| Blog and Media Roundup - Wednesday, January 13, 2015; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 13 2016, 05:05 AM (139 Views) | |
| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:05 AM Post #1 |
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NC attorney who fights for the innocent testifies in her defense Christine Mumma explains her actions Joseph Sledge’s innocence claims played large role NC Bar prosecutors begin cross-examination By Anne Blythe ablythe@newsobserver.com RALEIGH Christine Mumma, a lawyer who gets teary-eyed when talking about her efforts to free the wrongfully convicted, became emotional on Tuesday as she testified in her defense at a N.C. State Bar disciplinary panel hearing. Mumma, an attorney in North Carolina since March 1999, has been fighting professional misconduct accusations by the organization that oversees lawyers in this state. On the second day of a disciplinary panel hearing, Mumma's team of lawyers began putting evidence on in her defense after a full day and a half of listening to bar prosecutors lay out their case. The allegations are tied to Mumma's work toward freeing Joseph Sledge from the state prisons after he was wrongfully convicted of a double murder. Sledge, exonerated with the help of Mumma's attention to his case, has been at the N.C. State Bar headquarters in downtown Raleigh, where Mumma and her team of high-profile attorneys have spent the past two days offering a narrative that they hope will exonerate her. Sledge and others freed with Mumma’s assistance have speculated that Mumma is being targeted by a judicial system whose tarnishes she helped expose. In October 2013, while investigating Sledge's claims of innocence, Mumma and a worker from the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence went to the home of the sister of two brothers who had been suspects in the case years earlier. After failing to persuade the woman to provide a DNA sample that could be tested to include or exclude her brothers as suspects, Mumma picked up her note pad and other items she had brought into the home and grabbed a water bottle, too. Once she was at her car, she realized the bottle wasn't hers. She decided to keep it, she said, because she was persuaded that Sledge was innocent. If DNA on the bottle matched DNA from the crime scene, Mumma said she thought she would have a strong enough case to persuade Jon David, the District Attorney in Bladen County, to consider relief for Sledge. “I thought about the potential the bottle might have for Joseph,” Mumma testified on Tuesday. “I was continually asking for DNA to get Joseph home.” Tests of the bottle did not turn up DNA that aided Mumma in her fight for Sledge, but he was exonerated based on other evidence. Mumma later told the state bar about her action. She contacted the bar after being told by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, which also was investigating the Sledge case, and David, the district attorney from the county where the Sledge case was based, that they would file a complaint if she did not report the action herself. The hearing on Tuesday also touched on a portion of the bar complaint that involved documents that Mumma provided to a reporter at The News & Observer. Mumma told the panel hearing her case that she provided a digital version of a hearing transcript to Mandy Locke, a staff writer who had been chronicling the Sledge case, unaware that she would print out a copy for another N&O reporter. The bar prosecutors have raised questions about whether the transcript was a public document. Mumma’s attorneys contend the transcript was part of the public record. Bar prosecutors began their cross-examination of Mumma late Tuesday afternoon. They plan to pick up their questions on Wednesday morning. Anne Blythe: 919-836-4948, @AnneBlythe1 Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article54377855.html#storylink=cpy |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:08 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=12704 State Bar Complaint Targets Roy Cooper Boyce alleges professional misconduct by AG, inaction by State Bar By: Don Carrington Jan. 12th, 2016 RALEIGH — A longstanding feud between Raleigh attorney Gene Boyce and state Attorney General Roy Cooper that appeared to be over in 2014 reignited last week, when Boyce filed a complaint against the North Carolina State Bar claiming that Cooper should be investigated for professional misconduct. Boyce claims that starting in 2000, Cooper knowingly made false statements that harmed the reputation of Boyce and his law partners. Seeking to force an investigation, on Jan. 5 Boyce filed a formal complaint in Wake County Superior Court against the North Carolina State Bar, the state agency that regulates attorneys. In the complaint, Boyce says that as an attorney he has an obligation to report the professional misconduct of other attorneys to the State Bar. According to the complaint, Boyce has notified the State Bar on multiple occasions about Cooper’s alleged misconduct but the State Bar has not responded. Boyce also believes the State Bar has a conflict of interest in the matter because Cooper also serves as the attorney for the State Bar. Boyce is asking the court for a declaratory judgment forcing the State Bar to acknowledge Boyce’s claims of Cooper’s misconduct; declare that the State Bar has a conflict of interest in the matter; and refer the matter to an appropriate alternative agency for investigation, findings of fact, and discipline if appropriate. The dispute began in 2000, when Cooper was the Democratic Party’s nominee for attorney general and his main opponent was Republican Dan Boyce, Gene’s son. Cooper won that race and has served as attorney general since then. He currently is a Democratic candidate for governor. The Boyces and their law partners Philip and Laura Isley in 2000 filed a defamation lawsuit against Cooper based on ads run by the Cooper campaign committee. The lawsuit alleged that Cooper and his committee ran a political ad that was defamatory and constituted an unfair and deceptive trade practice. It also charged that Cooper and his committee participated in a conspiracy to violate a North Carolina law prohibiting false ads during election campaigns. A trial court judge dismissed the lawsuit, but appellate courts ruled in Boyce’s favor on several occasions, and in 2014 the matter was scheduled to go to trial. The dispute appeared to be over in April 2014 when Cooper issued a written apology to Boyce for statements Cooper’s political campaign made in the political ads. The parties signed an agreement ending the civil action, but Boyce’s complaint before the State Bar says Cooper’s conduct is a separate issue that the State Bar must address. Boyce has been practicing law since 1956. He served as assistant chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, working with U.S. Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., on the investigation of President Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign. When asked for comment, Boyce told Carolina Journal the information in the complaint spoke for itself. Noelle Talley, Cooper’s spokeswoman, told CJ the attorney general's office had no comment on the complaint. The lawsuit One week before the 2000 election, Cooper’s campaign started running a television ad that read: “I’m Roy Cooper, candidate for attorney general, and I sponsored this ad. Dan Boyce: His law firm sued the state, charging $28,000 an hour in lawyer fees to the taxpayers. The judge said it shocks the conscience. Dan Boyce’s law firm wanted more than a police officer’s salary for each hour’s work. Dan Boyce — wrong for attorney general.” The ad contained several untrue statements. When the advertisement was running, the Boyces and Isleys were partners at the Boyce & Isley law firm in Raleigh. Dan Boyce did not work on the lawsuit referenced in Cooper’s ad (the Smith case), and the Boyce & Isley law firm had not been created. The Smith lawsuit was filed by Gene Boyce and attorneys from the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm. Gene Boyce was not running for attorney general, and he did not charge taxpayers $28,000 an hour. Legal fees in class-action lawsuits are set by the judge, and the final payment to the attorneys was much lower than the amount alleged in the ad. On the second day the ad ran, Boyce & Isley notified Cooper’s committee in writing about the statements in the ad and requested that an immediate retraction. Cooper ignored the request and continued running the ads, the lawsuit stated. Gene Boyce said Cooper’s ad ran at least three times a day for seven days on more than 20 television stations. The Boyces and Isleys filed their lawsuit the day before the election, naming Cooper, the Cooper (political) Committee, and campaign aide Julia White as defendants. In three court filings in 2003 and 2008, Cooper stated, “The political advertisement is true.” Gene Boyce assumed the lead role in the lawsuit against Cooper. “That ad was false and the Cooper team knew it,” Boyce told CJ in 2013. “They implied we were crooks. I want my name cleared. I did not cheat my clients. The public record has shown the statements in the ad to be libelous. My main purpose in pursuing this is to get a decision that the ad is false. I want the record to be clear.” Precedent involves Cooper attorney Boyce’s complaint states that the State Bar recently set a precedent for the Cooper situation in handling a complaint against Faison Hicks, an attorney who works for Cooper. Since Hicks previously had served as counsel for the State Bar, the State Bar referred the Hicks complaint for an independent review by the Ethics Counsel for the State Bar of Georgia for a probable cause determination. In 2014 the State Bar became aware that on two occasions, Hicks signed forms stating he attended continuing legal education programs sponsored by the State Bar. Hicks claimed full credit for his attendance even though he had not attended enough hours to qualify for the credit he claimed. Rule 8.4 of the North Carolina State Bar provides in part that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to “engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.” Hicks acknowledged that he had not attended all the credit hours he claimed, even though he signed the attendance forms. Instead of handling the discipline through the State Bar, the matter was referred to Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens. “Attorney Hicks has no history of previous attorney misconduct resulting in disciplinary action and has admitted and expressed remorse for this misconduct. The court finds and concludes that attorney Hicks intentionally engaged in professional misconduct and that such was willful and did not result from mistake, inadvertence, or neglect. The court has considered all available sanctions and finds that a public reprimand should be issued in this matter. A public reprimand is a serious form of attorney discipline and is warranted for professional misconduct of this nature,” Stephens wrote. By issuing a reprimand, Stephens added, “This sanction shall serve as a strong reminder of the high ethical standards of the legal profession.” Hicks is still employed by the N.C. Department of Justice. Don Carrington is executive editor of Carolina Journal. |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:12 AM Post #3 |
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http://www.cotwa.info/2016/01/cotwa-for-bernie-maybe.html Tuesday, January 12, 2016 COTWA for Bernie? Maybe . . . . When Bernie Sanders announced he was running for president, we were hoping to learn that he favors due process for college students accused of sexual assault--after all, that is a position that a lot of serious progressives still believe in (e.g., the Harvard and Penn law professors who've gone on the record about it). We didn't hear it from Bernie, and we'd pretty much given up on him. But now Bernie has taken a position that, if implemented, will assure that the presumptively innocent accused of sexual assault get due process: "If a student rapes another student it has got to be understood as a very serious crime, it has to get outside of the school and have a police investigation and that has to take place." See here. Will Bernie back away from this position? Sadly, if we had to bet, we suspect that after the sexual grievance industry gets through with him, he will "clarify" his remarks to say that he does not favor dismantling the campus sexual assault industry. I expect this to happen very shortly--I hope I am wrong. Most Democratic politicians have sold their souls to the devil and have renounced their core beliefs on this issue--a grim nod to the group identity politics that grips the Democrat Party. They even bullied the fraternities to force them to back away from supporting the Safe Campus Act. Advice to Bernie: you won't get the sexual grievance lobby's vote no matter what you do--you never had it, and you never could get it. Not with Hillary Clinton running. Don't betray your core values--concentrate on the true progressives, the ones who still believe in due process for everyone, even dreaded college men. Posted by COTWA at 4:42 PM |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:40 AM Post #4 |
