An article by Bill Frezza, the president of "the alumni house corporation of [his] MIT fraternity, on Forbes.com was removed by the site after stirring controversy. http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...uests-are-the-gravest-threat-to-fraternities/ Now, personally, I'm always wary of anybody who non-ironically uses the term "nanny-state" or uses a patronizing tone when referring to feminists, but these things aside, I think he's making a decent point here. If you take a look at the article, it even includes a pretty tasteless picture of a girl drinking from a wine bottle, and I think a part of the reason why it has inspired so much backlash is because it sounds like Frezza is trying to exonerate all fraternities of their own poor behavior by claiming that drunk girls are the brunt of these problems. However, I was especially intrigued by the section I bolded above. To cast a further complex light on these problems plaguing universities around the nation, let's take a look back on what happened in Occidental college some time ago: http://www.businessinsider.com/occidental-sexual-assault-2014-9 All of this seems rather zany to me, and remarkably unfair to the males involved. I'm not going to deny that rapes happen on college campuses--unfortunately, they happen all the time and it's obviously an epidemic that needs to be stopped and addressed. However, I don't think that a solution to this problem is that we should be allowed to retroactively convict or punish men with accusations of rape that happen far after the fact--allegations that, more importantly, involve two inebriated participants rather than one inebriated participant being taken advantage of. This is obviously a very nuanced problem and I don't think that I'm capable of covering every base or understanding every perspective, but I would genuinely like to hear what other people's ideas regarding this topic are.
Here's a radical thought: if people keep drinking irresponsibly at parties, which they will, there will be ambiguous sexual abuse inevitably involved at a ridiculously predictable rate. People will always, for the rest of eternity, drink irresponsibly at parties. Women have almost always been the victims of this behavior. So what do we do to avoid these alcohol-related tragedies? The correct answer of course is to treat alcohol more seriously. It is far more dangerous than mar1juana or tobacco, yet treated too leniently. What will really happen though is people will disregard it and consider these tragedies acceptable in order to continue the quid pro quo under the guise of cultural protection. I feel like I deserve to live in a place where people who drink alcohol are subjected to heavy heavy heavy restrictions. That doesn't mean banning it, but it does mean banning the sale of it in public places. I respect that the large majority of alcohol drinkers are responsible adults, but the rest are a danger to people other than themselves and that's unacceptable in civil society.
chick gets ****-faced, feels guilty about her own drunken decisions, so she uses her 'victimhood' to ruin somebody else's life to quell her remorse aka lack of personal responsibility? this seems to be a trend in colleges today (seems in the media the black athletes bear a brunt for 'rape' cases) but one that chicks can get away with in this situation since males are always the 'guilty until proven innocent' party... also typical in divorce and parental right cases
Every, no, but out the chute if you're accused of rape more often than not you're not getting the benefit of the doubt. The mere accusation is a stigma.
This I agree with. Alcohol is a dangerous drug and yet we have the easiest access to it, along with a cigarette. Alcohol not only allows people to make bad decisions, they wake up the next morning and regret the decision they made. There are so many rape cases that involve alcohol it isn't even funny. The worst thing about it is, that same women who claims to be raped the next day was all for it during the sexual intercourse (not all were but there is no doubt some are.) I am not one to judge on alcohol consumption... My wife and I have our fair share of fun on the weekends but we are responsible about it. The fact that so many underage kids have such easy access to alcohol is appalling. When I was in high school much less my freshman/sophomore year of college, I could go anywhere and buy alcohol, drink at bars and so on while being underage. Just because I could grow a beard or give the bouncer $5-$10 and he would let me in. Not to go off topic but I feel the death rate of drunk drivers is far superior than the bad decision making by a college girl who chose to drink to much of that fruit flavored punch full of ever clear at a party. Alcohol related deaths while driving are preventative if the right actions are taken against it. I would much rather see someone smoke a blunt and drive than take 6 shots of hard liquor in an hour and get behind the wheel. At least the person that smoked would be driving 20 mph in a 50 mph zone compared to going 50 mph in a 20 mph zone. Much less running a red light or misjudging a turn and losing control of their car and killing themselves, passengers or someone they hit in the process.
I'm not sure what Frezza was trying to get across. If the article was only directed to fraternities, then I'm not sure exactly how important the message is. As others will note, fraternities are legitimately guilty of rapes and rape-like incidences far more than they are falsely accused of them, but I think the main issue here is one of accountability. The topic that spurred the article was because a woman fell out of a window at a frat party, not because she accused them of rape. Furthermore, check out the case at Occidental. The school policy outright says that John Doe is at all times responsible for determining whether or not Jane Doe is intoxicated beyond a capacity to consent, regardless of John Doe's own incapacity to detect that one way or another. A school policy like that is, in my opinion, incredibly biased and unfair.
