My lone Insider piece this week was on the Tigers’ deal with Justin Upton. I’ve been sick pretty much since noon on Monday and am still down with disease, trying to do as little as possible this weekend.
And now, the links…
- J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is back with another great post on 22 things you should never buy at the supermarket, meaning you should make them at home instead. I’d add mayonnaise to the list myself, because store jars are huge and I never finish them.
- Ruhlman weighs in too, by pointing out that no food is actually “healthy,” not even kale. Some of this is semantics; people are healthy, but food, by virtue of being already dead, is not. Food can be healthful – full, or not, of nutrients – but not healthy. The bigger problem, however, is the rush to categorize foods as good or bad for you when there’s a huge range in between, something that depends on what else you eat and your individual genetics.
- Most of you have likely seen this, but the BBC/Buzzfeed joint investigation on possible match-fixing in tennis is damning, even though it seems like much of this will be difficult to prove to an extent where we’ll see suspensions or expulsions.
- Ted Cruz isn’t up to speed on the Flint water crisis, even though Flint officials knew about the tainted water over a year ago, per this New Yorker editorial on politicians’ “contempt” for their constituents. Al-Jazeera America, which is about to shut down, ran a damning exposé on Flint water an entire year ago … and still Flint did nothing. And Michigan did nothing. Flint’s Director of Public Works, Howard Croft, refused to admit that there’d been any mistake made whatsoever in that piece; he resigned his post in November.
- EDBDS’s Spencer Hall gets a bit personal about his own depression.
- The Atavist has the story of Jewish-American lawyer who successfully sued the government of Iran for funding terrorism, including the attack that killed his daughter in 1995.
- The half-billion-dollar battle over the toy rights to Disney’s princess characters saw Disney (my employer) pull a license Mattel had held for twenty years and hand it to Hasbro. The reasons are complicated and fascinating.
- You can become a math person, mostly because the whole “math person” thing is bullshit. Point #4, about teaching math as a language, is the most important in my view – math is like the world’s easiest language because it lacks the irregularities and colloquialisms that trip up most language learners.
- A heartbreaking story of fetal alcohol syndrome in a 43-year-old woman.
- Liz Finnegan, erstwhile video game writer for The Escapist, explores the unbalanced nature of “consent” on college campuses, especially once alcohol is involved. I don’t see how you can say that an inebriated person (the woman, in these examples) is incapable of giving consent, but that the other inebriated person (the man) is capable of determining whether the first person is capable of giving consent – that is, not so drunk that clear, affirmative consent is still not sufficient. You couldn’t use that standard in court, but colleges play by their own rules when policing student behavior on campus.
- Loved Melinda Gates calling out Donald Trump on his anti-science vaccine denial views. Of course, I don’t think he’s got much of a shot with the intellectual crowd anyway, but it would be nice to get this particular lie out of the press for now.
Get better soon…hopefully after someone else has cleared the driveway and walkway.
That Liz Finnegan consent article is interesting. I wonder how universities would act if a male student were to take back consent given to a female student? A male student? Would there be a difference between all these cases?
I must admit to a certain level of skepticism about an article that appears on a website called “EveryJoe.com,” but I do think this is a perspective worth considering.
The way food is viewed in this country drives me nuts. “This food is bad, never eat it!” or “This food is good, eat it all the time!” Every real doctor and nutritionist I’ve spoken to does a Tina Fey eyeroll at statements like that. Eat a variety, avoid packaged foods when possible, and watch your portions” isn’t very sexy and doesn’t make for a great sound bit, but that’s what my doctors always recommend.
I agree with most of the J. Kenji Lopez-Alt article, although I’ve given up buying both beef and chicken broth. If I’m out of homemade stock, I just use water instead. To be honest, it doesn’t seem to make a big difference (at least to me). Also, it’s cheaper and reduces the sodium content of whatever you’re making.
The reason I stopped using it was because of something Ruhlman wrote about it tasting bad on its own. I heated up some, tried it, and had to agree.
Keith – thanks for responding. The accused student in the Amherst case wasn’t unconscious. The allegations, as recounted in his lawsuit against the college, (http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2090107/doe-v-amherst-complaint.pdf) were that he forcibly prevented the other student from stopping.
I agree the other allegations in his complaint are strong, and raise facts which undercut the original accusations and the college’s handling of them. I’m pointing this out only to distinguish this from the Occidental case, which presented the mutual intoxication problem you took issue with in your post.
If this means that it’s inherently wrong for colleges to develop their own rules and procedures for handling sexual assault cases involving students, however, I will continue to disagree.
“You couldn’t use that standard in court, but colleges play by their own rules when policing student behavior on campus.”
(a) It’s not like the criminal justice system handles sexual assault that well in the first place, (b) (most? all?) universities have affirmative obligations under Title IX that don’t apply to criminal cases, and (c) universities are full of young, single people with access to booze and other drugs — if you don’t like the standard or the way the college applied it according to some article on the internet, fine, but “playing by their own rules” is needlessly inflammatory.
And the inebriation of the initiating person is a non-sequitur. Courts apply objective standards of behavior every day.
First of all, you seem to believe that it is always clear who the “initiator” was. In most cases, however–including the specific case discussed in the story–that is not the case; it’s a team effort (as it were). Ergo, the drunkenness of both parties would certainly seem to be relevant.
Second, if the standards being applied are different from those used by the court system, and vary from university, how is that NOT “playing by their own rules”? Indeed, that is the textbook definition of “playing by their own rules.”
Yes, sometimes facts are ambiguous, though I think it goes too far to say that’s in “most cases.”