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/university-apologises-after-requiring-students-to-disclose-their-sexual-history-before-registering-a6808611.html University apologises after requiring students to disclose their sexual history before registering for classes Students were asked how many times they have had sexual intercourse in the last three months Siobhan Fenton @siobhanfenton A US university has apologised after requiring students to detail their sexual history before allowing them to register for classes. The University of Southern California distributed a mandatory online survey to students asking them to tally and disclose the number of sexual partners which they had been with over the previous three months. One question asked the students: “How many times have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months?” “With how many different people have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months?” The email in which the survey was distributed told students that completion was mandatory in order for students to sign up for classes. It said: “To help create a safe environment for you and other students, you must complete an online course… This course is mandatory, and you must complete it by February 9. “If you do not complete the training by this date you will receive a registration hold until the training is complete. Completing this course is a critical step in our efforts to educate our entire community about student rights, USC’s policies, and resources available on campus.” After students objected to the intimate nature of the questions, the university apologised. A spokesperson said that no offence or distress was intended by the questions and that the questionnaire had been designed as part of a federal mandate to address sexual assault on campus. Senior Vice President for Administration Todd Dickey told New York Daily News: “USC apologises for any offense or discomfort caused by optional questions included as part of a mandatory on-line training for students on sexual consent, misconduct and other important issues. “These questions have been removed from our online training module. All colleges and universities are required by law to provide such training, and our training was a standardised module being used by hundreds of colleges and universities across the country.” The online survey and consent course is part of Title IX training; a federal law which prohibits gender discrimination. In the US, all colleges must comply with Title IX training in order to receive federal funding. Over the course of the last academic year, a number of US colleges have been accused of mishandling sexual violence complaints, resulting in many colleges adopting consent workshops and more advanced anti-harassment policies. |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:40 AM Post #5 |
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https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/13/sanders-criticized-comments-sex-assault-investigations Sanders Criticized for Comments on Sex Assault Investigations January 13, 2016 Sexual assault survivors’ groups are criticizing remarks by Senator Bernie Sanders this week in which the Democratic presidential hopeful called rape accusations to be handled by law enforcement rather than colleges. Calling campus sexual assault an “epidemic,” Sanders said that it shouldn’t matter “whether it takes place on a campus or on a dark street.” “If a student rapes a fellow student, that has got to be understood as a very serious crime,” he said during a Democratic presidential forum hosted by Fusion. “It has got to get outside of the school and have a police investigation, and that has got to take place.” “Too many schools now are saying, well, this is a student issue, let’s deal with it,” he continued. “I disagree with that. It is a crime, and it has to be treated as a serious crime.” Colleges are currently required to address and investigate reports of sexual assault under the federal antidiscrimination law known as Title IX. In recent years the Obama administration has been more aggressive in enforcing that law and telling colleges they need to do a better job of handling sexual assault cases. Sanders’ comments put him at odds with advocates who believe that assault victims should have the choice of whether to resolve their case in the criminal justice system, campus processes, or both. “Police and prosecutors routinely fail survivors of sexual assault,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet, an advocacy group, adding that “sexual assault isn’t just a crime--it’s a civil rights violation--and schools are required by law to address it. Some college leaders, meanwhile, have said that they are ill-equipped to investigate and adjudicate sexual assault cases and have called for such cases to be resolved only by law enforcement. |
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| Quasimodo | Jan 13 2016, 08:16 AM Post #6 |
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So every ADA in Nifong's office rushed to report his professional misconduct, right? |
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| Quasimodo | Jan 13 2016, 08:20 AM Post #7 |
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How capable are those who mandated the survey to be instructors or academic leaders? Couldn't they spot an invasion of privacy (and of teenagers straight from high school, over whom their overbearing position of authority -- 'you can't enroll here if you don't answer'-- must have carried great weight?)? Bullying? There it is, example A. |
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| kbp | Jan 13 2016, 09:31 AM Post #8 |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 10:10 AM Post #9 |
