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UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux
Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,423 Views)
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/uva/three-uva-graduates-phi-kappa-psi-members-sue-rolling-stone/article_ff268408-365d-11e5-bd33-1f91a367313c.html

Three UVa graduates, Phi Kappa Psi members, sue Rolling Stone over retracted sexual-assault story

FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS | Posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2015 9:55 pm

Two months after a University of Virginia dean filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine, three UVa graduates who are members the fraternity profiled in a discredited and retracted story about a gang rape in their chapter house have filed a lawsuit against the publication, its publisher and the writer of the article.

George Elias IV, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler, members of Phi Kappa Psi, are suing Rolling Stone, Wenner Media and journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely on three counts, including defamation and negligent infliction of emotion distress, and are asking for at least $75,000 for each count.

In court records filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York, a lawyer for the men said they suffered “vicious and hurtful attacks” because of inaccuracies in the November 2014 article.

In their lawsuit, the three 2013 graduates said the article “created a simple and direct way to match the alleged attackers” from the alleged gang rape to them based on details provided in the story.

For instance, Elias’ room at the fraternity house was “the mostly likely scene of the alleged crime” based on the details in the Rolling Stone article.

“Upon release of the article, family friends, acquaintances, co-workers and reporters easily matched [Elias] as one of the alleged attackers and, among other things, interrogated him, humiliated him, and scolded him,” the lawsuit said, adding that Hadford and Fowler “suffered similar attacks.”

In the lawsuit, their lawyer said each of their identities was listed online by anonymous users when the article first came out and each of their “names will forever be associated with the alleged gang rape.”

“These claims had a devastating effect on each of the plaintiffs’ reputations,” their lawyer, Alan L. Frank, wrote in Wednesday’s filing.

Erdely and a spokeswoman for Wenner Media did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.

Phi Kappa Psi was placed on suspension and had its house vandalized following the release of the article, titled “A Rape on Campus.” The 9,000-word story included an accusation from an anonymous student — referred to as “Jackie” — who says she was gang raped by members of the fraternity.

The article was ultimately discredited as the student’s friends gave conflicting accounts of what happened after the incident and Phi Kappa Psi released records showing it had not held a social event the night the rape was supposed to have happened.

Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo announced in March that the department’s investigation into the incident has been suspended and there is “no substantial evidence” to support the account in the article, but they had found that UVa Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo, after hearing Jackie’s claims, was quick to report them to local authorities and UVa administration. Eramo, who counsels sexual assault victims, was a central figure in the story that described the school administrators as more worried about image than protecting women. Jackie did not cooperate in the police investigation, authorities said.

Eramo sued Rolling Stone magazine for more than $7.5 million in May, saying the article cast her as the “chief villain.”

In their response to Eramo’s suit earlier this month, attorneys for the magazine acknowledge flaws in Erdely’s reporting process, but maintain that errors she made are not libelous against Eramo.

A report published by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism earlier this year said Rolling Stone failed at virtually every step of the process, from the reporting by Erdely to an editing process that included high-ranking staffers.

No one at Rolling Stone was fired or disciplined as a result of the article. Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana posted an apology on the publication’s website, and Erdely also apologized in a statement.

Along with sparking protests at Phi Kappa Psi, the article shook the UVa community, sparking protests wrenching period of soul-searching on Grounds. For the three former students, the article made them unable to focus on school and work, and embarrassed them about their association with the fraternity.

Despite its flaws, the Rolling Stone article heightened national and local scrutiny of campus sexual assaults. UVa had already been on the Department of Education’s list of 55 colleges under investigation for their handling of sexual assault violations.

The article also prompted President Teresa Sullivan to temporarily suspend Greek social events. Fraternities later agreed to ban kegs, hire security workers and keep at least three fraternity members sober at each event.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/rolling-stone-managing-editor-dana-leaving-magazine-article-1.2308815
BY Jason Silverstein
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Wednesday, July 29, 2015, 11:04 PM


The managing editor of Rolling Stone announced his exit from the magazine Wednesday night, hours after University of Virginia frat boys launched a defamation lawsuit over a botched story about a supposed gang rape.

Will Dana, who has been with the magazine for 19 years, will be leaving Aug. 7 and does not have another job lined up.

The magazine didn’t say if the UVA scandal led to Dana’s departure, with a spokesman for editor and publisher Jann Wenner telling The New York Times, “many factors go into a decision like this.”

Dana said in a statement it is “time to move on.”

