The New York Times On “The Hunting Ground”
Posted on January 26th, 2015 in Uncategorized | 18 Comments »
The paper of record continues its bizarrely one-sided reporting on the issue of campus sexual assault today, as film writer Brooks Barnes pens a glowing review of a new documentary called “The Hunting Ground.”
I first heard about this film a few days ago in a Variety review; Variety called the documentary “a buzzed-about documentary about the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses.”
That word “epidemic” always sets my alarm bells ringing, as there’s absolutely no evidence that this is true, and in fact, there’s real evidence that there is considerably less sexual assault on college campuses than there is, well, everywhere else.
Variety continues:
Statistics indicate that as many as 20 percent of college women are sexually assaulted on college campuses in the United States in a year. But a tiny fraction of the attackers ever face any disciplinary action, and college hearings rarely expel students for rape.
Except that statistics don’t indicate that 20 percent of college women are sexually assaulted on college campuses. And while I’m sure that there are no reliable statistics on the number of “attackers” who ever face any disciplinary action, to the extent that this is the case, the main reason for this appears to be that, even with standards of proof lower than you’d find in a criminal court, many of these allegations are hard-to-prove and/or tenuous.
The Times’ review goes even further in its uncritical promotion of the “epidemic.”
At the premiere here on Friday, audience members repeatedly gasped as student after student spoke on camera about being sexually assaulted — and being subsequently ignored or run through endless hoops by college administrators concerned about keeping rape statistics low.
I haven’t seen the film, so I don’t want to go overboard here—especially because I’m sure that some of the horror stories are true. (The recent case at Vanderbilt appears to be one such example.) But I just don’t believe that there’s some sort of systemic conspiracy to “keep rape statistics low” out of fear of reputational damage. Maybe rape statistics are low because there’s no epidemic of campus rape. And university administrators are not typically cold heartless sinister bureaurats. (Remember, these are the people that the right-wing typically portrays as aging lefty hippies or politically correct SJWs; now the left-wing has them as something out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.)
The film is going to air on CNN sometime this year, which allows CNN head Jeff Zucker—formerly producer of the Today show who is now busily destroying CNN in order to save it—the chance to talk about how brave the network is.
“We’re not afraid,” Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, said after the panel, when asked about a potentially forceful response from higher education officials to “The Hunting Ground.” “They’re on the wrong side.” CNN has not revealed an air date except to say that it will run the film by the end of the year.
Indeed. Because, you know, those higher education officials are known for their vicious, merciless responses. I mean…are we living in the same world here. How many people could even name a higher education official other than, perhaps, the president of the university they attend(ed)?
Then Mr. Barnes writes one of the oddest paragraphs I’ve read in some time. (Is there an editor in the house?)
Underscoring the degree to which media scrutiny of campus rape can provoke swift and severe pushback, Rolling Stone in November was forced to step away from a provocative article focused on accusations of a gang rape at the University of Virginia. The magazine acknowledged that it had erred in relying solely on the word of the accuser, named only as Jackie, and did not try to contact the men she accused.
“Swift and severe pushback?” Is Barnes on crack? Since when is pointing out that a story is terribly reported and quite likely false “swift and severe pushback”? And remember—there was a vast media silence about that story until I and a few other folks started raising doubts. There certainly wasn’t any “swift” pushback.
But wait—there’s more. That sentence—”the magazine acknowledged that it had erred in relying solely on the word of the accuser…” makes it sound like Rolling Stone forgot to cross a “t” and dot an “i.” A fairer sentence would have said, “The magazine admitted that it had failed to prove its allegations, which now appear to be fake.”
But Barnes make it sound like the reaction to the Rolling Stone story only proves the legitimacy of the issue. I’m trying to get my head around the logic: Because people reacted strongly to a story that wasn’t true, therefore “media scrutiny of campus rape” is somehow under siege. It’s intellectual vapor from Cloud Cuckoo-land.
Barnes also mentions that 90 schools are being investigated by the Department of Education for their handling of sexual assault cases. you see that and similar numbers reported a lot. But he doesn’t report (does he know?) how such investigations are launched; any student can write a letter to the DOE complaining of a Title IX violation, and the Department is required to initiate an investigation. So the mere fact of a large number of investigations does not in and of itself mean very much.
I would have thought that the Rolling Stone fiasco would have caused people in the press–and particularly the Times, which was so embarrassed by the follow-up reporting of the Washington Post—to employ at least a little skepticism about the “epidemic” of sexual assault on campus. I was wrong. The epidemic of bad journalism continues unabated.
18 Responses
1/26/2015 4:11 pm
I will bet up to .2 bitcoin that at least half of the stories reported in this documentary are either downright false (like the Rolling Stone article), greatly embellished (like Liz Securro’s claims of a gang rape) or not more substantiated than ‘she said / he said’ (as in: there was no investigation by university authorities or police or if there was such an investigation it did not lead to a conviction of sexual assault).