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https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/13/politician-proposes-law-prevent-harassers-being-passed-one-institution-another?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=04bb443969-DNU20160113&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-04bb443969-198528653#.VpY3DwJGZvY.twitter Public Shaming U.S. representative shares a previously confidential report about sexual harassment by an astronomy professor who went on to teach elsewhere and announces plan to require colleges to tell other institutions about such findings. January 13, 2016 By Colleen Flaherty U.S. Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, is no stranger to women’s issues and has previously advocated for more accountability for colleges and universities concerning campus sexual assaults. So it was perhaps unsurprising that she weighed in on a matter of increasingly public concern -- that of sexism in science and, in particular, some institutions’ tendency to quietly allow professors who sexually harass students to move on to other institutions. The phenomenon has been called "pass the harasser." Specifically, Speier proposed legislation that would require colleges and universities to reveal the findings of investigations of alleged violations by students, faculty and staff under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 -- which prohibits sex-based discrimination -- to their new institutions. “I plan to introduce legislation to require universities to inform other universities of the results of a disciplinary proceeding,” she said. “When students, faculty or staff whose conduct violated Title IX transfer to another institutions, the university they are moving to should be aware of their past conduct." But Speier’s tactic -- to reveal these kinds of findings against one professor in particular, to make her point -- surprised even the most ardent advocates for women in the sciences. Many called it a powerful instance of public shaming of which other harassers will take note, while some questioned whether it was the right move. Either way, it got people talking Tuesday. Standing on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Speier -- next to a poster featuring an image of a telescope pointing at the words “Stop Sexism in Science” -- referenced the recent case of Geoff Marcy, who resigned his astronomy professorship at the University of California at Berkeley after it was revealed that he had sexually harassed students for years. Then Speier said she’d been alerted to more harassment by several “brave women,” this time at the University of Arizona. She asked to enter into the record a report by Arizona concerning the conduct of Timothy Slater, a former professor of astronomy there who now holds an endowed chair in secondary science education at the University of Wyoming. “This report was sealed for over a decade while Dr. Slater went on with his career,” Speier said. “His example shows why so few women continue careers in science and engineering. Some universities protect predatory professors with slaps on the wrist and secrecy, just like the [Roman] Catholic church sheltered child-molesting priests for many decades.” Speier continued, “The incidents described in this report are lurid and disturbing. One graduate student was told regularly by Dr. Slater that she would teach better if she did not wear underwear. He asked another graduate student to give women pointers on oral sex techniques.” Slater himself, according to the report, admitted that he gave an employee a vegetable-shaped vibrator and that he frequently commented on women’s looks to employees and students, Speier said. And members of her staff spoke with one female graduate student -- who has since left astronomy -- who was required to visit a strip club in order to discuss her work with Slater, she said. Another former graduate student said Slater asked her when she was planning on having sex at his house, Speier added, since many other students had. Speier said the woman transferred out of Slater’s lab, losing years of work. Speier’s remarks were brief -- about four minutes -- but caused digital jaw dropping as academics watched live on C-Span and, later, in YouTube clips. Some activists for women in the sciences said they’d heard that Speier had become involved in the issue, but had no idea she’d address it as she did, in so public a forum. “Reaction to Rep. Speier’s statement this morning about women in science: Finally! Someone speaking the truth in a clear and unambiguous way!” tweeted Chiara Mingarelli, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in astrophysics at California Institute of Technology, for example. “Yes! So excited to see Rep. Jackie Speier trying to build a mechanism so sexual harassers can't swap around universities,” wrote Sarah Tuttle, a research associate in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. Kathryn B. H. Clancy, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who’s studied sexism in the sciences, also tweeted, “Rep. Speier, killing it in her discussion of harassment in science.” Slater, the professor Speier discussed, did not deny that an investigation had occurred, but said that some of the incidents were described without appropriate context. There's more on that below. Astronomy and Beyond The problem isn’t just with astronomy, others pointed out. But astronomy has long had a reputation as being relatively inhospitable to women and it’s seen some high-profile cases of harassment. Those include that of Marcy, who was alleged to have harassed students on several campuses, with arguably minor disciplinary action from Berkeley (which said its hands were largely tied). Most recently, Science reported that Caltech suspended Christian Ott, a professor of theoretical astrophysics, for gender-based harassment. (In an email to Science, Ott said he couldn't confirm or deny the report.) The American Astronomical Society discussed the issue broadly at its annual winter meeting earlier this month). And Meg Urry, the society’s president, wrote about the issue this week for CNN, saying a society survey indicated some 82 percent of respondents had heard sexist remarks from their peers, 44 percent heard sexist remarks from supervisors and 9 percent experienced physical harassment from peers or supervisors. “The [society] is taking steps to solve the problem of harassment in astronomy,” Urry wrote. “It helps that there are many women astronomers these days.” Joan Schmelz, deputy director of the Universities Space Research Association at Arecibo Observatory and chair of the astronomical society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy from 2009-2015, has long worked to bring harassment to light. She applauded Speier’s move, saying her “proposed legislation will be a great first step in changing the current system.” That way, she added, “anyone who has violated the sexual harassment policy at one university could not simply start over at another university.” He