “not how I felt.” Her dispassion doesn’t always play well in a social media era when bad news moves around the world instantaneously, and crisis managers are expected to be nimble, bold, and empathetic. “My natural tendency is to shut down,” Sullivan admits. She’s self-conscious about being a woman in charge: “There’s a negative stereotype of women being overemotional and thus not able to lead.” On a deeper level, she says, “I’m inclined toward introspection and not letting the emotion overtake that.” Her leadership philosophy: “Don’t overreact. Reason my way to a solution. And keep the good of the school in front of me.” Those were her guidelines last November when she read the Rolling Stone article about the alleged gang rape of a student at UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi house. Her initial response, she says, was “numbness.” She acknowledges that leaving the country as the story exploded was “a mistake.” She does not, however, regret her decision to suspend social activities in the Greek system. After Phi Kappa Psi was vandalized and threats surfaced, she says, “I was attempting to calm things down.” Discrepancies emerged in the article, and, in late March, the Charlottesville police department announced that it had found no evidence that a gang rape had occurred. Sullivan hopes to turn the mess to the school’s advantage: “I want the University of Virginia to play a major role on the issue of sexual assault,” she says. Sullivan worked with student leaders on new rules to crack down on binge drinking and frat party excesses. Now at least three fraternity brothers must be “sober and lucid” at all fraternity events, and at least one must be on duty at each point of alcohol distribution and another at the stairs leading to residential rooms. “If I had come up with the rules, everyone would be gaming the system,” Sullivan says. Collaboration “is more successful than Mama Terry calling the shots.” The New York Times praised the code of conduct as “worthy of being used elsewhere.” Sullivan has made strides on other fronts. She has increased faculty pay and research spending. She’s working to create institutes for professors from across the university to collaborate and teach. The first, an institute for students interested in data analytics and security, opened last fall. Sullivan has been unspectacular when it comes to fundraising, which is particularly crucial at a time of diminishing state funding. UVA reported $224 million in cash flow (actual money coming in) last fiscal year, which pales next to the $302 million her predecessor delivered in his peak year, 2007. But this year’s cash flow is up 29%, and Sullivan has managed to reel in some big donors. She has even been collaborating with Paul Tudor Jones on his passion project: a new $15 million Contemplative Sciences Center he is funding. UVA’s board of visitors is now discussing whether to renew Sullivan’s contract, which runs out in July 2016. She would like to stay, but it says something about her that she doesn’t know if she has cemented enough board support to win a new contract. Meanwhile, Sullivan is managing one more crisis, this one centered on race. In March, Martese Johnson, an African American student and a vice chair of the student-run honor committee, sustained head injuries when white Alcoholic Beverage Control officers tangled with him outside a bar. A cellphone camera caught him struggling and bloodied, yelling, “I go to UVA, you f*ckin’ racists. What the f*ck? How does this happen?” Johnson has pleaded not guilty to public intoxication and obstruction of justice without force. Within 24 hours, students began protesting. Frustrations had been rising in the wake of the deaths of black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City—just as Sullivan was struggling to deal with student drinking and sexual assault. Today many at UVA see her reaction to the Johnson incident—she called the governor, requested an investigation, and released a bland statement about “seeking the truth”—as inadequate. Incoming student council president Abraham Axler says Sullivan has been a “friend to the student council and accessible” but has “struggled to provide the emotional leadership that the community needs.” Says Sullivan of the latest episode, “I did my best to get in front of it immediately.” She adds, “If I were highly emotional, I would be criticized for that.” Treading water all the way, Terry Sullivan has created a legacy. And that legacy is now her problem. Five Years of Crisis Teresa Sullivan has faced a stream of violence and calamities as President of UVA. 2010: An undergraduate murders a fellow student In May, only months after Sullivan was named UVA’s president—but three months before she took office—student lacrosse player Yeardley Love was killed by George Huguely V, her former boyfriend and a star on the men’s lacrosse team. Huguely was convicted of murder and is serving a 23-year sentence. Sullivan oversaw new student education on domestic violence and “bystander intervention training.” 