| Blog and Media Roundup - Tuesday, December 22, 2015; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 22 2015, 04:53 AM (111 Views) | |
| abb | Dec 22 2015, 04:53 AM Post #1 |
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Group that runs Durham’s Carolina Theatre more than $1M in debt Leaders thought the nonprofit that runs the historic downtown venue was operating in the black Unpaid sales tax led to discovery of ‘errors and omissions’ in financial reporting Nonprofit has asked the city to advance it $600,000 in management fees to help with cash flow By Virginia Bridges and Mark Schultz vbridges@newsobserver.com mschultz@newsobserver.com Durham City officials are working with the group that manages the Carolina Theatre to better understand how the historic entertainment venue has amassed nearly $1.1 million in debt. “What they have sent, it’s not all that clear, quite frankly, and we just need our finance people to meet with their finance people to go through the numbers,” City Manager Tom Bonfield said. On Monday, the nonprofit’s leaders announced they had run up an additional $800,000 in debt since July 2013, when they and the rest of the board thought the city-owned theater was making a profit. The city pays Carolina Theatre of Durham Inc. $654,000 a year to run the complex on Morgan Street. Previous information released by the nonprofit had indicated the organization ended the 2013 fiscal year with a $68,730 surplus, ended the 2014 fiscal year with a $41,000 surplus and cut its long-term debt to $224,909. The numbers marked the first back-to-back profitable years since fiscal years 2007 and 2008, the organization reported. But the numbers were wrong. In an interview, chief executive officer Bob Nocek and board president Scott Harmon said they learned earlier this year they were making decisions based on faulty accounting. They became aware of the errors in May when the state put a levy on the organizaton’s bank account seeking unpaid sales tax on ticket sales, they said. The nonprofit owed about $155,000, which Nocek said they paid by July. A subsequent examination of the financial data by an accounting firm and management indicated the losses were due to “errors and omissions in our financial reporting,” the men said. There was no intentional misrepresentation or fraud, they said. “It was just done wrong,” Harmon said. “It was just bad.” Growing fast Nocek joined the Carolina Theatre staff as vice-president/chief operating officer in 2009 and took over in 2010. He expanded concerts and other live performances in the 1,000-seat Fletcher Hall from about 60 events per year to over 100, added weekend matinees in the cinemas and increased rental activity. By the end of the fiscal year this past June, the theater had generated a record $5 million in overall revenue, up from $3.5 million two years earlier. But while more money was coming in, bills weren’t getting paid. Nocek and the board added programs, hired additional staff and made decisions he says he would not have made had he known the theater’s true financial position. “There were things we should have seen along the way,” Harmon said. “Bob should have known this was going on, and the finance committee of the board should have known this was going on.” Financial oversight included management by then finance director Sam Spatafore, who started in April 2013, according to his LinkedIn account profile. Harmon and Nocek declined to discuss or even confirm Spatafore was finance director. All they said is that the finance director no longer works for the nonprofit. Efforts to reach Spatafore by phone and through his linkedin.com account Monday were unsuccessful. Spatafore had previously worked as an arena accountant for the PNC Arena from October 2011 to March 2013, and as a controller for ARKS Funding for four years where he managed $31 million for church construction projects among other duties, his LinkedIn profile states. For two years ending in July 2005, Spatafore was director of finance at Alltel Pavilion at Walnut Creek, where he worked with Bob Klaus, current manager of the Durham Performing Arts Center and former vice president and general manager for Clear Channel Entertainment, which managed the pavilion, according to his LinkedIn profile. “I recommend Sam in the highest fashion and if given the opportunity would hire him at a moments notice for my current business,” Klaus wrote on Spatafore’s profile. Efforts to reach Klaus for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Harmon said theater went from having a bookkeeper and an outside accountant who would bless the figures every month, to hiring a director of finance. Every month, the finance director met with Nocek and the finance committee, four board members with accounting and finance backgrounds, and reviewed the finances, Harmon said. The organization’s finances for the fiscal year 2013-14 were audited, but no concerns were raised, Harmon said. A new audit firm has been selected and previous financial disclosures and audits will be re-examined. The nonprofit has also hired Thomas, Judy & Tucker to manage its finances. Asking for help The city extended its contract with the nonprofit last year to run through 2024. The contract includes city reviews twice a year. In addition, Nocek said, Reginald Johnson, the city’s