“It has been a great ride and I loved it even more than I imagined it would,” he said.
A demonstrator protests at the University of Virginia last November, after Rolling Stone published a story about a supposed gang rape there. The story fell apart after months of media scrunity. Ryan M. Kelly/AP
A demonstrator protests at the University of Virginia last November, after Rolling Stone published a story about a supposed gang rape there. The story fell apart after months of media scrunity.
A NOV. 24, 2014 FILE PHOTO Steve Helber/AP
Police said there was no evidence of the gang rape, or even the party where it was said to have happened, at UVA's Phi Kappa Psi frat house.

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Ryan M. Kelly/AP
A demonstrator protests at the University of Virginia last November, after Rolling Stone published a story about a supposed gang rape there. The story fell apart after months of media scrunity.

Dana, and many others at the top of the magazine's masthead, saw their careers derailed last year after the publication of “A Rape on Campus,” a story about a sexual assault said to have happened at a UVA frat party.

Months of media scrutiny, and a report from the Columbia Journalism School commissioned by Wenner, revealed the magazine mostly relied on a single source — a student called “Jackie” — and failed to verify crucial details of her story. Police later said they could not prove Jackie's rape, or the frat party, had even happened.

After the damning Columbia report in April, the embattled mag retracted the article and Wenner said no one would be fired for over it. The story’s author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, remains on staff.

Three UVA frat boys, who graduated in 2013, sued Rolling Stone Wednesday for allegedly making them out to be rapists. The students were not named in the piece, but details in pointed to them and ruined their reputation, the suit says. They are seeking damages exceeding $75,000 each. A UVA dean is also suing the magazine for $7.5 million.

jsilverstein@nydailynews.com
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/will-dana-editor-who-oversaw-rolling-stones-u-va-rape-story-to-step-down/2015/07/30/cced2650-3666-11e5-b673-1df005a0fb28_story.html

Editor who oversaw Rolling Stone’s U-Va. rape story to step down

By Paul Farhi July 30 at 12:14 AM

The editor who oversaw Rolling Stone magazine’s erroneous story about a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia will leave the magazine, more than eight months after the story was published.

Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, will step down next month after nearly two decades at the magazine. His departure comes amid a series of defamation lawsuits against the magazine as a result of its publication in November of “A Rape on Campus,” which described an alleged gang rape that authorities determined never occurred.

The U-Va. story at first received great praise for its searing revelations, but as it quickly unraveled, it garnered widespread condemnation.

Dana had only limited involvement in the development and editing of reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s nearly 10,000-word story. But he apologized for it on Rolling Stone’s Web site after major elements of it could not be corroborated.

“A Rape on Campus” attracted worldwide attention with its shocking description of the repeated sexual assault of a U-Va. undergraduate identified in the story only as Jackie. The story said she was invited to a party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on campus in 2012 and then lured to an upstairs room, where seven fraternity brothers took turns raping her. It said school officials and Jackie’s friends were indifferent to Jackie’s plight when she reported the crime to them, using her narrative to enforce the theme that U-Va. fosters a culture of rape.

Follow-up reporting by The Washington Post and other news outlets subsequently found that virtually every major detail in the story was inaccurate. A subsequent investigation by officials at Columbia University’s journalism school found numerous flaws in the reporting, editing and fact-checking of the article. Police in Charlottesville also said they found no evidence of a crime.

Upon publication of the Columbia investigation, Dana wrote: “This report was painful reading, to me personally and to all of us at Rolling Stone. ... With its publication, we are officially retracting ‘A Rape on Campus.’... We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students.”

The Columbia report was commissioned by Rolling Stone’s co-founder and editor, Jann Wenner. He declined to discipline any members of his staff in the wake of its release in April.

On Wednesday, three members of the Phi Psi fraternity who graduated in 2013 filed suit against Rolling Stone in New York, alleging that the story — which did not name them directly -- libeled them by effectively accusing them of gang rape. Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean at the college whom the magazine said took little action after Jackie confided in her, also has sued Rolling Stone.

[Phi Kappa Psi members sue Rolling Stone over retracted U-Va. rape story]

The New York Times, which first reported Dana’s departure on Wednesday, said the magazine did not cite a reason for Dana’s departure and has not named his successor.

Paul Farhi is The Washington Post's media reporter.
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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/07/graduates-sue-rolling-stone

University alumni sue Rolling Stone, Erdely
Three University graduates file defamation suit, seek damages
by Owen Robinson | Jul 30 2015 | 4 hours ago


Phi Kappa Psi brothers are seeking legal action against Rolling Stone magazine, but no action against Sabrina Erdely has been confirmed.

Three University alumni filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Rolling Stone magazine, Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Wenner Media for defamation and negligence in regards to Erdely’s Nov. 19 article in Rolling Stone titled “A Rape On Campus,” alleging sexual assault by members of the University chapter of Phi Kappa Psi.