2012: A presidential coup is undone after a big protest On June 8, less than two years into her term, Sullivan was confronted by board rector Helen Dragas and vice rector Mark Kington, who asked for her resignation. By June 18, when Sullivan appeared before the board for a farewell speech, there had been a populist uprising at the university. On June 26 the board, facing a torrent of criticism, voted unanimously to reinstate Sullivan as president. 2014: Another death — plus UVA is scrutinized for sexual assault In September, sophomore Hannah Graham went missing. After six weeks her remains were found; a 33-year-old local man was later charged with her murder. A media firestorm erupted on Nov. 19, when Rolling Stone published a story about an alleged gang rape at a UVA fraternity. Sullivan left town, then, on Nov. 22, suspended social activities at all UVA fraternities and sororities. On Dec. 5, Rolling Stone apologized for its article. 2015: This time it’s about race: UVA makes headlines again Sullivan began the year still addressing ways to prevent sexual assault. In January she lifted the suspension on social activities and announced new safety rules. On March 18, 20-year-old black student Martese Johnson was bloodied by white officers during an arrest after Johnson was denied entry to a bar. Student protests erupted within 24 hours of the incident. This story has been corrected. The original version referred to Hannah Graham, the UVA student who was murdered last year, as a freshman. She was a sophomore. This story from the April 1, 2015 issue of Fortune. |
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| abb | Mar 25 2015, 04:26 PM Post #837 |
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/opinion/opinion-editorial-layers-of-questions-still-remain/article_7ede8bbe-d25e-11e4-ac4c-4f8da50c4edb.html Opinion/Editorial: Layers of questions still remain Posted: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 12:15 am The Daily Progress Questions. Some are put to rest. Others linger, as unsettling as ever. The Charlottesville Police Department has thoroughly and carefully investigated allegations of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity in 2012 and, after months of work, found “no substantive basis” for those claims. Shortly after the accusations surfaced in Rolling Stone magazine last fall, UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan asked city police to look into what had been described by the alleged victim as a terrible crime. Meanwhile, the fraternity began sifting its own records and found apparent discrepancies in the story provided by “Jackie.” However, the attention of the community was laser-focused on “Jackie’s” apparent ordeal and the claims of a “rape culture” at UVa. That focus was both understandable and fitting, for precisely the same reason that police were called in: If true, it was a terrible crime and it deserved our attention. Police, however, found no evidence to support the claim, they reported this week. They presented a time line and a meticulous description of actions taken in the course of the investigation. Their conclusion seems unassailable. Which leaves us, perversely, with more questions. They are not legal questions, but emotional, social and moral ones. What did happen to “Jackie,” if anything? The investigation clarifies what did not happen. Police could find no reason to believe a rape as described in Rolling Stone occurred at the named fraternity, or any fraternity, in the time frame specified by “Jackie.” “That doesn’t mean that something terrible did not happen to ‘Jackie’ on the evening of Sept. 28, 2012,” said police Chief Timothy J. Longo. “We are just not able to gather sufficient facts to conclude what that something may have been.” He again stressed the critical importance of contacting police as quickly as possible after a crime. Every minute, every day, every month of delay means that evidence is leaking away. Why were we in the community so swift to believe the allegations? For reasons both logical and emotional. Because the University of Virginia already was under federal investigation for allegedly mishandling a sexual misconduct case. Because Rolling Stone seemed to be a credible source. Because we know a rape previously had occurred at a UVa fraternity: In 2005, victim Elizabeth Securro received a letter of remorse from a man who admitted raping her at a frat house nearly 20 years earlier, confirming her confused memories and launching a formal investigation and trial. Because we have been socially conditioned to believe the victim first — an understandable impulse toward correcting errors of the past when victims were never believed, but not one that is always useful. These difficult questions, and others, must be faced — if not fully resolved. Even incremental steps toward clarity may help us help other “Jackies” in the future, and help us to maintain equilibrium amid confusion and controversy. |
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| abb | Mar 26 2015, 04:50 AM Post #838 |