Community Development Department director, attends most board meetings. City Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden also sits on the board. To address short-term cash flow shortages, the board has asked the city to advance the organization about $75,000 from each of the remaining eight years on the contract – or $600,000. Harmon said it’s not unusual for nonprofit arts organizations to carry deficits and that Nocek’s job – his contract was extended last year through June 30, 2019 – is not in danger. “We live hand to mouth and on the edge of our cash flow,” Harmon said. Moving forward, Nocek said, the nonprofit plans to pay down the debt by achieving long-term profitability. It has cut full-time staff from 22 to 18 through attrition, one layoff and one staffer who went from full time to part time. It will also scale back live events to between 60 and 70 per year and take fewer programming risks. Bonfield said after the city’s and nonprofit’s accountants meet in the next week or so, he will meet with the nonprofit’s finance committee “to talk about what their proposal is moving forward and whether or not we think the request that they have made is ... a viable solution to their financial problems.” The City Council will likely discuss the issue in early 2016, he said. “We just have a lot more questions,” Bonfield said. Virginia Bridges: 919-829-8924, @virginiabridges ‘We can turn this situation around’ The Carolina Theatre will celebrate its 90th year in 2016 with a series of special events, including a 90th Anniversary Celebration Concert Jan. 30 featuring Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda in the Broadway hit “Wicked.” In part of a statement Monday, theater officials said they do not expect their newly discovered debt to affect fans’ theater-going experience. “Although we will make some adjustments to programming over the next few year while we work through this difficult situation, we will do so in a way that is barely noticeable to our fans, but allows us to become profitable again. Our concerts, comedy and cinema programming is the reason Durham has come to love the Carolina Theatre as it does, and we intend to fully continue to deliver the same quality performances we have over the past few years. We are confident that we can turn this situation around in the coming years.” Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/article50902770.html#storylink=cpy |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 04:56 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/12/the-chronicles-top-10-news-stories-of-2015 The Chronicle's top 10 news stories of 2015 By Staff Reports | Sunday, December 20 A freshman's allegation that she was sexually assaulted at an off-campus fraternity party and revisions to Duke's sexual misconduct policy were The Chronicle's No. 10 news story of 2015. As 2015 winds down, The Chronicle takes a look at its top 10 news stories from 2015, beginning with an honorable mention. Check back each day to see which story will be revealed next as 2016 draws one day closer. 10. A sexual assault claim and reformed policies A female freshman’s allegation that she was drugged and raped at an Alpha Delta Phi party off campus gained national attention in January. Phone records obtained by the Durham Police Department showed that the student likely left the party with a senior member of the fraternity and was taken to his apartment at approximately 3:30 a.m., before he returned her to her dorm—where she said she woke up the next afternoon with little memory of the night before. Durham District Attorney Roger Echols announced in July that after “extensive and thorough investigation,” his office decided not to seek an indictment charging any subject of the investigation with a criminal offense. Echols noted that because the nature of the conduct investigated and the alleged offenses are "personal and sensitive," more details of the investigation would not be made public. During the summer, the University revised its sexual misconduct policy to make it clearer and easier for students to use. Duke’s Interfraternity Council also created a student-led task force in June to investigate the role Greek life plays in sexual assault on campus and make recommendations to prevent and address the issue of sexual assault. In a 2014 survey by the student organization Duke Inquiries in Social Relations, 46 percent of respondents who reported being sexually assaulted reported that their assailant was Greek-affiliated. Sexual misconduct will likely be a top story again in 2016, as the trial for Lewis McLeod—who was found guilty of sexual misconduct and is suing the University for his diploma—is set to begin next February. |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 04:58 AM Post #3 |