Didn't Want 'Any Surprises' There's no doubt “pass the harasser” is a problem when it comes to both students and employees. Such scandals have erupted in college sports and in disciplines outside the sciences, such as philosophy. But did Arizona pass Slater on to an unwitting Wyoming? The answer appears to be no -- but because Slater brought it up voluntarily. “It would have been me that brought it up,” Slater said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed after being what he described as blindsided by Speier’s remarks. Slater said he disclosed the allegations against him when he was being vetted by Wyoming in 2008 because, at the time, the 2004 Arizona investigation was known to many in his discipline. And he didn’t want there to be “any surprises” for Wyoming down the line, he said. Chad R. Baldwin, spokesman for Wyoming, corroborated that account, saying in a statement that the allegations against Slater were brought to the university’s attention in the hiring process. Wyoming inquired further and found that there were “no barriers to his hiring," Baldwin said. Slater said he didn't have a copy of the report to which Speier was referring, since it was supposed to remain confidential to protect students. He said he wondered how Speier had obtained her copy and whether it was authentic, and that he was worried some of the details she disclosed even in her brief speech -- such as that one accuser left his lab -- could “out” the witnesses. Slater didn’t deny outright any of Speier’s claims but said that they’d been taken out of context. He also didn't deny being a harasser by some definitions, but said he'd changed a lot since 2004. He said he never offered a vibrator to anyone, for example. Rather, he said, two people affiliated with the department who lived together exchanged gifts of a pickle-shaped vibrator and chocolate handcuffs at a large holiday party he hosted at his home. Instead of an individual investigation against him, Slater described the 2004 inquiry as part of a broader investigation into the climate for women in the astronomy department. That inquiry determined that sexual innuendo and banter were both wanted and unwanted, and that faculty and students did a generally poor job of maintaining professional and personal boundaries, he said. Members of the department received harassment training and other interventions, and the issue was resolved, he added. Slater said he was never again accused sexual harassment at Arizona or at Wyoming, and that he’s never sought to keep his past a secret. He’s even blogged about it, he said. “This is bizarre,” he said of the day’s developments. “I’m not sure when there are other examples out there why [Speier] picked mine.” He said he never spoke with anyone from her office about the report, but that he’d heard in recent months some astronomers were contacting graduate students and others, trying to root out harassers in the field. “I think there’s quite literally a witch hunt going on in the astronomy community,” Slater said. “They probably see me as a target because I haven’t really been secretive about this.” Speier, after her remarks, released a copy of the redacted Arizona report. It backs some of Slater’s claims -- including that harassment was occurring across ranks and that the university sought to investigate a generally hostile climate in astronomy. But it also says Slater was named as a respondent based on early findings, and that he’d violated the university’s sexual harassment policy by making regular unwanted and unsolicited sexual comments. (The university found there was insufficient evidence to back retaliation claims made by two separate accusers.) Contrary to Slater’s explanation, the report Speier shared alleges that Slater was accused of giving sex toys and chocolate handcuffs to a graduate student, and that Slater admitted giving a sex toy to a female graduate student in the course of the investigation. In another example, Slater was accused of saying he would have invited a student over to swim, but decided against it because he knew she’d bring a bathing suit. Slater denied saying that during the investigation, saying he was not “exclusionary” by nature. Four separate witnesses made numerous, similar claims. Slater denied some and admitted others -- such as that he’d probably told a witness to repeat him or herself, because a passing woman was too distracting. He described himself as "sexually overt," according to the report. Christopher Impey, a distinguished professor and astronomy chair at Arizona, said he hadn’t and couldn’t authenticate the report because it was a private, internal document, and he was only the deputy department head at the time of the investigation. Following the investigation but not as a result of it, he said, he attended a training with the entire department to increase awareness among faculty, students and staff about such issues. Chris Sigurdson, a spokesman for Arizona, said the university did what it was supposed to do in 2004 in "ending" activities that created a sexually hostile workplace. It originally launched the investigation after it learned some would-be complainants were worried about coming forward, he said. “Our concern now is for the witnesses who cooperated with the university and gave testimony expecting it would only be used internally,” he said via email. “The [report] was released in error, and we asked that all copies be destroyed. Apparently, that was not the case, and we’re concerned about how the report’s publication could affect those witnesses.” Impey, meanwhile, said Speier is to be “commended for being a champion of the women who were adversely affected, and for trying to make it less likely that serial offenders remain under the radar.” Asked about Speier’s proposed legislation, Slater said that if universities used to try to keep quiet instances of sexual assault or harassment, “I think the pressure is exactly the opposite now. … Universities have very specific mandates from Title IX to be sure they’re monitoring and preventing sexual harassment by their employees.” Anita Levy, of the American Association of University Professors, said having disciplinary records follow a faculty member from one institution to the next “is a new one for us.” The association’s due process policy regarding sexual harassment doesn’t even begin to address or even “envision” the idea, she added. AAUP does know that procedural protections for faculty members accused of sexual harassment at many institutions don’t measure up to AAUP-recommended