The three Class of 2013 graduates — George Elias, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler — are seeking a trial by jury against the defendants in New York and asking for $75,000 each in damages.

The suit claims the details presented in the article made possible the public identification of Elias, Hadford and Fowler as potential perpetrators of the alleged assault and that, following the release of the article, the three plaintiffs suffered public harassment.

According to the suit, “Family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and reporters easily matched [Elias] as one of the alleged attackers and, among other things, interrogated him, humiliated him, and scolded him [...] Hadford and Fowler suffered similar attacks … these attacks had a devastating effect on each of the Plaintiffs’ reputations.”

The suit adds that the details provided by the article — the details which it says led to such public “attacks” — are definitively false and run counter to publicly available information.

“These statements and accusations of the events that occurred at Phi Kappa Psi are categorically false and have been disproved by publicly available information,” the suit reads.

Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo, who was also singled out by the piece, filed a separate defamation lawsuit last month against the same three defendants. Eramo is seeking $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/media/will-dana-rolling-stones-managing-editor-to-depart.html?_r=0

Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s Managing Editor, to Depart

By RAVI SOMAIYAJULY 29, 2015

Will Dana, the managing editor of Rolling Stone, will leave the magazine, just months after a controversial article about a supposed gang rape at the University of Virginia was retracted.

Mr. Dana, whose planned last day is Aug. 7, is not leaving for another job, and his successor has not been named. When asked if the departure was linked to the controversy over the discredited article, Rolling Stone’s publisher, Jann S. Wenner, said, via a spokeswoman, that “many factors go into a decision like this.”

In a statement, Mr. Dana said, “After 19 years at Rolling Stone, I have decided that it is time to move on.” He added: “It has been a great ride and I loved it even more than I imagined I would. I am as excited to see where the magazine goes next as I was in the summer of 1978 when I bought my first issue.”

Mr. Wenner, a founder of the magazine, said that Mr. Dana was “one of the finest editors I have ever worked with.”

Mr. Dana and Mr. Wenner both declined to be interviewed.

Rolling Stone and Mr. Dana had been widely criticized after the publication late last year of the article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which reported that a brutal gang rape occurred in 2012 at a fraternity party at Virginia. The article helped prompt a national conversation about sexual assaults on college campuses and sent the University of Virginia into turmoil.

In the weeks after publication, the article, which was based largely on the account of one student, named only as Jackie, fell apart. Police in Charlottesville, Va., said that after exhausting all leads they had found “no substantive basis” to support the article’s depiction of the assault.

The magazine commissioned an analysis of the article by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and its report in April cited failures at every stage of the reporting process. After the report was made public, Rolling Stone retracted the article.

The magazine has since been the target of lawsuits from an assistant dean at the university and by three members of the fraternity at the center of the article, who filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday.

Mr. Dana joined Rolling Stone in 1996 as a senior editor and became managing editor in 2005. He had also been editorial director of Rolling Stone’s sister publication, Men’s Journal.
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The complaint.

https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/272985322?access_key=key-A1ekgh2jl6eY8vlZcBJF&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll
Edited by abb, Jul 30 2015, 04:48 AM.
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Joan Foster

How delicious that Jackie's lies are sullying THEIR reputations, damaging their careers, and creating chaos in THEIR lives...just as they intended to do to others.

But still "Jackie" remains protected. I really hope one of these suits gets to court. I want to see the complicated dance steps where they attempt to shield " their victim" and still defend themselves.
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Plaintiff attorney

http://alflaw.net/attorneys/
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Joan Foster

http://reason.com/blog/2015/07/28/campus-rape-stats-lisak-study-wrong


The public debate over the extent and causes of the campus sexual assault crisis is fraught with misleading information. The previously acclaimed work of psychologist David Lisak deserves that distinction as well.

The federal government, universities, and members of Congress have all used Lisak’s theories to justify rape adjudication policies that are biased against accused students. They should reconsider those policies in light of new discoveries about the inapplicability of Lisak’s work.

Lisak has cultivated a reputation as one of the nation’s foremost authorities on sexual assault, and his thinking undergirds the most vexingly anti-due process policies currently mandated by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. His authority on the subject is so uncontested that even critics of draconian anti-rape policies feel obligated to grapple with his assertions, according to Slate’s Emily Yoffe, who described Lisak’s work as foundational "in the movement to curb campus sexual assault."