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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/university-faculty-respond-to-rolling-stone-article-released-wednesday University faculty respond to Rolling Stone article released Wednesday Faculty Senate releases statement, departments hold student discussions by Anna Higgins and Lee Williams and Madeline Nagy | Nov 25 2014 | 11/25/14 3:38am The English department faculty held a student-faculty discussion called "We Need to Talk." “We pledge to engage with the administration, staff, students, and alumni to foster a safe community, grounded in dignity and integrity, free of violence,” the statement says. Amid a sea of protests, University faculty have been active participants in the dialogue permeating Grounds which critically analyzes the University's culture and policies surrounding sexual assault. In addition to organizing a rally Saturday night on Beta Bridge, faculty from a swath of departments have issued statements and held discussions to help promote constructive change on Grounds, after a Rolling Stone article published last week thrust the University community into the national spotlight over the administration's handling of sexual assault cases. Asst. Religious Studies Prof. Matt Hedstrom said faculty may be better positioned than students to help promote long-term change in culture and policies surrounding sexual assault. “Students, in a way, are limited based on the fact they’re here four years,” Hedstrom said. “If we’re talking about things that have a reach over a span of time, that’s where administrators and faculty and alumni provide, in some ways, a wider perspective than current students can. [However,] pressure from students can make a huge, huge difference.” Faculty Senate responds The Faculty Senate's executive council released a statement Nov. 21, calling upon the entire faculty of the University to participate in the process of amending the “culture that allows violence to occur." The letter, signed by Executive Council Chair Joe Garofalo, Chair-Elect Nina Solenski and Past-Chair Chris Holstege, along with Greg Saathoff, chair of the General Faculty Council, condemns the sexual assault described in the Rolling Stone article and urges the University community to act with “sensitivity and sound judgment” while the police conduct their investigation into the allegations. “We pledge to engage with the administration, staff, students, and alumni to foster a safe community, grounded in dignity and integrity, free of violence,” the statement reads. The Faculty Senate will hold a meeting Dec. 17 which help determine what specific action the faculty will take to achieve these goals, Garofalo said in an email. “Our Faculty Senate meeting will be devoted to an open discussion of sexual violence, focusing on what is being done and what actions need to be taken,” he said. Saathoff said the entire community — faculty, staff and students — shares the responsibility to make real change in the University to protect the students from sexual assault. But he acknowledged faculty may play a special role in the process. “I think it’s important to listen to perspectives of the faculty and compare and contrast what the situation is here with others,” Saathoff said. “Now that this topic has been opened up I think it gives us an opportunity as a faculty to listen even more closely and thoughtfully.” The English department said the Faculty Senate's statement failed to capture the necessary activism and policy changes the administration must take. In an open letter, the department highlighted the appointment of Mark Filip, a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, to serve as independent counsel to review the University's sexual assault policies as a clear failing on the administration's failure to adequately respond to the issue. A Phi Kappa Psi party is the scene of a graphic gang rape described in the Rolling Stone article. Attorney General Mark Herring announced Friday morning that Filip would not serve as independent counsel in the investigation, given his ties to the fraternity. “We just wanted to voice our outrage about that obvious conflict of interest,” English Prof. Caroline Rody said. “By the time we made the statement, he had already been removed from consideration.” Departments foster faculty-student dialogue The English department also hosted an event Monday titled “We Need to Talk,” which brought students and faculty together to meet and discuss the article and sexual assault on Grounds. The talk, held in Minor Hall, brought a diverse range of people to discuss the issues through a literary lens, before breaking into small groups so students could voice their frustrations and interpretations of recent events. Because of the toll these events have had on the student body, the professors thought it necessary to provide an outlet for expression, Rody said. “We need to create a movement for students to think through these awful events and all of the problems with sexual violence on this campus," she said. English Prof. Brad Pasanek said after the article