standards, she said, and an association committee is currently working on a report on academic freedom and the “uses and abuses” of Title IX. For that reason, Levy said she’d be concerned about a mandate requiring that disciplinary records be passed from one institution to another “when the original proceedings may have been severely lacking in procedural protections, and thus the findings questionable -- even if that means some genuine serial harassers may slip through the nets.” Lots of legal and technical questions about Speier's proposal remain. But as she's still working on drafting her bill, no additional details on just how it might work were available Tuesday. Asked whether there was a “witch hunt” in astronomy, Schmelz said that if there really were “‘witches’ out there, you would want dedicated, ethical, knowledgeable people hunting them.” But astronomers shouldn’t be worried about witches or witch hunters, she said. They "should, however, be worried about sexual harassers,” such as those the Berkeley and Arizona investigations revealed. Asked whether Slater was the right poster boy, given that he’d voluntarily disclosed the allegations against him, Speier said via email, through a spokesman, that it’s “not sufficient to rely on perpetrators to voluntarily disclose their own history of harassment in job interviews, nor can we confirm what [Slater] actually told Wyoming.” From a public policy standpoint, she added, “We can't simply trust the better angels of people's nature and unfortunately we can't rely on universities to do the right thing every time, either. Federal law should require disclosure. I'm interested in what Arizona told Slater's next employer, not what he told them.” |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 10:14 AM Post #10 |
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http://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/jane-kelly-the-shock-is-not-the-100-attacks-on-german-women-it-is-the-liberal-media-cover-up/ Jane Kelly: The shock is not the 100 attacks on German women. It is the liberal media cover-up By Jane Kelly Posted 8th January 2016 Many ladies of a certain age give up on joining New Year street festivities. The pleasure of being jostled about in a huge melee for hours in the cold palls after about the age of thirty. Many young people love it, of course, especially in Germany where ‘Sylvesternacht’ is a huge festival with fireworks. I enjoy it vicariously so my ears were alerted when I heard on BBC Radio 4 on Monday that something had gone wrong during the end of year celebrations in Cologne. The BBC report was rather vague and, mysteriously, five days late. Women, no one said how many, had been physically assaulted, but it was not clear how badly or more tellingly, by whom. A reporter mentioned that ‘extreme right wing groups in Germany’ were blaming migrants. Hearing that, most of understood immediately that we were entering into taboo territory. The event was back on BBC news that night, but again in a nebulous report. Only from reading a broad coverage of news on line did it become clear that at least 90 women in Cologne had been sexually molested, some raped and others terrified. There had also been similar attacks in Munich. It had obviously been a New Year nightmare for both men and women, trapped inside Cologne railway station, encircled by a crowd of aggressive young men, North African and Asian immigrants who had thrown live fireworks at their victim’s legs. Party goers were jumping and running to get away, while the Africans set about grabbing and groping for all they were worth. A young woman later told reporters she’d felt, ‘fingers on her every orifice,’ after she was stripped near naked. Women were stripped and kicked to the ground, others were followed by men chanting the very unpleasant words: ‘Bitch, ficki, ficki.’ Considering the current controversy about mass migration to Germany, it was strange that this commotion went unreported for five days. Some news agencies now report that ‘News of the attacks was suppressed for days,’ with just short reports of isolated incidents in Cologne city centre making it to local newspapers on New Year’s Day. Cologne’s own paper, The Kolnifsche Rundschau, called the scene at the railway station, ‘largely peaceful’ and made no effort to describe the attackers. Only after nearly 100 victims of assault and abuse came forward to police, and stories of attacks started circulating on social media, did the truth start slowly to emerge, forcing local police to hold a press conference on Monday afternoon. Despite the chief of police admitting the enormous scale of sexual assault and confirming the attackers were of ‘North African and Arab’ origin, much of the German mainstream media, just like the BBC, desperately tried to shift the focus from migrants, or avoided reporting the event completely. Only the German edition of the Huffington Post came clean and published a scathing editorial criticising the police and media for their attitude. Not just for failing to keep order in the first place, but for suppressing the truth in a most duplicitous manner, by appealing for witnesses but refusing to release descriptions of the Arab and African suspects. Breitbart, an American news network with a bureau in London, was the first news site in the English-speaking world to report the events on New Year’s Eve, and received a number of messages from eye witnesses but they are still waiting for a comment from Cologne Police. They were followed by the decidedly non-PC Daily Mail which acknowledged Breitbart for breaking the story. The BBC, which has offices in Cologne, were reluctant to report the story at all, and when they did, on line, they didn’t mention the migrant attackers until the 18th paragraph. Similarly, the German national news broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, only mentioned the description of the attackers in the tenth paragraph of their report. The reason for the cover-up was a desire by the German police to preserve public order and any sort of violent reaction to the attacks. Like the BBC their main worry was activity by right wing groups. A week later, three suspects have been identified, and no arrests made. So much for the reportedly enormous security camera surveillance now installed in many German stations. It seems clear that the Germans have had their first taste of what Swedish women have been experiencing for years. 