Title IX/Sexual Assault...yet no MSU bball
So, this article in the Detroit News today highlights changes in sexual assult policies (mostly at UofM) due to Title IX. Once again, Gibbons is brought up and no mention is made of two stars of MSU's basketball team whose story seems even more damaging than Gibbons...and they're a (due to weak region) favorite to win the tourney.
I just don't get it. Our (not great) kicker seems to have been a legendary scumbag and likely rapist (reading his police interview, "I didn't bust in her", makes it pretty hard to defend the guy) but the victim didn't want to press charges and the police took no action. The university then expelled him as soon as it changed its sexual assault policy (which removed the requirement for the victim to make a formal complain and lowered the burden of proof). Our PR response was awful, but official actions seemed to be proper (albeit slow and clunky).
By way of contrast, two MSU players were accused of sexual assualt, a teammate witness said it was not consensual and the victim wanted to press charges. The police (just like with Gibbons) refused to press charges. MSU (unlike Michigan with Gibbons) has taken no action against the two players and the media makes almost no mention of any of this despite repeated coverage of Title IX and sexual assault.
Is this just crazy time? If reducing/eliminating sexual assault is the goal, why in the world has there been no action taken against these guys and, even worse, where's the parallel media attention given that MSU is a daily sports news item? It can't be a matter of "the press hates Michigan" because, frankly, I don't believe that to be true.
Maybe I just had to get that WTF off my chest, so mods, please feel free to delete if today should be a day of joy and celebration only.
I said WHETHER OR NOT he is driving at the truth is secondary to many. Some people are so fanatical the first thing they see is somebody being a big meanie to their team.
Please enlighten me on all of his "dishonest" tactics.
all UM employees, current and former, are extremely gruntled.
Where do they find the time to know the issue, statements and people involved and commenting and then pass haughty judgment?
March 20th, 2014 at 12:33 PM ^
federal regulations have changed a University's approach to this sort of allegation/crime. Before the revision Gibbons was still a student/player and after the revision he was expelled.
Since the article is about how Universities have adapted to/adopted the new federal regulations you aren't going to find a much better example than a student athelete thats case was handled one way prior and another after.
Moreover, the amount of press surrounding the Gibbons event means the author doesn't have to spend much time explaining the circumstances surrounding the case.
The MSU event(s*) doesn't (don't) make as good of an example because no additional steps were taken after the federal regulations were implemented.
I don't think this is really an example of any type of anti-Michigan bias. It's just an article about a change in school policy prompted by the federal regulations and you can't get much better of an example than the Gibbons' case.
Finally, MSU was mentioned quite a few times.
Also, I don't like MSU so this is hardly an apology for MSU despite it possibly seeming as such.
*Apparently the feds are investigating three seperate incidents at MSU?
Michigan expels Gibbons and its the story of the centry. National media picks is up and the Detroit media aggressively pushes all sorts of conspiracy theories about a coverup and strongly critisizes U of M for hiding behind privacy laws/rules in not giving them more red meat to go after. On the flip side with MSU there is hardly a peep in the press. Are we to believe that the Detroit media isn't aware of the involvement of two prominent MSU basketball players are invovled? I find that very hard to believe. I think the way this is being handled tells you all you need to know about the Detroit sports media. They think they can make their name by tearing down Michigan.
...hadn't decided to source practically all of this article through "activists," university rape counselors and Obama Administration officials.
Because she didn't supply it, let's post it right here; a reading list on litigation related to false claims of sexual assaults on campus since the newly-aggressive Obama Administration rules:
- James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, on the Auburn case of Joshua Strange;
- Taranto, on a West Point case;
- News on false-accusation litigation at Xavier, Vassar, Williams, Bucknell, St. Joseph's and Holy Cross;
- More news on that same trend with many of the same cases referenced.
I'm openly rooting for a lawsuit featuring a plaintiff Brendan (misspelled by Kim Kozlowski in the Detroit News) Gibbons versus the University of Michigan. I'd like to see it happen, to shed some light on the nature of the quasi-legal and/or sub-legal proceedings to which he was subjected. I'd like a civil action to force disclosure on what role Washtenaw Watchdog Doug Smith (who has falsely called Gibbons a "rapist" and who has wrongly claimed that media didn't report this story when it happened, and who has maliciously alleged that the University of Michigan ignored the case, implying that the football program somehow stymied the investigation) played. I'd love to see a defamation action brought against Smith.
These aren't predictions on my part; just what I'd like to see happen.
By the way, I think the low-level no-brain stories are the old ones about 'Did the media ignore the same kind of stuff at MSU?' or 'We need to make sure that Michigan is above board becaus gosh darnit we're MICHIGAN.'
Unh-unh. This case is all about Washington's gaming of Title IX standards, and institutions like Michigan playing along. This isn't like recruiting, or grey-shirting, or oversigning, or some NCAA academic standards. Or any of the usual 'competitive advantage' issues. This isn't really anything about "our team's better than your team." This is politics. Under current rules, it is only a matter of time until every one of our rivals, and then Michigan again, finds itself in the middle of a contested sexual assault allegation.
March 20th, 2014 at 10:16 PM ^
March 21st, 2014 at 10:42 AM ^
There's been awful, context-void reporting on this story everywhere. One of the many things they consistently get wrong that I find important is the actual source of the changing policy.
"Title IX" is only involved insofar as it's the White House's flimsy means by which the universities are being made to change their policies. This isn't some part of Title IX, and it isn't a Dept of Ed thing. The White House saw what happened at ND and Missouri because sexual assaults on campus are way more frequent than they are prosecutable by law, and decided to use those afore mentioned tools to force universities to do something about it.
I know I'm skirting the edge of politics here, but I think that's an important distinction to make since we're judging how schools react to sexual assault, and there's an appearance allowed to fester that Michigan and Michigan State were isolated cases. It's the difference between "hey look England has Mad Cow disease; don't buy British beef" and "hey look, England is the first country testing for Mad Cow disease and they found it."