President Obama’s January 2014 memo announcing the creation of a White House task force to address campus sexual assault repeatedly cites Lisak. His research provides evidence of the notion that "campus rapists are often serial predators" who perpetrate a "cycle of violence" unless stopped, according to the memo.

The 2002 Lisak study that supposedly makes that case—"Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists"—is fundamental to the activist campaign to reduce campus rape. But despite the study’s prominence, its assertions about the serial nature of campus rapists are dubiously sourced, according to a thorough investigation conducted by Reason contributor Linda LeFauve.

The study pooled data from four separate surveys of interpersonal violence that were conducted at the University of Massachusetts-Boston during the ‘90s, at which time Lisak was employed as an associate professor. Lisak’s study had a total sample size of 1,882 men, 120 of whom gave responses in the surveys indicating that they were predators. Of the 120 rapists, 76 were judged to be repeat offenders, leading to the oft-cited claim that the majority of campus sexual assault is the work of serial predators who remain "undetected," i.e., are never convicted for their crimes.


The claim suffers when scrutinized. For reasons left unclear, the four surveys that contributed data are never actually identified in the study. In fact, Lisak struggled to recall which ones he used when asked about them during the course of a telephone interview with LeFauve. When LeFauve suggested to him that the data in question came from his doctoral students’ dissertations and masters’ theses, he agreed that this was "probably" the case.

I spoke with James Hopper, one of Lisak’s former students at UMass-Boston, who confirmed that the survey data he conducted for his own dissertation was included in the 2002 study. He also identified several other students as near-certain contributors via their masters’ theses and dissertations.

What’s remarkable about these surveys is that they don’t actually have anything to do with campus sexual assault (aside from the location where they were conducted).

Researchers set up tables at different areas of campus and handed out questionnaire packets to men who passed by them; participants who returned the questionnaires received a few dollars. The surveys made no attempt to prevent non-students from participating. The researchers had no reason to do so, since their questions weren’t aimed at on-campus attacks and did not specifically ask about violence committed by or against students. And the average respondent was 26.5 years old—several years older than the typical college student—reflecting the fact that UMass-Boston is a commuter school with a significant number of older, non-traditional students.

This is quite the revelation: The canonical text of the campus sexual assault crisis is filled with data repurposed from academic papers that never intended to survey campus violence in the first place.

Lisak admitted as much during his conversation with LeFauve, agreeing with her contention that the surveys weren’t designed primarily to study campus sexual assault and admitting that "a number of these cases were domestic violence situations." During a presentation at Emory University in 2013, he also said that UMass-Boston was "demographically different than a traditional four-year college."

In an interview with Reason, Hopper described the survey respondents as "working-class, first-generation college students" who didn’t live on campus.

"This is not a typical college sample," he said.

The issues don’t end there. In an August 20, 2012 interview with the Star-Telegram, Lisak asserted that he subsequently interviewed the sexual predators in the study. "We started with questionnaires, then interviewed men who responded to the questionnaires, we did screening interviews and to verify and confirm that everything they had reported was accurate," he said.

Several other interviews and news articles about Lisak imply that he extensively interrogated the subjects of his 2002 study. He also told LeFauve during his conversation with her that he had interviewed "most of them." And yet when LeFauve asked him to explain how this was possible—given that most of the surveys he relied on were anonymous—he hung up the phone.

It’s true that Lisak interviewed 15 students who had committed sexual assault during his graduate studies at Duke University in the ‘80s. But the idea that he conducted similarly comprehensive interviews with a majority of the subjects of the 2002 study—and thus gained some special insight into the minds’ of serial campus rapists that would allow him to make claims beyond the scope of the study—has no basis in fact.

Lisak did not answer my repeated phone calls and emails asking for clarification. Paul Miller, a former student of Lisak’s who coordinated at least one of the four surveys and is co-author of the study, also did not return calls. The UMass-Boston psychology department did not respond to a request for comment.

Extensive digging, as well as interviews with Hopper (who relayed some of my questions to Lisak) revealed that it was possible for Lisak’s team of researchers to conduct interviews with some, though by no means a majority, of questionnaire respondents. One of the four surveys asked subjects to provide their contact information for subsequent interviews, and a minority of those subjects did so. According to Hopper, Lisak said his team may have subsequently interviewed approximately 22 of the 120 participants who gave responses indicating that they were rapists. These interviews were validation exercises designed to ensure that respondents had given truthful answers during the initial survey. Lisak did not recall precisely how many were conducted—whether it was greater or fewer than 22—and was unwilling to look it up for me, according to Hopper.

Lisak did not respond to me directly and only answered questions about his methodology through Hopper. The fact that he avoided answering such simple questions—questions that should have been answered in the text of the study itself—suggests an obscuring (either deliberate or coincidental) of the study’s actual purpose.