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http://www.cotwa.info/2015/12/mother-of-wrongfully-accused-college.html Monday, December 21, 2015 Mother of Wrongfully Accused College Student Describes Trauma A post by Washington Examiner Commentary Writer Ashe Schow highlights an anonymous mother's story about her falsely accused son who is still reeling from the false allegation even after the college cleared him. In one part, the mother writes: "I want to beg Senators [Claire] McCaskill and [Kirsten] Gillibrand to see the destruction of an innocent life, to feel his pain, to see his trauma, to know what it's like to pick up your child who is in a crumble on the campus lawn, to ask them why his life doesn't matter," she wrote, "but the silencing continues, and the war wages on." It is doubtful that her pleas would have any effect on Senator McCaskill who has written this in an opinion piece in Time Magazine about her efforts to reform the UCMJ: "As a former sex crimes prosecutor who’s personally held the hands of victims and fought to put rapists behind bars, I’ve judged each policy idea with one yardstick: Will it lead to better protections for victims and more prosecutions of predators?" Noticeably missing from her one and only yardstick is due process concerns for the accused. And, it isn't a stretch to imagine that she cares as little for falsely accused college students as she does for falsely accused Servicemembers who have no place on her yardstick. And, this mother's pleas will likely fall on deaf ears with regards to Senator Gillibrand who told Fox News reporter Martha MacCallum unequivocally that she believes "Carry that Weight" performer Emma Sulkowicz: "I believe Emma," Gillibrand said. The basis for my opinion that Senators McCaskill and Gillibrand care nothing for the due process rights of the falsely accused is hidden in their statements: a belief that victims never lie. Whether it is a conscious indifference for due process to get at the truth displayed by McCaskill's one yardstick doctrine, or Gillibrand's ignorant gullibility due to her lack of experience in prosecuting sexual assault crimes that makes Senator Gillibrand believe Emma, one might wonder whether they have ever met a complaining witness who they believed lied. What would be really interesting to watch is how either would react if Austin Exposito, Theodore Gillibrand, or Henry Gillibrand were ever falsely accused of sexual assault. Posted by barney greenwald at 3:42 PM |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 05:00 AM Post #4 |
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http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25602/ Georgia Tech railroaded straight and bisexual students accused of rape, lawsuits claim Matt Lamb - University of Nebraska-Omaha •December 22, 2015 Judge says no ‘irreparable harm’ from having to explain rape finding The same Title IX official at Georgia Tech has been accused of depriving two expelled students of due process in separate sexual-misconduct investigations against them. The lawsuits against the school and Peter Paquette, assistant dean of students and sole investigator, were filed less than a month apart but were assigned to different judges in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta. The judge in the first case, filed Nov. 20, has already ruled against the request by “John Doe” to force Georgia Tech to readmit him immediately as the case proceeds, saying it won’t cause him “irreparable harm” to have a gap in his academic record. The second suit, filed last week, involves a gay student who accused a former bisexual hookup partner of assault nearly a year after the incident in question. The accused student is also asking for quick readmittance to avoid academic harm. Paquette’s investigative practices are “unusual,” wrote KC Johnson, a Brooklyn College history professor who co-wrote a book on the Duke lacrosse rape case and who has reviewed both Georgia Tech cases. “He interviews students, but doesn’t record the interviews, and shares with the accused student only summaries of his private interviews with his ‘informants,’” Johnson wrote. “(An accused student has no right to sit in, or have a legal representative sit in, on any of Paquette’s interviews.)” But Paquette’s two investigations differed in one major respect. In the first he found the accused student responsible because the student initially denied having had sex with another student but admitted it later. In the second, according to the Dec. 15 complaint, Paquette continued to believe the accuser even after that student “changed his story or otherwise made inconsistent statements” several times. Not credible because of one lie According to the Dec. 16 ruling by Judge Steve Jones denying an injunction against Georgia Tech, Paquette found John Doe responsible for sexual misconduct because Jane Roe was “very drunk” during their sexual encounter 16 months earlier. (Doe denied “any sexual contact.”) Paquette declined to interview a witness provided by Doe, a “sober monitor” at that night’s frat party, whom the student claimed was the only other person to interact with Roe. peter-paquette.Georgia_TechHowever, Paquette admitted that he wasn’t sure whether Doe was responsible until Doe had changed his story on whether he had had sex with another student, identified as “V2,” who had also accused him of assault. Three weeks after his initial denial, Doe said they had indeed had oral sex but that he stopped when she withdrew. Paquette testified in court that Doe’s about-face on V2 “swayed the evidence against him” and that Doe lost his “credibility” in both incidents at that point. But the investigator also admitted that Roe submitted a “narrative” that had “some inconsistencies” with her original statement. Judge Jones wrote that he was “greatly troubled by a number of