So that means I am willing to count as true those cases where there was in fact a conviction but about which I personally have great doubts (e.g. the conviction of William Nottingham Beebe).
1/26/2015 4:17 pm
‘“Swift and severe pushback?” Is Barnes on crack? Since when is pointing out that a story is terribly reported and quite likely false “swift and severe pushback”? ‘
The sentence in question is even weirder than that. ‘Underscoring the degree to which media scrutiny of campus rape can provoke swift and severe pushback, Rolling Stone in November was forced to step away …’
So critically examining [scrutiny] the article can give rise [provoke] to resistance [pushback]. So what does the resistance [pushback] part refer to if not the critical examination [scrutiny] itself? And if it does in fact refer to that, then using the word ‘provoke’ to describe the relation between them is bizarre as the claim would merely be an identity claim (with the scrutiny just *being* the pushback), not a causal one (with the scrutiny causing the pushback).
1/26/2015 5:55 pm
This is what these feminist want
https://twitter.com/ShunCampusWomen/status/559059280670638080
1/26/2015 9:29 pm
“But Barnes make it sound like the reaction to the Rolling Stone …”
I think you meant ‘made’
1/26/2015 9:44 pm
Just read Zoe Heller’s “Rape on the Campus” in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, particularly the first footnote.
1/27/2015 2:25 am
To a certain mentality, it’s always September 28, 2024 in a dark upstairs room at a certain frat and university…
It’s an old, primitive rhetorical trick, respond to any weaknesses in your claims by yelling louder. It’s actually pretty effective in a confrontation-adverse society.
1/27/2015 4:14 am
The BOJ recently released the real rate of sexual assault on campuses. It is lower than the national average. The figure is actually 6.1 per 1000 students per annum. ie 0.6%.
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5176
1/27/2015 6:27 am
Haven Monahan was not available for comment.
😉
1/27/2015 8:46 am
Richard,
Any chance that you might quit your day job and start a new magazine,lol?
I am with you on most points, but not all. But then we can’t really learn from one another if we always agree without sincere questioning, can we?
I think that this issue is so serious that it must be torn loose from the left/right debates. We have a new technology that is affecting us all in both good and bad ways, particularly our young men and women, and that technology is the Internet. (The Vanderbilt case is almost bone chilling in this regard. One of the alleged rapists watches pornography on the Internet as the assault takes place, then another sends video and text messages of a completely unconscious woman being raped. If a “radical feminist” had worked night and day to come up with a hypothetical example of the “objectification” of a woman, he or she could not top this horrifying reality that took place in a college dormitory, and that is the real story-and the real truth: how-when- did normal “peer pressure” among some adolescents-among these adolescents, at least-begin to include participating in, or turning away from, the sexual assault of an unconscious woman? )
Many lives have been ruined in this incident: those of the young men who participated in the assault, and that of the woman.
I am not jumping from Vanderbilt to a “rape epidemic”. But before we all just move on, let’s take a close look at Vanderbilt and what the case reveals.
“Radical feminists” did not create this case: the rapists did, and they were caught on surveillance cameras. Then, they proceeded to further incriminate themselves by taking pictures and making a video of the assault. Campus police turned the evidence they had over to the Nashville sex crimes unit. Detectives there got the cell phones of the alleged rapists and retrieved deleted photos. That is how the investigation of a felony should take place. It is shameful of our society to ask university officials not only to finish raising our children, but to “adjudicate” a felony. Professors should be teaching philosophy and literature and physics, not tasked with dealing with alleged and actual sexual assaults, and with moral lapses so severe in some that the blame truly does lie with society at large. The four young men who participated in the assault would not have done so, in my opinion, without the tacit assumption that anything goes is the norm. Also, without being caught almost assuredly beyond the shadow of a doubt unless the closing arguments of the last defense attorney include surprise details that turn the case upside down, this case might be one argued as yet another example of a radical agenda, and the details picked apart and ridiculed. As it stands now, the actual Vanderbilt rape case makes Erdely’s fictitious tale pale in comparison.
1/27/2015 9:45 am
The outcome of this stuff is clear enough: smart young men on campus are going to stop socializing with women on campus. Too little to gain, too much to lose. There are women off-campus. There are women after college. The smart male students will see that, and approach their social lives accordingly.
It’s a sad outcome. The social function of college as a place where the two sexes learn mutual respect and trust seems to be unraveling, because the rules treat one sex like ghouls and the other like infants.
1/27/2015 12:03 pm
What gives?
Didn’t DOJ recently release data indicating that women in college are less likely than their peers to be sexually assaulted?
It is beginning to strike me that, somehow, our society has made being in college as entitling women to greater protection than not.
Is there perhaps some element of class entitlement here?