was published he felt his students "didn’t know how to talk about what’s going on.” “They had a lot of emotions and feelings and didn’t know how to articulate how they felt," he said. "[Students] didn’t know how to talk about what was happening, and weren’t sure how to speak in a way that would effect change." English Prof. Gregory Orr said the event was part of an effort to foster what he hoped would be a student-led reforms. “All we can do is gather the energy of people who want it to change and to be part of that energy,” he said. Pasanek said he was pleased with how the students expressed their thoughts, and he said there need to be more outlets for student expression. “Our students are extremely articulate, it’s just that they just don’t have places to speak, there aren’t opportunities,” Pasanek said. “Every time an undergraduate opens their mouth and speaks to me, I’m always blown away.” The American Studies program held a similar event — reframing its regular "Pizza and Praxis" event, traditionally a chance for students to informally interact with their professors, into a candid dialogue about sexual violence at the University. Hedstrom said the American Studies program is uniquely situated to foster this type of discussion. “That’s what we do in American studies,” Hedstrom said. “We study culture. We think about how culture works – how it’s produced and propagated, and what kinds of texts and sources and institutions make it come alive in people’s lives.” Assoc. American Studies Prof. Sandhya Shukla said she was shocked when she read the Rolling Stone article. “I also felt a deep sense of regret that I had not connected with students about this issue before,” Shukla said in an email. “These revelations have mobilized many faculty, myself included, to commit to know exactly what is going on, and how we can take a stand to change the situation.” Assoc. American Studies Prof. Anna Brickhouse said the American Studies program is committed to being an outlet for student perspectives. “As everyone knows, there is now a national conversation on this issue taking place,” Brickhouse said in an email. “We want to be sure our students have a place to talk about it and to think about positive steps that they and we can take for our university community.” American Studies faculty member Lisa Goff said it is important to self-examine — something emphasized in the program's pushback against American exceptionalism and directly applicable to the University community. “Loving a place, and even feeling loyal to a place, should not stop you from facing hard truths,” she said. The French department held a similar discussion between students and faculty. The event sought “to discuss, vent frustrations and concerns, and begin to deal with the troubling, indeed painful events that have impacted our community recently,” said French Prof. Ari Blatt, who chairs the department. Next Steps The Faculty Senate Planning Committee will lead a faculty meeting next Tuesday, Dec. 2, to more squarely address and debate the ways faculty can take action in response to the Rolling Stone article. Planning Committee Co-Chair Rae Blumberg said she hopes the meeting will foster collaboration which creates policy to prevent sexual assault and improve University response efforts to be more "respectful and helpful to the people involved.” Blumberg said she was hopeful for how the University community could come together to deal with the tragic issue of sexual assault. “Out of this potential disaster it can lead to something really good,” she said. “[It is] bringing people of different levels together in the University.” The meeting, an extra hour long, will be a “free ranging conversation” on any number of ways the committee can develop a program to deal with the issue in a concrete way. Though he said the faculty-led response is important, Saathoff emphasized the most important impetus of change is still the opinion of the students. “Before proposing any kind of strategy, I think it’s really important that we hear from as many students as possible who love this University as much as anyone here,” he said. |
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| Payback | Mar 26 2015, 08:35 AM Post #839 |
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Be mighty nice to have an academic community safe from false accusation. |
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| Bill Anderson | Mar 26 2015, 01:36 PM Post #840 |