procedural matters” in Paquette’s investigation, including his decision to ignore “any line of investigation that may have cast doubt” on Roe’s claims and failure to interview the “sober monitor.” Paquette’s testimony “about the course of the investigation and the manner in which he made certain investigatory decisions was very far from an ideal representation of due process,” Jones continued. But the judge said there wasn’t a “substantial likelihood” Doe would prevail, because of his about-face on V2 and because an appeals panel at Georgia Tech reversed Paquette’s finding of sexual assault against V2, showing that it “clearly deliberated” on the case. Jones also rebuffed Doe’s claim that the gap year owing to his expulsion – which he’d have to explain to potential employers – would cause him irreparable harm. (Doe asked to be admitted back in the spring.) “Plaintiff offered no evidence as to what questions would be raised if he graduated five years and not four years after his matriculation in an undergraduate engineering program,” Jones wrote. Presidential meddling to achieve a verdict of ‘responsible’ In a Dec. 15 motion for a preliminary injunction before Judge Richard Story, bisexual student “John Doe” claimed that gay student “John Roe” accused him of assault because of Doe’s “unwillingness to pursue a romantic relationship” following two oral-sex encounters weeks apart in April 2014. Roe claimed in his April 2015 complaint he had been “intoxicated” during their first sexual encounter and couldn’t consent. “Both acts were consensual and in both instances, Roe was sufficiently clear minded and aware of what was going on,” the motion says. “Eventually, Roe ceased contact with Plaintiff due to jealously [sic] and the fact that he was clearly a jilted lover.” Paquette’s investigation was stacked against Doe from the beginning, the filing claims: He didn’t record interviews with Roe’s witnesses so that Doe could view the transcripts, and in his “written summaries” – which contained “highly contradictory” witness statements – Paquette didn’t identify witnesses. The investigator didn’t interview “crucial witnesses and generated a report that relied upon hearsay, innuendo, suppositions, and uncorroborated statements,” while ignoring “numerous instances where Roe changed his story or otherwise made inconsistent statements,” the filing continues. “Paquette repeatedly ignored the ample evidence” that Roe filed his complaint “only after it became clear” in February that Doe didn’t want a romantic relationship, the filing said. Because Doe agreed to delete their Facebook messages from his profile – at Roe’s request, before alleging the assault – he couldn’t “conclusively” show that Roe had “heavily edited” his own version of the exchanges “in an effort to frame” Doe for assault. Even though Paquette said it was “reasonable to believe” that Doe thought he had consent, the investigator said it was more likely that Roe was “very intoxicated” and thus “more likely than not” unable to consent, Doe alleged. The filing points to several procedural errors. Roe’s parents filed an appeal with President Bud Peterson after the Appellate Committee overturned Paquette’s findings for “lack of evidence,” and that filing was a day late – both violations, Doe claimed. “Apparently using a standard form letter,” Peterson said the committee’s decision “must be made on some compelling reason” but wrongly defined the term, “ignored the two other bases for appeal” and upheld Doe’s expulsion, the filing claimed. Beyond the irreparable harm of being falsely branded a “sex offender,” if Doe is not reinstated to Georgia Tech next month, he won’t be able to graduate because the school is not continuing courses he either needs to graduate or must take as prerequisites for other graduation requirements, the filing said. A Georgia Tech spokesperson told The College Fix it couldn’t comment because “both cases are still pending.” Paquette did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations against him specifically. History professor Johnson said Paquette’s disparate treatment of parties who misled him in the two cases showed his bias. “Paquette proclaimed that once a key witness lied to him, that decision alone undermined the witness’ credibility” in the Nov. 20 case, but in the bisexual student’s case, “the accuser made several false or misleading statement to Paquette—with no loss of credibility,” Johnson wrote. |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 05:04 AM Post #5 |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/12/the_year_we_doubled_down_on_the_worst_part_of_the_campus_rape_debate.single.html The Year We Doubled Down on the Worst Part of the Campus Rape Debate Plus, the one blind spot that every feminist can rally around. By Nora Caplan-Bricker In this series, Double X writers look back on 2015’s flashpoint debates around gender and feminism as they played out in the spheres of reproductive rights, work-life balance, pop music, affirmative consent on campus, and more. Read all the entries here. This should have been a productive year for talking about how to prevent sexual assault on college campuses. Last spring, Emma Sulkowicz hefted her mattress across the stage at her Columbia University graduation, in a symbolic victory over a culture of silence and