1975, when beautiful, blonde Swedish women shocked the staid British newspaper reader as they led the world with ‘sexual liberation,’ and became known as the most emancipated women in Europe, 421 rapes were reported to the police. In 2014 the number reported was 6,620, an increase of 1,472 per cent. Sweden is now number two on the global list of rape countries. According to a survey from 2010, with 53.2 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants, is surpassed only by Lesotho in Southern Africa, with 91.6 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. Significantly, that report did not touch on the background or ethnicity of the rapists. In Swedish government statistics, second-generation immigrants are counted as Swedes. Swedish law forbids registration based on people's ancestry or religion. It seems that the Swedish and German police are going down the same road as the British, who, as we know, ignored the issue of foreign men attacking indigenous British women in Rochdale, Rotherham where 1,400 white girls were abused by Asian men over a sixteen-year period, and Oxford where almost 400 girls were abused by Muslim men over a similar length of time. Last November there was another report of a similar case in Rotherham, where a teenage girl had been raped almost every day for years and used as a commodity to settle her abuser’s debts. Attacks on white girls all over Europe elicit a profound silence. In the EU at least, ‘community relations’ trumps the comfort and safety of western women. It was sad that the German girls in Cologne on that winter’s night didn’t have brave boyfriends who could protect them. Middle class boys and men are obviously not used to fighting and discouraged from defining their gender in a traditional way. In fact most girls are now largely undefended, by partners, husbands, family, police or any agencies of state. It is perhaps understandable then that the Mayor of Cologne, one Henriette Reker, was reticent about the New Year attacks, not mentioning migration or any failure of integration, but blaming the victims of the sexual abuse for having failed to defend themselves against the immigrant attackers. On German TV news she said that in future local women would have to be better prepared in her city to deal with migrants. She remarked: ‘The women and young girls have to be more protected in the future so these things don’t happen again.’ She did not mean that the local police would get on the trail of their attackers, but advised them to dress, you guessed it, more ‘modestly’ in future and go about in large groups. No more walking home from a night out on your own. It is up to girls to protect themselves and it seems the surest way to do that is to become more like their sisters in the Middle East. Cover up, shut up and stay in doors. It was hard not to compare the reporting of events in Cologne with another story out at the same time, but greeted with a lot more joy. On Tuesday Temba Bavuma made history when he became the first black South African to score a Test century. The media, including the BBC and the Daily Mail went wild with adulation, continually emphasising his race and colour. A BBC reporter begged a South African sports expert to explore the long term ‘significance’ of his success. The reply came back that it would take at least fifteen years to work out all the ramifications of this wonderful African achievement, echoing Zhou Enlai’s famous words that the French Revolution was too recent for us to yet know its full effects. There is something so very patronising about all this. The message is: If you are not white (I.e. not yet fully adult) you cannot be expected to understand or keep civilised laws. On that basis, unless you are a celebrity who is available for a spectacular trial by tabloid, if you commit even terrible crimes you will be forgiven, the elites of once great nations will stand back and let you get on with it because they wish above all to be seen as good, tolerant people, not like those ‘right wing groups,’ who criticise without understanding. For those in power in Europe, the privileged white community best represented by the BBC, the vital thing is to be seen as relativist in all judgements, pious and politically correct. The comfort and safety of women cannot really be allowed to get in the way. |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 07:11 PM Post #11 |
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http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/13/bernie-sanders-said-something-sane-about Bernie Sanders Said Something Sane About Campus Rape—Activists Are Attacking Him Sanders isn't crazy: rape really is a violent crime that the police should handle. Robby Soave|Jan. 13, 2016 1:02 pm SandersSandersThat didn’t take long. Victims’ advocacy groups are going after Bernie Sanders for asserting that campus sexual assault—like all other kinds of sexual assault—is best left to law enforcement. In his comments earlier this week, Sanders stated explicitly that rape must always be dealt with as a criminal manner, rather than as an education issue. While that might seem like a stridently anti-rape stance, it actually puts him at odds with the vast majority of campus advocacy groups, who agree that rape is an epidemic and yet believe campus-run show trials that result in mere expulsion are the best way to deal with rapists. The Huffington Post interviewed several such activists who were dissatisfied with Sanders’ comments: "Advocating for requiring survivors to go to the police shows his lack of understanding of what constitutes equity on campus," said Andrea Pino, a survivor and co-founder of the activist group End Rape On Campus, "and also demonstrates an ignorance of the current lack of police preparedness on this issue." Alexandra Brodsky, a Yale Law student and co-founder of the advocacy group Know Your IX, said Sanders has "a lot to learn." "Without key interventions by their schools, many survivors won't be able to continue their educations," Brodsky wrote on Feministing, where she is an editor. "An extension on a paper due the week after an assault might make the difference between a victim staying in school and dropping out. No police force can provide that kind of accommodation. Don't want victims 'sitting in a classroom alongside somebody who raped them'? A school can often make that happen more quickly than a student can get a restraining order, particularly if he or she has trouble accessing a court." The most charitable explanation of their argument for why colleges rather than (or at least, in addition to) the police should