Unlike Lisak, Hopper agreed to participate in a wide-ranging conversation about methodology. He vigorously defended Lisak, their fellow researchers, and the work that was done.

"This went through institutional review and this was people of integrity conducting this research," he said.

Hopper also believes Lisak’s conclusions about the serial nature of campus rapists are well justified.

"They are entitled!" he insisted during our conversation after I suggested that students might be less likely to commit violence than the general populace. "They think they can get away with it. If anything, they might be at higher risk for committing sexual assault."

Nevertheless, in the years since "Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending" was published, the subject and scope of Lisak’s research has been vastly misinterpreted. I’ll leave it to others to debate the extent to which Lisak himself is culpable for encouraging this confusion, but at the very least, he allowed it to continue. He has repeatedly claimed in interviews that the overwhelming majority of campus sexual assaults—more than 90 percent—were premeditated by serial perpetrators.

"The vast majority of sexual assaults on campuses, in fact over 90 percent, are being perpetrated by serial offenders," Lisak told Al Jazeera. That article cites the 2002 study—a study that had nothing to do with campus sexual violence, remember—as evidence of this.

This curious interpretation of Lisak’s work has spawned a glut of federally-mandated anti-rape policies. To understand why, it’s necessary to first understand what the theory of serial predation implies. Prior to the widespread adoption of Lisak’s views, campus rape was often considered to fall into the supposedly less serious category of "date rape." Students who committed rape were assumed to be one-off offenders motivated by alcohol and circumstance into crossing blurry lines. But the 2002 study turned this thinking on its head by revisiting campus rapists as sociopaths inclined to commit violence over and over again. Abuse was in their nature, and reforming them was difficult. They were not motivated by circumstance: In fact, they planned out their crimes in advance, much like the sociopathic rapists who allegedly attacked Jackie in the infamous, false Rolling Stone story, "A Rape on Campus."

Since most campus rapists* are serial perpetrators rather than date rapists, according to Lisak, universities should feel obligated to take stronger corrective measures. Lisak himself has said that every rape accusation "should be viewed and treated as an opportunity to identify a serial rapist." This logic makes some sense, but only if one accepts this interpretation of the research. Such thinking makes it much easier for administrators to justify the abridgment of due process rights for accused students, and to operate from the presumption that accused students are guilty—of a great number of rapes, no less.

But Lisak’s 2002 study falls well short of proving that this approach is justified. His surveyed perpetrators weren’t traditional college students. It’s possible that some of them weren’t students at all, since the surveys had no mechanism for ensuring this. What the study did find was a small proportion of the UMass-Boston community—perhaps but not necessarily students—had a history of violence. This violence may or may not have happened in proximity to campus. It may or may not have happened to students. It may or may not have happened to children, spouses, or the elderly.

Given that the 2002 study is much less than what it seems, it should come as little surprise that more recent research contradicts its findings. On July 13, Georgia State University Psychology Professor Kevin Swartout and his colleagues published a study, "Trajectory Analysis of the Campus Serial Rapist Assumption," that seriously undercuts Lisak’s ideas. Swartout’s study, which did specifically set out to gauge student-on-student violence, found that most college rapists could not accurately be described as serial predators.

"Although some men perpetrate rape across multiple college years, these men are not at high risk entering college and account for a small percentage of campus perpetrators—at least 4 of 5 men on campus who have committed rape will be missed by focusing solely on these men," wrote the study’s authors.

Policymakers would be wise to let go of the notion that the average American campus is home to a dedicated contingent of rampaging sociopaths that must be stopped at all costs. Such thinking has provided cover for federal bureaucrats to endlessly expand their efforts to root out imaginary monsters—to the detriment of due process and academic freedom. It has also duped the media into uncritically accepting the lies of people like Duke University’s Crystal Mangum and UVA’s Jackie, whose nightmarish tails of ritualistic, premeditated violence destroyed the reputations of dozens of innocent people.

None of which is to say that the campus rape crisis is made up. Women are assaulted on college campuses all the time. But if we want to do anything to stop this, we might look for solutions outside the lens of a study that was never about campus violence in the first place.

(For more on this story, please see Linda M. LeFauve's piece on David Lisak's work, "Campus Rape Expert Can’t Answer Basic Questions About His Sources.")

*This sentence has been corrected: most rapists are serial offenders, and 90 percent of rapes are committed by serial offenders, according to Lisak.