shame. This fall, an estimated 1,400 institutions across the country enacted new “affirmative consent” standards and started teaching students that they needed a clear “yes” to move ahead with sex. Through it all, U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Kirsten Gillibrand have been working to assemble a bipartisan group to push for a bill that would create more resources for victims of sexual assault as well as harsher penalties for universities that mishandle rape cases or fail to report them. But all too often in 2015, the debate seemed to be slipping backwards. In a year that opened onto the unraveling of Rolling Stone’s massive feature about what proved to be a fabricated story of a brutal gang rape—and that closed with CNN’s decision to air the documentary The Hunting Ground despite reason to doubt one of its core narratives—much of the energy around this topic vanished into a vortex of questioning whether rape victims can be trusted and whether rape on campus has the proportions of a genuine problem. The more important and constructive discussions—the ones that actually got at the knotty realities of sex on campus—were often pushed to the sidelines. Minimizing the problem of sexual violence by discrediting survivors is an old trick. Character assassination of victims was such a ubiquitous and ugly tactic in rape trials that the U.S. tried to outlaw it with “rape shield laws” in the 1970s and ’80s, although that didn’t stop rape deniers from chipping away at victims’ stories. Some feminists responded by taking the untenable position that women virtually never lie about rape, when the truth is that it’s almost impossible to get a solid handle on the rate. (The latest and best evidence suggests the number is less than 10 percent.) Feminists are debating the role of prevention programs in changing campus culture. But when you zoom out, this question starts to look like a red herring. Casting blanket doubt on rape victims is a way to insinuate that the entire problem of sexual violence is overblown, when study after study has show that it’s not. Just this fall, in a brand-new report from the Association of American Universities, one-third of female college seniors reported being the victims of nonconsensual sexual contact during their undergraduate years. Feminists and victims’ advocates saw the storm coming when Rolling Stone retracted its story in December 2014. “Rolling Stone’s letter will be the first citation for every rape denialist,” Alexandra Brodsky, a co-founder of the student campaign Know Your IX and an editor at Feministing, wrote on MSNBC. “They screwed up and now students will pay the price.” In the wake of the story, national Greek organizations lobbied hard for legislation that would have made it extremely difficult for universities to punish perpetrators of sexual violence. They dropped the bill after a backlash this November, but this yearlong effort to institute regressive policies symbolized the way the Rolling Stone controversy set the clock back on the campus rape debate. When it comes to the arguments against affirmative consent, the subtext is that women and girls can’t be trusted to honor the distinction between morning-after regret and rape. In June, the writer Judith Shulevitz fretted that affirmative consent standards “make sex a crime under conditions of poor communication.” But where is the wisdom in defending sex between two people who aren’t even comfortable establishing what both of them want? Jaclyn Friedman, a sexual health educator and editor of a new book about affirmative consent, argues that so-called “yes means yes” standards are a practical way to foster healthy sexual norms. “All the grownup scaremongering is drowning out one important fact,” she wrote in the Washington Post. “Young people are embracing affirmative consent.” In at least one instance this year, advocates for rape survivors unintentionally fed into the narrative that victims aren’t trustworthy. The documentary The Hunting Ground—which has been screened to acclaim everywhere from the White House to the Sundance Film Festival to, this fall, CNN—included a story about an alleged rape at Harvard Law School that has been disputed by 19 Harvard law professors; the student has been found not guilty of rape by the university and acquitted of lesser charges of “sexual touching” by a Massachusetts court. (He was found guilty of “misdemeanor touching of a nonsexual nature.”) “In their effort to sound an alarm about what they believe to be rampant college rape, the makers of The Hunting Ground did an injustice,” wrote Slate’s Emily Yoffe. That injustice has cut against the documentarians’ own purpose. Libertarian blogger Radley Balko cited the movie when he wrote at the Washington Post, “I think the activists on this issue are mistaken when they say that we’re in the midst of a campus rape crisis.” The data is against Balko and other disbelievers (except if they aggressively cherry-pick). But their dogged insistence that campus rape is a problem dreamed up by feminists has had a terribly real impact on the national conversation, crowding out the subjects that could actually improve our sexual culture. One of the debates that deserves center stage was raised last winter by law professors at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who