1/27/2015 1:17 pm
“Barnes also mentions that 90 schools are being investigated by the Department of Education for their handling of sexual assault cases. you see that and similar numbers reported a lot. But he doesn’t report (does he know?) how such investigations are launched; any student can write a letter to the DOE complaining of a Title IX violation, and the Department is required to initiate an investigation. So the mere fact of a large number of investigations does not in and of itself mean very much.”
We also need to look at the active and very real “Rape Culture” on campus-but not in the way the raptivists and social justice warriors are framing it. Look at Jackie Coakley-a venerated “survivor” with 9 notches on her belt, a key speaker and micro celebrity at various “slut walks” and Take back the Night rallies. Let us not forget Jackie spread her fictitious and libelous story for a year or more at various campus events hosted by these rape culture groups.
Simply put, of course there are a lot of cases to be investigated as activist groups whip new recruits to the cause and potential victims into a frenzy, encouraging them to be “brave” and share their “story,” regardless of whether it’s true or all-out fiction. Case in point Emily Renda, who peddled Jackie’s lies before congress to perpetuate her anti-male rape culture agenda.
1/27/2015 2:39 pm
st -
Your comment that “The four young men who participated in the assault would not have done so, in my opinion, without the tacit assumption that anything goes is the norm.” is perhaps on the mark, but while we are examining things, we should look at where that comes from. It comes exclusively from the left who excuse absolutely anything in the name of moral relativism as long as it isn’t done by a a male person of pallor.
As for the ‘adjudicating’ part of your post, they crave this power… the vast majority of professors are SJWs who don’t care a wit for due process. They think “in parentis loco” gives them the right to do whatever they want to your kid, the constitution be damned.
You should look at this:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510
If it comes up firewalled, put “lawyer university son accused site:wsj.com” into google and follow the link “Judith Grossman: A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast”.
Unfortunately, none of this stuff is really new or news… the only newsy about it is that RB and a few others are starting to pay attention.
1/28/2015 7:24 am
Interested Observer,
Thanks for the link. The ordeal that this woman and her son endured is appalling. I have young men in my family who will be going to college in a few years, and how to protect themselves from false accusations is a major topic for discussion. They already know that rape is wrong.
I think that the left, the right, and many university professors and other officials are beginning to agree that the allegation of sexual assault is a law enforcement issue. The accused must be granted due process, and tried in a court of law, not in a university hearing. This is so basic, it is almost ridiculous to have to state it. I can agree with you that the left has a lot to do with many of our current societal problems, but my hearing aid goes off when the right does not own up to its own shortcomings. Even on this blog, which I find to be fair and even handed, several commenters have shown that they are every bit the racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic men and women that the left accuses them of being. Yet, on the other hand-and much more prevalently-the comments come from thoughtful people trying to muddle through this morass just as I am. We have two disturbing things taking place simultaneously: the type of almost sociopathic behavior exhibited in the Vanderbilt case (there was another case that did not involve rape, but the beating to death of a young woman outside of a night club by two other young women, all of which was videotaped, which comes to mind, too) and the truly disturbing case you linked to, in which an innocent young man must defend himself against false accusations with no legal protection. (In another incident, Brian Banks, a football player, spent five years in jail for a rape he did not commit) I remember when feminists stood for something I could understand. I attended UVa in the 1970s and women did face discrimination in those days. We had to tough it out, and we did. (One assumption prevalent then was that women were inferior writers just because they were women. It was just a widespread belief at one time, and one still held by some, I would wager) I still love the university, though, and I mean that sincerely. “Love” is an emotional word, but I can’t think of a better one. We have a problem, and we need to fix it, regardless of our political beliefs.
1/28/2015 9:21 am
st -
Thanks for your civil reply. I agree with pretty much everything you said, and especially the last part.
You use a hearing aid for reading blog posts? Who knew!
To be sure, the ‘right’ has its own problems, different but every bit as pernicious as the left’s. In a nutshell, the right is hypocritical about anything related to sex, while the left is hypocritical about anything related to money and race (or anything where identity politics trumps all).
1/28/2015 10:26 am
Observer,
You’re welcome. Thanks for your reply as well.
I agree with your assessment of the right and the left. I am pretty much fed up with extremists from both ends of the spectrum calling the shots. I am sure we will hear plenty from both sides in the coming months with another presidential election coming up.
On the hearing aid, good point, lol…..I actually don’t wear one for blog posts or for anything else…..yet…..
1/28/2015 6:23 pm
smart young men on campus are going to stop socializing with women on campus
This isn’t necessary. There are plenty of reasonable women on campus who have already rejected the radfems. To test ask them about the Patriarchy. If they roll their eyes you’re good. If they launch into some theory tell them you’re 100% behind them, then leave.
1/29/2015 10:17 am
“If they launch into some theory tell them you’re 100% behind them, then leave.”
And who said colleges don’t prepare you for the workforce?