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I had this piece in LRC on Wednesday: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/william-l-anderson/the-anti-male-fraud-continues/ As the U.S. political culture continues to dive steeply into destruction (and dragging everyone along with it), there is a culture that is in an even steeper dive: the political culture that envelops higher education. One would think that with the findings that one campus “incident” after another fall into the hoax category, that people on campus might think twice before jumping off the cliff. In previous eras, experience mattered, but today experience is whatever those in authority wish to make of it, so even though an extensive police investigation has found that a student named “Jackie” really was not raped, attacked, or anything else at a University of Virginia fraternity house in September 2012, no one in a position of influence is willing to add two plus two. Despite the fact that “Jackie” refused to cooperate with the investigation (she must have a good lawyer who has reminded her that lying to police really is a crime), and despite the fact that the fraternity had no party at the house on the evening in question, and despite the fact that the whole story as outlined in the November 2014 issue of Rolling Stone was ludicrous on its face, apparently the Charlottesville police chief is falling back on the “something-might-have-happened” account with the following statement: We’re not able to conclude to any substantive degree that an incident occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house, or any other fraternity house, for that matter. That doesn’t mean something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie on the evening of Sept. 28, 2012. We’re just not able to gather sufficient facts to determine what that is. This is an amazing statement, and what makes it more amazing is that the chief and every cop in Charlottesville knows that the entire account was a sick hoax that “Jackie” cooked up in order to get attention for herself. The chief does not believe “Jackie” and he does not even believe what he told the media. Furthermore, despite what almost surely will be a whitewash of the incident by Columbia Journalism Review, which is “examining” how Rolling Stone published an article that was One Big Falsehood, Rolling Stone and the author of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, are going to skate. Even though Phi Kappa Psi’s national office is looking to sue RS for what clearly is libel, my sense is that nothing negative will happen to the magazine and to Erdely. Why do I say this? I say it because the president of UVA, Teresa A. Sullivan, is facing no recriminations from her employer, whatsoever. This is amazing because Sullivan helped Erdely put together the story and was involved in its creation long before RS actually published it. Yes, the UVA president helped create and nurture a massive fraud that damaged lives and scarred the university, yet she remains gainfully employed and there is no movement by anyone associated with the university or with higher education in Virginia to show her the door. Sullivan’s antics are not the first time the president of an “elite” American university has actively tried to smear the president’s employer. Duke University president Richard Brodhead played an active role in having three Duke lacrosse players wrongfully indicted in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case of 2006-07. Brodhead not only made inflammatory remarks that implied the accused were guilty – despite having massive amounts of evidence at his fingertips that no one had raped or even touched a black stripper at a lacrosse team party – but he also encouraged Duke employees to spread false stories and pandered to the blacks and hard-left advocates in Durham, North Carolina, to give the hoax more life. Brodhead still is employed at Duke. None of the people who enabled and encouraged the lies lost employment at Duke despite the fact that the university was forced to settle with the three lacrosse players for nearly $7 million apiece or almost $21 million in total. Had a CEO of a private firm performed as wickedly as did Brodhead, he or she would have been out of work in no time. So, a president who decides to help create and nurture a hoax at UVA in order to have clear sailing in the implementation of huge restrictions on fraternities at the university gets to keep her job. Her actions created untold damage to her employer, yet nothing happens. On the “law enforcement” end, the chief of police wants people to believe that maybe, just maybe, something just awful happened to the student who apparently has no intention of cooperating with police to report that awful “something.” Well, the cop wants others to believe what he himself knows to be absolutely untrue. That puts him in line with Sullivan, who surely should have known that the details of “Jackie’s” story were false (including her being thrown through a glass table and having shards of glass sticking in her), yet Sullivan also wanted the world to believe that a horrible, vicious rape occurred on her watch at UVA. (And if Sullivan was too stupid to ask the obvious questions when presented with the details, then that means she clearly is too stupid to be a university president.) All of this tells me that higher education in this country is beyond redemption, or at least the dominant university political culture is beyond redemption. Don’t look for sanity – and certainly anything resembling a search for truth – to return in our lifetimes.
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9:15 AM Jul 11