published letters expressing concern that policies that protect victims often don’t afford due process for the accused. “Feminists should be concerned about fair process, even in private institutions where the law does not require it,” Nancy Gertner, one of the professors who signed the Harvard letter, warned in the American Prospect. “We put our decades-long efforts to stop sexual violence at risk when men come forward and credibly claim they were wrongly accused.” Gertner and the other signers were particularly concerned about male students of color under the new code. (In the Harvard Law School case featured in The Hunting Ground, both accuser and accused were black.) Feminists—and university administrators—are also debating the role of prevention programs in changing campus culture. A New England Journal of Medicine study published this year found that teaching college women to assess their acquaintances as potential sexual threats slightly lowered their risk of being raped; some women’s advocates want to run with these results and with programs that warn female students away from binge drinking. But many student activists argue that the focus should be on reeducating men; in their view, teaching young women that they can prevent rape risks adding to their psychic burden in cases where they can’t. As Emily Bazelon pointed out in the New York Times Magazine, both of these policy questions are refracted through a larger debate: Are women better served by preaching self-reliance or by pushing institutions for recognition and protection? If there’s a blind spot in the campus sex conversation that feminists should be able to rally around, it’s the one that Rebecca Traister identified in New York magazine this fall: the problem of our “neatly halved sexual universe, in which there is either assault or there is sex positivity. Which means a vast expanse of bad sex—joyless, exploitative encounters that reflect a persistently sexist culture and can be hard to acknowledge without sounding prudish—has gone largely uninterrogated.” Sexual violence on campus is all too pervasive and real, but talking about it won’t encompass all the ways that sex can fail to be healthy and empowering. Traister writes, “One thing that’s clear is that feminists need to raise the bar for women’s sex lives way, way higher.” What a great opening salvo for the year 2016. Nora Caplan-Bricker is a contributing writer for DoubleX. Follow her on Twitter. |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 05:08 AM Post #6 |
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http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/12/21/uc-berkeley-sex-claims-must-be-amended.htm UC-Berkeley Sex Claims Must Be Amended By PHILIP A. JANQUART SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Students must amend their claims that the University of California Berkeley treats sexual assault claims with indifference, leaving students vulnerable and enabling offenders, a federal judge ruled. Sofie Karasek, Nicoletta Commins and Aryle Butler sued UC Berkeley in Alameda County Court on July 2. All claimed they had been sexually assaulted and that the school responded with "deliberate indifference" when they reported it. Karasek and Commins say fellow students assaulted them. Butler claims a guest lecturer assaulted her in 2012 on a university research trip to Alaska. They cite "numerous deficiencies" in university procedures, dating back to 1979, and claim the school underreports the number of sexually violent incidents on campus. They sought damages for gender discrimination in violation of Title IX and the California Education Code, and for negligence and fraud. The university removed the case to Federal Court in August and sought dismissal in September, claiming they failed to satisfy the requirement for Title IX claims because they "do not allege that they suffered 'further harassment' after reporting their assailants to the university." U.S. District Judge William Orrick dismissed most claims on Dec. 11 with leave to amend. He denied the university's motion to dismiss Title IX claims because the students failed to allege that they suffered continuing harassment after they reported the assaults. "That a student must be harassed or assaulted a second time before the school's clearly unreasonable response to the initial incident becomes actionable, irrespective of the deficiency of the school's response, the impact on the student, and other circumstances of the case run counter to the goals of Title IX," Orrick wrote. He dismissed, however, the negligent failure to warn, train or educate claim, stating that the university does not have a duty to warn students that they could become victims of sexual assault. "The general rule in California is that 'one who has not created a peril is not liable in tort merely for failure to take affirmative action to assist or protect another from the acts of a third party," Orrick wrote. "There are exceptions to this general rule, such as where the defendant has a 'special relationship' with the plaintiff. But California courts have repeatedly held that a university does not have a special relationship with its students such that it may be held liable for failing to protect them from the wrongful acts of third parties." The plaintiffs' fraud claims specifically