Here’s an account of the incident and hearing which makes much more of an effort to understand what happened while remaining sympathetic to the accused student:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a33751/occidental-justice-case/
There is a lot of evidence that the woman was too drunk here to consent under the university rules, and that if she had not been blackout, vomiting drunk that night, she would not have been in the other student’s room. She then reported experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder quickly afterward. Is that a “team effort”? Maybe. Not enough that I feel comfortable second-guessing the arbitrator who heard the case.
Again, the universities have a responsibility to put in put in place rules where a student doesn’t have to come back to a residence where he or she will be pressured into having sex while blackout drunk. In this case, they provided notice of a rule, standards, and possible disciplinary actions. Those may have been too harsh in this case — I get that. But painting universities with a broad brush as authorities run amok based on a single case is not a great approach when schools are confronting issues which in the past were often avoided or covered up.
Hardly about “a single case.” How about Amherst expelling a student accused of assaulting a girl while he was unconscious: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/23/amhersts-response-to-a-rape-lawsuit-is-stunning/
No, describing kangaroo courts administered on college campuses as “playing by their own rules” is not needlessly inflammatory. If anything it’s kind. The criminal justice system has its flaws no doubt, but it’s certainly the superior option for adjudicating sexual assault because it already has clear cut procedures for due process, protection for the accused, discovery of evidence, collecting testimony etc.
Colleges who became aware of sexual assaults should immediately be encouraging possible victims to report their case to law enforcement.
Patrick – Universities also don’t have the power to issue criminal convictions. And relying on the criminal justice system takes a long time, even years, while the students are both part of the school, attending classes, living in dorms, etc (and in the case of serial rapists, are still around others who the university has an obligation to). Criminal investigations also impose a high barrier on victims who are reluctant to come forward for a number of reasons. Absolutely universities should encourage and help students work with law enforcement — if the students feel it to be in their best interests. But sexual assault is a very serious issue and it’s appropriate that schools develop multiple channels for addressing it.
If sexual assault is such a serious issue then why are you advocating that institutions which are ill equipped to adjudicate the matter get involved instead of letting the machinations of the CJ system work through it? These institutions possess little regard for due process, discovery of evidence, collection of testimony, protection for the accused, allowing the accused to face their accusers (!!) and lower standards for finding of guilt (i.e. preponderance of evidence vs. beyond a reasonable doubt).
I’m sorry, but you don’t impress me as someone who really knows what they are talking about.
First of all, both partners in a “hookup,” in most cases, will be able to plausibly say that the other signaled interest. By the time the sex is verbalized, if it ever is, there has almost always been prior nonverbal communication. It would be extremely rare for one individual to be 100% the initiator. There is a vast literature on this–Saad, Lycett, Dunbar, Grammer, Malamuth, etc.–that you may want to look into.
Second, you seem to be operating under the assumption that universities are trying to do the right thing, and that a little collateral damage may be the cost therein. In fact, “the right thing,” or some sort of political agenda, are most certainly not the universities’ #1 motivator. Their #1 goal is to cover their own asses, so as to keep from being the target of expensive lawsuits and/or bad publicity. And they are more than happy to crush a few students, if that’s what it takes. See the parallel, but much less politically charged, case of computer piracy. A student can be punished quite severely for “illegal downloads” with precious little real evidence, protecting the universities from DMCA suits.
Third, declaring that universities don’t have the power to issue criminal convictions is the real non sequitur here. Their powers to punish students are very substantial and can certainly be just as damaging as a criminal conviction. You can easily lose years of your life, you can be de facto blackballed from your choice of profession, you can spend tens of thousands on legal counsel, etc. Indeed, the fact that universities do not have the powers of the court system is actually an excellent argument as to why they should NOT be in the business of adjudicating such serious cases, since they lack the ability to subpoena witnesses, to compel production of evidence, to threaten witnesses with penalty of perjury, etc.
Note that I am as big a believe as anyone in making certain that sexual assault is properly punished when it happens. But, as compared to past practice, we are in a period of over-correction right now in which innocent people are being treated very unjustly. It is also the case that the targets of this unjust treatment are, to the surprise of nobody, disproportionately minority students. You might want to read Jeannie Suk’s recent piece in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/argument-sexual-assault-race-harvard-law-school
I see Patrick beat me to the punch on the very important point that universities are ill-equipped, by virtue of their not having judicial powers, to handle these cases.
CB – Please, send some citations or links if you have them at hand. I would genuinely like to read some studies and reconsider my position regarding the scope of incapacitation rules.
As for the rest — no, I’m not interested in “crushing a few students,” any more than you’re interested in brushing aside the experiences of students who have reported sexual assault. Public universities, like other public agencies, routinely handle administrative hearings under procedures that other than those of the federal or state court systems — entirely consistently with due process requirements. Notice, clear rules, fair procedures, and appropriate remedies — yes, those are needed, and are in fact provided routinely outside the courts for cases in which careers and reputations are at stake. I’m open to discussions that university procedures can and need to be improved. But blanket dismissals that schools shouldn’t investigate complaints or hold disciplinary procedures because they don’t hew to the standards of the criminal justice system — I mean, yes, they have different interests and stakes than the criminal justice system — strike me as entirely unrealistic and insufficient.
How many other public agencies outside of universities have systems in place which try to adjudicate serious criminal offenses? Otherwise, why should universities be involved at all instead of handing matters over to authorities?
“Notice, clear rules, fair procedures, and appropriate remedies — yes, those are needed, and are in fact provided routinely outside the courts for cases in which careers and reputations are at stake.”
Are you reading the links? In fact these things, often are NOT provided in these cases. That’s the problem.
Thanks for the post, Keith. Get well soon.
Sick for a week and no new posts? How are them vaccines working for you now, klaw????
– Donald T., G. Paltrow, et al.