Hopper's quote referencing a sense of "entitlement" was expanded, and contexted provided, to improve clarity.
Edited by Joan Foster, Jul 30 2015, 05:33 AM.
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Jul 30 2015, 04:47 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/media/will-dana-rolling-stones-managing-editor-to-depart.html?_r=0

Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s Managing Editor, to Depart

By RAVI SOMAIYAJULY 29, 2015

Will Dana, the managing editor of Rolling Stone, will leave the magazine, just months after a controversial article about a supposed gang rape at the University of Virginia was retracted.

Mr. Dana, whose planned last day is Aug. 7, is not leaving for another job, and his successor has not been named. When asked if the departure was linked to the controversy over the discredited article, Rolling Stone’s publisher, Jann S. Wenner, said, via a spokeswoman, that “many factors go into a decision like this.”

In a statement, Mr. Dana said, “After 19 years at Rolling Stone, I have decided that it is time to move on.” He added: “It has been a great ride and I loved it even more than I imagined I would. I am as excited to see where the magazine goes next as I was in the summer of 1978 when I bought my first issue.”

Mr. Wenner, a founder of the magazine, said that Mr. Dana was “one of the finest editors I have ever worked with.”

Mr. Dana and Mr. Wenner both declined to be interviewed.

Rolling Stone and Mr. Dana had been widely criticized after the publication late last year of the article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which reported that a brutal gang rape occurred in 2012 at a fraternity party at Virginia. The article helped prompt a national conversation about sexual assaults on college campuses and sent the University of Virginia into turmoil.

In the weeks after publication, the article, which was based largely on the account of one student, named only as Jackie, fell apart. Police in Charlottesville, Va., said that after exhausting all leads they had found “no substantive basis” to support the article’s depiction of the assault.

The magazine commissioned an analysis of the article by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and its report in April cited failures at every stage of the reporting process. After the report was made public, Rolling Stone retracted the article.

The magazine has since been the target of lawsuits from an assistant dean at the university and by three members of the fraternity at the center of the article, who filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday.

Mr. Dana joined Rolling Stone in 1996 as a senior editor and became managing editor in 2005. He had also been editorial director of Rolling Stone’s sister publication, Men’s Journal.
Double speak for fired.
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MikeZPU

Relative to cks' post above, when you go to the story at the link below,
there's a pretty funny video clip of Jon Stewart calling for real consequences
at Rolling Stone Magazine for the publishing of their totally discredited story:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/29/media/will-dana-rolling-stone/index.html
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/education/higher_education/uva-leader-sullivan-says-this-year-brings-changes/article_022f026a-4f94-5bf0-ba78-40711fdc3ddf.html

UVa leader Sullivan says this year brings changes

By Karin Kapsidelis Richmond Times-Dispatch | Posted: Saturday, August 29, 2015 8:01 pm

RICHMOND — The day after she met with state officials last week to review the University of Virginia’s six-year plan, class began for President Teresa Sullivan.

Sullivan is teaching a course on 21st-century labor markets to 15 first-year students, and it’s a subject that in many ways parallels ongoing discussions she is having around the state Capitol.

Aside from the six-year strategies on enrollment, retention and student success that public institutions are required to submit, a new joint legislative subcommittee is studying the future competitiveness of Virginia higher education.

“We’re important. That’s why so many people are looking at what we do,” Sullivan said. “There’s a great deal of concern about the Virginia economy, especially given sequestration, and a lot of concern about how we are preparing students for the world of work.”

In an interview before her meeting Tuesday with state education officials, Sullivan discussed the changes that have been made and challenges that remain at the start of her sixth academic year at UVa, a tenure marked by drama and tragedy.

With a six-year graduation rate of 94 percent and a $7 billion endowment, UVa’s troubles are not typical of most schools, but last year they were uniquely painful.

The university and other Virginia institutions are adapting to new state laws approved by the General Assembly this past session in the aftermath of the slaying last fall of UVa student Hannah Graham and Rolling Stone magazine’s erroneous account of a gang rape at a UVa fraternity house.

UVa expelled a student this past academic year for rape, Sullivan said, and though the case is on appeal, it would be the first time “to my understanding” that the sanction routinely applied to honor code violations would be used for a sex crime.

As this semester started, Sullivan said, she made clear the university’s stand on rape when she addressed parents as students moved onto Grounds last weekend.

“I was pretty blunt about our view of student safety,” she said, going beyond her normal talk to tell them unequivocally what constitutes rape and to make clear that “in Virginia there is no statute of limitation on rape.”

Students were given bystander-intervention training their first week back, and they must complete two online courses educating them on alcohol and substance abuse and sexual and gender violence.

The policy on adjudication of sexual abuse and harassment cases was changed this year and will break with the university’s long-standing tradition of self-governance.