allege that the university makes "false representations" about the safety of the campus and that it underreports incidents of sexual violence to hide the true numbers. Orrick dismissed those claims on procedural requirements. "This cause of action must be dismissed because it does not satisfy the heightened pleading standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b), which requires that claims sounding in fraud or mistake 'state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake," Orrick wrote. "The allegations of fraud 'must be specific enough to give defendants notice of the particular misconduct which is alleged to constitute the fraud charged so that they can defend against the charge and not just deny that they have done nothing wrong." He gave the plaintiffs until Feb. 11, 2016 to submit amended complaints on their Title IX claims of harassment and deliberate indifference; their claims of negligent failure to train, warn or educate; and their claim of fraud. He dismissed without leave to amend their claims under the California Education Code, but granted them leave to amend it under a new cause of action, if they find one. |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 22 2015, 07:15 AM Post #7 |
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In Durham? No, of course not... Now if they can just find the $30 million the feds gave them for all that housing (which also seems to have disappeared)... |
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| kbp | Dec 22 2015, 10:53 AM Post #8 |
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..city pays...$654,000 a year to run the complex on Morgan Street ... marked the first back-to-back profitable years since fiscal years 2007 and 2008 ... unpaid sales tax on ticket sales If they sell tickets to shows as a charge for their services provided, while at the same time collecting money from the city budget for operations ($654,000 a year), how can they ever classify it as being a "profitable" outcome? |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 12:20 PM Post #9 |
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"Journalists" are quite unfamiliar with accounting principles, or for that matter any other hard science that requires logic. |
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| abb | Dec 22 2015, 03:51 PM Post #10 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2578947 Georgia Tech's flawed campus sexual assault procedures By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 12/22/15 3:34 PM Just days after a judge denied a Georgia Institute of Technology student's request for a preliminary injunction to halt an expulsion, another student has filed a gender discrimination claim against the school. John Doe, as he is referred to in court documents, has filed a lawsuit against the university and the same administrators who failed to follow school procedures against the other complainant. The twist in this case is that Doe is also bisexual, and is alleging that Georgia Tech has not only a bias against male accused students, but an exceptional bias against non-straight male accused students. The accusation stems from a sexual encounter between Doe and a student identified as John Roe. Doe's lawsuit (obtained by the Washington Examiner) alleges the encounter was consensual, and that after the event, the accuser and accused were on friendly terms. The accused says he ended a serious relationship with his boyfriend, and shortly after the eventual accuser asked to speak with him. The accuser picked Doe up and admitted his feelings, seeking a romantic relationship. Doe said he still wasn't over his previous relationship and wasn't ready for a new relationship, but didn't completely close the door on a future relationship. The two continued to be friendly toward one another and a few months later engaged in consensual oral sex. The two disagree on when the alleged "non-consensual" encounter occurred. Doe believes it occurred on the weekend of April 26, but the accuser claims it happened on April 30, which would have been a Wednesday night. Doe says he was studying that night since he had a final exam the next day. Doe believes this is evidence that the accuser "fabricated a significant portion of his claim," according to the lawsuit. The accuser claims he and some friends went to Doe's house, where everyone was drinking. Both he and Doe drank but neither were intoxicated. Doe claims the two discussed "hooking up again" using Facebook messages so that the other partygoers — including Doe's ex-boyfriend — would not know they were becoming intimate. The two came up with a plan to get away from the party to hook up. The accuser said he was sick and going to the bathroom and then Doe would follow him to make sure he was okay. The two began kissing and moved to the bedroom. Each party took off their own clothing, and then the accuser initiated oral sex on Doe, who then reciprocated. The two fell asleep together, and woke up hours later and performed oral sex on each other once again. The accuser would later claim he had been too drunk to consent. In the weeks and months following the encounter, the two men remained friendly toward each other. The accuser even rented the apartment next door to Doe. Doe's lawsuit alleges that the lease must have been