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October 7 update: Readers coming from Minding the Campus should know that I take issue with KC Johnson’s gloss on this post. I’ve submitted a comment to that effect over there, and written a follow-up post here as well.
In a new post this morning about last week’s Hofstra rape case — in which a student initially said she’d been raped by five men, then withdrew her allegations — Jaclyn Friedman writes the following:
There’s a widespread assumption that recanting an accusation means that you’re admitting you lied. But in reality, lots of victims recant not because they made it up, but because they come to the unfortunate realization that it will cost them more, emotionally, to pursue justice than to let it go.
We’ll probably never now what happened in this case, but it’s entirely possible that she was threatened by the accused perpetrators or their associates, interrogated by the police about her sexual history or what she might have done to “provoke” the attack, or blamed and slandered by the media or people in her community. All of these things happen all too often to rape victims who speak out. Let’s not ignore the possibility that they happened here.
This is important stuff to keep in mind, and Friedman makes other good points along the way. But I’d like to take it a step further: Even if the Hofstra student lied in her original statement to the police, it doesn’t automatically follow that she wasn’t raped.
The cultural pressures that lead women to falsely recant rape charges are the same pressures that lead women to blame themselves, or expect blame from others, when their rapes don’t follow an accepted narrative. If a woman is raped by a man she’s been intimate with before, or raped in the course of a sexual encounter that began as consensual, or raped in circumstances in which her judgment may be called into question, she can expect to be disbelieved, shamed, and attacked, and that expectation may lead a rape survivor to alter her story to make it more palatable to police, or to a jury, or even to her friends and family.
I don’t know what happened that night, and I expect that I never will. I’m not accusing any of the five men who were named of anything, and I’m not saying that the fact that they were accused means they must have done something wrong. I don’t know, and I’m not interested in speculating.
I do, though, want to say clearly that the question of what happened isn’t a binary one of “she told the truth, and they’re guilty” vs. “she lied, so they’re innocent.”
It’s possible that she lied and that some or all of them are guilty.
The long-term residency of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States, many of whom came here as children with their families, provokes an ambivalence in American voters and politicians that’s unmatched by any other issue.
The governing board of North Carolina’s community college system, the third largest in the country, has changed its rules on the admission of undocumented students four times in the last nine years. On Friday, the board board reversed itself yet again, overturning a 16-month-old policy that had barred such students from its campuses.
The victory for such students is a limited one, however. Under the new regulations, only those who have graduated from an American high school will be eligible to enroll. They will also be required to pay tuition at out-of-state rates — more than $7,000 a year — and will be ineligible for financial aid.
The policy, which will face a final vote in the state’s General Assembly next spring, is intended to bring CC admissions procedures in line with those of the UNC system, which recently adopted a similar approach.
Nine states have passed laws allowing undocumented students to enroll in their public colleges and universities at in-state tuition rates, while only three have explicitly banned such eligibility by statute. According to Inside Higher Ed, this policy change would leave South Carolina as the only state that bars such students from higher education completely.
Policies on undocumented students are attracting new attention this fall as the DREAM Act — a federal law that would allow some undocumented immigrants to establish permanent legal residency by completing college coursework — moves forward in the US Congress.
(Last week, I started posting a weekend roundup of highlights from the @studentactivism Twitter feed. Here it is again.)
Links to this blog:
Students for a Democratic Society has relaunched its SDS News wiki. Great stuff: http://bit.ly/Y1zbm
Student protests in Allahahabad, India, entering their sixth day: http://bit.ly/pi4c9
Campus budgets are getting slashed coast to coast, and students are fighting back: http://bit.ly/1YxoTh
Chomsky on student activism in the 60s & today, & on high tuition’s role in suppressing protest: http://bit.ly/3BFxi
What John Brown taught me about privilege, whiteness, and anti-racism. http://bit.ly/AsIHi
#SAFRA means better student loans, financial aid, drug rules–but it still has to pass the Senate: http://bit.ly/1s7rIc
Students fight fees around the world! Reports from South Africa, Ireland, Cyprus, and Nepal: http://bit.ly/2v3i8c
Outside links:
RT @forstudentpower: Blagojevich gives a great example of why University Trustees should be popularly elected:http://bit.ly/zewZE
Student union suspended, leadership expelled, after anti-govt campus protest in Zambia: http://bit.ly/3duy7
Bizarre, unhinged National Review rant on student activism & campus culture: http://bit.ly/2FWikB
Harvard Med School has reversed new policy regulating students’ interaction with the media: http://bit.ly/t6st0
Canada: New province-wide student association looks to build student power in Saskatchewan. http://bit.ly/10VZFi
India: Campaign for students’ rights at Allahabad U goes national. http://bit.ly/19nHqX (Background here: bit.ly/pi4c9)
Race, frats, history, and the University of Alabama student government: http://bit.ly/3QLOe0
MUST READ — U of California students & profs will walk out Sept 24. Here’s why: http://bit.ly/LYrR7 (Via @kmmcbride)
Other stuff:
When MTV replays that Kanye moment, they should splice in a shot of Mike Myers looking uncomfortable. #vmas
This ACORN story is just so incredibly bizarre. Are we seeing the birth of Borat journalism?
I hate Illinois Nazis, but I always made an exception for Henry Gibson. RIP.
Whenever someone refers to something as “the last acceptable form of prejudice,” they’re full of crap. All kinds of prejudice still thrive.
Earlier this week I posted news about student struggles for access to higher education in the US. Here’s a taste of what’s been going on in the rest of the world in the last seven days:
In Ireland, students camped outside of parliament overnight on Monday in a protest against government plans to introduce new university fees.
South Africa’s Witwatersrand University saw three days of protests this week over plans to raise tuition for the coming academic year. Demonstrations were suspended after the university threatened police action, but the country’s public university system is said to be exploring new revenue streams to alleviate student unrest over fee hikes.
Students shut down community colleges and secondary schools in Nepal for several days this week in protest against the commercialization of education, presenting a thirteen-point list of demands that included a cap on tuition charges.
A new law in Cyprus, put forward in response to student complaints, would require all public colleges in that nation to establish clear tuition rates when students enroll and prohibit increases during a student’s course of study.
SAFRA, the Student Aid and Financial Responsibility Act, passed the House of Representatives yesterday in a 253-171 vote. If passed by the Senate later this fall, SAFRA will end government subsidies to private student loan companies, move those loans federal direct loan program, and use the savings to increase aid to students and colleges by $8 billion a year.
This is a very big deal.
The House’s endorsement of loan reform is a huge step forward, but SAFRA contains another component that’s also worth paying attention to. Since 1998, the Higher Education Act’s Aid Elimination Penalty (AEP) has denied federal financial aid to students with drug convictions on their records. Commit robbery or rape and you can still receive financial aid, but if you’re busted with pot you’re out of luck.
Two hundred thousand American students have lost financial aid because of this law since it went into effect a decade ago, but in the version of SAFRA passed yesterday, the AEP has been scaled back dramatically. If the House language makes it into the final bill, AEP will now apply only those students who are convicted of selling drugs while actually receiving financial aid.
Observers are predicting a tough fight for SAFRA in the Senate, where private lenders are gearing up to protect their turf. We’ll keep you informed as the situation develops.
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