To comply with U.S. Department of Education guidance, students will no longer be part of the hearing panel that determines responsibility and sanctions.

“We’ve had discussions about it,” Sullivan said. “In the end, getting guidance from DOE was pretty important to us. This is going to be one case where students are not judged by their peers.”

This year, too, the university will be “deliberately seeking to create lots more exciting things to do on Grounds that don’t involve alcohol,” she said. “One of the things students told us was that when there’s not a football game, there’s not always something to do. And that’s when they go to the Corner and look for a party.”

Alcohol does not cause sexual assaults, she said, but “it’s simply empirically true” that drinking is involved in many cases the university investigates.

Improving safety around Grounds and at fraternity parties dominated discussions last year. Sullivan’s No. 1 priority for this year is faculty hiring to replace retiring professors, she said.

The university estimates it will hire more than 200 faculty members over the next year.

Sullivan said the retirements will provide an opportunity to diversify the faculty, not just by race and ethnicity but also by new approaches that can be brought to the classroom.

“We’re conceptualizing diversity in some pretty broad ways,” she said, and “looking for people with good ideas who come to us from other places besides the university.”

“An engineer who has been working in a field for a while can often help young engineering students in a way that’s different from — not necessarily better than — but different from what we already have available on the faculty,” she said.

But the two most important criteria for hiring new faculty will be finding a candidate “who brings us something that is intellectually cutting-edge, and it has to be somebody who really loves students,” she said.

“I really don’t want to hire people whose object is to see as few students as possible,” she said.

As part of the class she is teaching for the fall semester, “The 21st Century Labor Force,” Sullivan also will serve as her students’ academic adviser until they select a major. She remains the adviser for students who took the class last fall.

Her students will study the workforce of the future and how to prepare for jobs in industries that do not yet exist. Their first assignment will be to write papers that touch on recent news about the difficult workplace climate at Amazon.

But the class is also a two-way street for learning.

“I love teaching this class,” Sullivan said. “It’s shown me what some of their problems are.”

Having the principal for a teacher brings results.

“I’ve been able to call deans and say, ‘Why is it this way?’ and they say, ‘It’s just a glitch,’ and we get it fixed.”

One student came to her with a question that proved more than a glitch, she said, about a course “that in my opinion was not functioning” the way it should. There was no syllabus or office hours for the professor to meet with students.

“I called the dean. The dean called the department chair. The department chair called me. The person won’t be teaching,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have known that.”

The student had not come to her to complain, she said. First-year students “don’t know what college is supposed to be like. But it isn’t supposed to be that much of a mystery.”
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/education/higher_education/uva-s-sullivan-discusses-rising-costs-rolling-stone-scandal/article_fe797a1f-c2e9-5c03-98f9-f1888dd3acd8.html


UVa's Sullivan discusses rising costs, Rolling Stone scandal

Richmond Times-Dispatch | Posted: Saturday, August 29, 2015 8:56 pm

Q: Some Ivy League universities have been criticized for paying high fees to endowment fund managers at the expense of student aid. Does the University of Virginia use enough of its $7 billion endowment to mitigate tuition increases?

A: “Our board actually has addressed that,” Sullivan said.

In March, the board of visitors increased the payout rate from the endowment primarily to support operations, which in turn means fewer tuition dollars are needed to cover those expenses, she said.

The endowment spending rate was reset at 4.62 percent for fiscal 2016, which is estimated to yield $161 million for the university, up from $147 million without an increase.

“You’re obliged to conserve the endowment for future generations,” she said. “You have to make a judgment about what will inflation be and what will your rate of return be so that you don’t dip into principal. The board has been pretty conservative about that … but decided that within the bounds of prudence, they could raise the payout rate.”

Q: How do you justify the high salaries of administrators and some faculty members when student debt is soaring?

A: “We are in a very competitive business,” she said. “If the commonwealth of Virginia wants to have highly ranked schools — and I think they do — they’re going to have to be competitive.”

UVa’s reputation “means people are being recruited away from us all the time,” she said, adding that a member of the medical faculty recently received the offer of a package worth $20 million.

“You know, people understand this with football coaches. But let me tell you, it’s true with neurosurgeons, it’s true with your top English faculty and your top law professors. ”

Q: Why did the university not do more to counter the Rolling Stone article about the gang rape of the student called Jackie at a fraternity house, if it was known the story was false?

A: “The university couldn’t say it wasn’t true because of FERPA,” said Sullivan, referring to federal student privacy law. “And the only reason I can say it to you now is because there’s a police chief’s report, which is not FERPA-protected.”