signed just days or weeks after the allegedly "non-consensual" encounter. Doe left campus for the summer to compete in a marching band program, so he was unable to talk to the accuser for sometime. On one occasion during that summer, however, the accuser traveled to a location where Doe was performing, and left early to walk a mile to where the band's buses were parked. Doe was the only member of the band the accuser knew. The accuser would later claim this event never happened. Later that year, the two – who were both in the band – would go on a retreat in the accuser's hometown. Instead of staying with his parents, the accuser paid to stay at the cabin with Doe and his fellow band members. The accuser even asked Doe to ride in his car when they took a trip to a waterfall an hour away, according to the lawsuit. Photos from the event show the two hanging out together and having fun. At some point during the retreat, the accuser again asked about a romantic relationship, but this time Doe said he was not interested. Months later, the accuser would send Doe a Facebook message asking to cuddle. Doe again rebuffed his advances. The accuser would later ask Doe to delete all their Facebook messages, and Doe complied, which removed the evidence of their relationship once the accusation was made. The accuser provided edited versions of the conversation to make it look like Doe was admitting to sexual assault. Doe was unable to restore the messages, as Facebook requires a subpoena to access such messages. Nearly one year after the party where the two engaged in oral sex for a second time, the accuser filed a report of sexual assault with Georgia Tech. The school follows a single-investigator model, and Peter Paquette (you may remember his name from the previous Georgia Tech lawsuit), was the one behind this investigation. Paquette did not advise Doe of his rights or the Georgia Tech policy and only interviewed witnesses suggested by the accuser. None of the interviews were taped or transcribed, so Doe had no way to accurately respond to the claims against him. Further, most of the witnesses interviewed by Paquette described the accuser after the event, and not the actual event itself. Doe was given just one-hour to review a 13-page, single-spaced summary of Paquette's investigation. Paquette apparently interviewed the accuser twice in order to get his response to Doe's statements and provided the accuser with ample time to respond. Paquette also accepted the heavily edited Facebook messages from the accuser (although, to be fair, it's not like Doe had the actual Facebook messages to prove the accuser was lying). The accuser's story also changed throughout the investigation, and Paquette appeared to disregard the suggestion that the accuser only filed the claim as retaliation against Doe for rebuffing him. Paquette acknowledged that "both the victim and the respondent provide[d] accounts that are reasonable to believe." Notice the use of "victim" to describe the accuser. Paquette also believed that, given the nonverbal actions of the accuser on the night in question, Doe had reason to believe "he had consent." Yet despite this, Paquette determined Doe had sexually assaulted the accuser and ordered his expulsion. Doe appealed the decisions, and the Appellate Committee overturned Paquette's decision. The accuser's parents, however, filed an appeal of this decision with Georgia Tech's president, even though school policy says the appeal must be prepared and filed by the student. The appeal was also filed the day after the deadline. The president overturned the appeal, upholding Paquette's initial finding. Doe then appealed to the school's Board of Regents, saying the president misstated school policy in his decision and hadn't even reviewed the investigative material. The board vacated the president's decision and returned the case to Georgia Tech, but didn't explain its decision or instruct the school on how to proceed. Doe tried to ask the board for more information, but they didn't respond. Despite the multiple appeals and overturns, Doe's expulsion was in effect. His fate was now once again in the hands of the same appellate committee that initially overturned his expulsion. Except this time, the school's president directed the committee to find Doe responsible, and they complied. So Doe sued, alleging gender-bias and that the school failed to adhere to its own guidelines. Claims of sexual assault were supposed to be brought no later than 30 business days after the incident, yet Paquette allowed the accuser to bring a claim nearly one year after the encounter. The school also allowed the accuser's parents to file an appeal on his behalf a day after the deadline to submit an appeal. Doe's lawsuit points out that Georgia Tech must know that its procedures are flawed, because the school created an advisory group to assess the sexual misconduct procedures. The advisory group was created the same month the Board of Regents reviewed Doe's case. As with other lawsuits of this nature, Doe faces an uphill battle. The Washington Examiner reached out to Georgia Tech via phone and email but has not heard back, due to the school being closed for winter break. Schools are often unable to comment on ongoing cases. |
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9:28 AM Jul 11