seed from dakotah, kayleigh, mike, fern
-Classmates. Fooled around 2 times previously and had done everything but sex. Meet after class one day, girl suggests they watch TV at the guy’s room. They go back to the room to watch House of Cards. He starts to make sexual moves, which they have done before. They came close to having sex before in terms of nakedness and intimacies but she had remained a virgin. Once it becomes clear he was intent on intercourse, she says “I thought we were here to watch a movie.” Shortly thereafter, he penetrated her..
FACTS DIVERGE HERE
MALE:
He thought she was being flirtatious and persisted. The communication was vague. Based on prior experience, he thought this was permissible. Times previously she said don’t take off my shirt, but then she herself took off the shirt.
FEMALE:
She tried to communicate that she was uncomfortable and this was unwelcome. I said it in stern way, and my body language indicated my nonconsent.
VARYING FACTORS
-alcohol: both had been drinking. 3 or 4 beers. She supplied the alcohol.
-intercourse on previous occasions: relationship scenario.
-reports right away, reports next morning, or reports after speaking with women’s vengeance brigade
-power dynamic: change who the people are. Guy is a TA or grad student, and she is an undergraduate.
-cultural:
-loose girl or an athlete scenario
-when does she leave after the interaction?
-girl who has an ulterior motive for alleging rape. She found he slept with her roommate.
-she said yes but then changed her mind.
-she says no, clearly. She had said no previously but in a playful way. This time she says no in a firm way.
***
let’s set this up as a socratic seminar.
cbs nesson socratic 1982
pick one story and follow it procedurally from the time the complaint comes to the dean.
the dean [mckensie], in private, speaks to the girl.[kaylee], who voices her complaint.
a complaint comes in: the title 9 alarm bell rings; the carefully worked out legal procedure that the dean must follow at risk of losing all our university’s federal funding clicks in:
Should she immediately identify the potential defendant and isolate him from contact with the complainant? For the guy, an extraordinary constraint on freedom triggered by a complaint.
within the legal institutional world complaint warranting restriction of freedom initiates with stop and frisk, which offers the dean a model. reasonable suspicion is the standard for stop and frisk. does the dean have reasonable suspicion that the defendant is guilty of sexual assault on campus to warrant a minimal intrusion on the defendant’s freedom? yes.
what does the dean do? does she empathize? does she offer to mediate?
the dean speaks in private to the guy [mike],
[let’s hear the mediation conversation driven in a way that does not resolve the complaint yet explores possible avenues of resolution to pinpoint failure points.
then the dean says, now what do i do? where does the story go from there? who does she call?
[mckensie. be the dean, who do you call?]
[compared to the settlement choice, let’s hear what the litigation route will entail. who can tell us that?
[then come back, is there any positive thing that could be done to satisfy the complaint alternative to litigation: [ e.g., a deliberation program encompassing the culture. that being the change that kaylee is really fighting for.
welcome to the rawlsian room, in which we decide what is fair without knowing whether ours is the male or the female position, leave aside for the moment gradations of self consciousness in between.