She said, “Universities are put into a position in which we cannot defend ourselves.”

The board of visitors hired a law firm to investigate the university’s handling of the case, she said, and the attorney general’s office sought permission from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to release the executive summary of the report.

“The Department of Education said no,” she said. “We cannot even be transparent about an instance in which we spent taxpayers’ money. .”

Q: Did the board meeting in which the rector apologized to Jackie, and other board members and students talked about the university’s “rape culture,” reinforce the Rolling Stone story before it was retracted?

A: “I think what you saw from our board was the commitment to deal with it and not run from the issue.”

In January, after the article was retracted, fraternal organizations adopted tougher provisions to improve safety at parties, she said.

Sullivan said she was not “the ventriloquist” behind the changes.

“We really do believe in self-governance, and our fraternity men stepped up to the plate,” she said.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/09/04/rolling-stone-files-motion-for-protective-order-in-virginia-deans-defamation-case/

Rolling Stone files motion for protective order in Virginia dean’s defamation case
By Erik Wemple September 4 at 12:55 PM

Lawyers for Rolling Stone magazine yesterday entered a motion aimed at limiting the amount of information and documents disclosed in the ongoing defamation case filed this year by Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia associate dean whose actions were depicted in the November 2014 Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus.” That story, which narrated an alleged gang rape at a campus fraternity house, was later exposed as a fraud, prompting a review by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a retraction.

Though the Columbia report laid bare the faulty editorial procedures behind “A Rape on Campus,” written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely (a named defendant in Eramo’s suit), Rolling Stone is apparently seeking to limit how much more information can leak into the public realm through this proceeding. “The Parties acknowledge that disclosure and discovery activity in this litigation is likely to include production of confidential, proprietary, or private information for which special protection from public disclosure and from use for any purpose other than prosecuting this litigation may be warranted,” reads the proposed protective order. Though Eramo’s legal team isn’t opposing the order, it comes at the behest of Rolling Stone.

The proposal would secure confidentiality for disclosures that fall into any one of several baskets, including information whose release is barred by statute, trade secrets or “commercially sensitive” information, “unpublished newsgathering materials” and “information of a personal or intimate nature regarding any individual.” For the consideration of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the Erik Wemple Blog has a great interest in “unpublished newsgathering materials.” We oppose this motion!

The protective order would “survive” the litigation and could be undone only by a court order or a request from one of the parties.

Eramo filed her defamation action in May, after she and her lawyers at the Alexandria, Va., firm Clare Locke LLP had attempted to secure a direct apology from Rolling Stone over how it had treated the dean. She is seeking $7.85 million in damages. The defendants in July responded to the suit by denying they’d defamed Eramo. As we’ve pointed out before, Erdely’s controversial story did contain some positive passages regarding Eramo’s work on sexual assault at U-Va. but leaves a larger impression that she sat on important complaints and otherwise failed to remedy injustices sitting right in front of her. Not to mention that Erdely, in her post-publication comments to the media, hammered U-Va. for how it handled the central anecdote in the story — an anecdote for which a subsequent police investigation found no supporting evidence.

Jeffrey Pyle, a partner in the Boston-based firm Prince Lobel Tye LLP, says he’s “not surprised” to find that the order seeks to protect “unpublished newsgathering materials,” since the legal departments of media outlets are constantly fighting subpoenas and fishing expeditions for such materials. As for Rolling Stone’s quest to get this stuff protected, Pyle says
that one possible motivation would be to “prevent dribs and drabs of information about Rolling Stone’s newsgathering activities from being released in the media and unfairly harming it in the public eye.”

News organizations could intervene with opposition to the proposed order, says Pyle, though it “would probably be better to do so before documents have been exchanged pursuant to it.”

Erik Wemple writes the Erik Wemple blog, where he reports and opines on media organizations of all sorts.
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http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/Review-of-Gang-Rape-Allegations-Handling-Not-Being-Released-Publically-325997331.html

Review of Gang Rape Allegations Handling Not Being Released Publicly
Updated: Wed 2:43 PM, Sep 09, 2015
By: STEVE SZKOTAK - Associated Press


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- An independent review of the University of Virginia's handling of a student's gang rape allegations will not be publicly released because of privacy concerns.

The review focuses on the Charlottesville school's handling of an alleged gang rape that was reported in graphic detail by Rolling Stone magazine. The piece was later retracted.

In an email from the school's Freedom of Information Act officer late last month, UVa rejected a request from The Associated Press to publicly release an executive summary of the review.

The officer cited a letter from a U.S. Department of Education official who said its release would violate the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. The Charlottesville university declined a request for additional comment Tuesday.
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