handle rape is this: sexual assault is not merely a crime, but a violation of Title IX, the provision of federal law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in higher education. Student-victims of rape have been deprived of their legal right to an education, and thus campuses are obligated to put certain practices into place to help them cope—practices that neglect the due process rights of accused students. Of course, this argument is something of a tautology. Unelected bureaucrats in the Title IX agency—the Office for Civil Rights—invented the idea that sexual assault is a deprivation of a student’s civil rights rather than just a violent crime, and these same bureaucrats are the ones proscribing all the solutions for it. Activists maintain that students should have the option to report to campus administrators, the police, or both. But it’s worth wondering whether this extra path—where innocent people are treated too harshly, and guilty people are not treated harshly enough—deters victims from going down the road that would actually protect the broader community (beyond just the university) from dangerous predators: reporting to the police. It would not surprise me if the pushback from activists persuades Sanders to walk back his comments. But he should stick to his guns: he's right, in this case. As he said, rape is a terrible crime, and the way it's handled by campuses is insulting. |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 08:19 PM Post #12 |
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/01/13/bernie_sanders_means_well_but_he_s_out_of_step_with_young_feminists_on_one.html Bernie Sanders Means Well, But He’s Out of Step With Young Feminists on One Crucial Issue By Nora Caplan-Bricker Bernie Sanders has shown himself this week to be somewhat out of step with an important progressive constituency: young feminists. On Monday night, at the Brown & Black Democratic Presidential Forum hosted by Fusion, he said: Rape and assault is rape or assault whether it takes place on a campus or on a dark street. And if a student rapes a fellow student, that has got to be understood to be a very serious crime. It has got to get outside of the school and have a police investigation. And that has got to take place. Too many schools now are saying, well, this is a student issue, let's deal with it. I disagree with that. It is a crime, and it has to be treated as a serious crime. And you are seeing now the real horror of many women who have been assaulted or raped sitting in a classroom alongside somebody who raped them. Rape is a very, very serious crime. It has to be prosecuted, and it has to be dealt with. As Sanders’ critics have acknowledged, he was clearly trying to telegraph the gravity of sexual violence and his commitment to advancing women’s cause. But given the many well-documented problems with the approach he’s advocating, Sanders’ comments show instead that he hasn’t given the issue of rape on campus much thought. As Libby Nelson writes at Vox, “colleges aren't investigating sexual assaults in order to sweep them under the rug. They're required to do so by Title IX, the federal law that guarantees equal educational opportunity to men and women”—and which treats gendered discrimination, sexual harassment, and assault as violations of that civil right to an equitable environment. Since 2011, the Obama administration has been engaged in a historic push to make schools own this responsibility, a goal that the government recognizes as essential for rape survivors. The Department of Education has directed universities to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard when evaluating cases of sexual assault, as opposed to the criminal justice system’s standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Although colleges are still debating the best way to interpret “preponderance of evidence” so that it provides justice for both accuser and accused, there’s a growing consensus that universities should use a lower standard than the criminal justice system. Some campus rape survivors do go to the police and the courts, but many don’t want to submit themselves to a grueling process that’s highly unlikely to result in a conviction: Only about one in ten rapes reported to the police are ever prosecuted, and an estimated two in every 100 rapists ever serve time. Sanders’s suggestion would make it harder for victims to get justice, and would almost definitely deter many from reporting in the first place. Perhaps most importantly, universities can do a lot to protect a rape victim’s rights to an education, with or without weighing charges against the assailant. As Alexandra Brodsky, co-founder of the group Know Your IX and an editor at Feministing, wrote this week: An extension on a paper due the week after an assault might make the difference between a victim staying in school and dropping out. No police force can provide that kind of accommodation. Don’t want victims “sitting in a classroom alongside somebody who raped them”? A school can often make that happen more quickly than a student can get a restraining order, particularly if he or she has trouble accessing a court. Brodsky writes, “I don’t think this is the side of history on which Sanders wants to stand.” And I agree that the lefty senator is probably “very open to being pushed” on this issue, to borrow the phrase that Black Lives Matter activist Johnetta Elzie used after Sanders met with members of her movement. That was after another of Sanders’ talking points—“black lives matter, white lives matter, Hispanic lives matter”—made him look similarly unschooled in this election cycle’s biggest grassroots cause. Even if Sanders’ heart is in the right place, his comments on campus rape make a telling contrast to Hillary Clinton’s speech on the issue in September. “As president, I’ll fight to make sure every campus offers every survivor the support she needs and will make sure those services are comprehensive, confidential and coordinated,” she told a crowd in Iowa. “Rape is a crime wherever it happens and schools have an obligation. I think it’s both a legal obligation and a moral obligation, to protect every student’s right to get an education free from discrimination, free from fear.” With his stumble this week, Sanders provided a reminder that Clinton isn’t just running as our potential first woman president. She’s also the candidate with the deepest genuine knowledge of the issues women face. |
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9:27 AM Jul 11