> "Male and female student have a drunken hookup. He wakes up, terrified she's going to file a sexual misconduct complaint, so he goes to the Title IX office and beats her to the punch. She is found guilty and suspended."

It was bound to happen. I'm surprised that I've not seen reports before. So obvious.

When Sweden first discussed to change the law for sexual assault and rape, this was my fist thought. They changed the text to remove violence as a factor and added in its place consent, which in concept sounds good since that is more the central issue for what we recognize as assault.

But it does lead to the problem where two people can simultaneous accuse the other of rape, and the problem of our current systematic response of treating the accused as guilty by default. It is very hard if not impossible to disprove for a school or public a lack of verbal or non-verbal consent. If there is a benefit of being first to report then this kind of situation is bound to recur.

On the positive side I predict we will see more understanding and light for male victims. No more is strength and violence a factor, which has historically been used as an argument why men can't get sexual assaulted. I also predict that the clearing rate will go down in proportionality to the number of reported cases, but will stay rather static in the proportionality to the population.

Why not abolish Title IX completely?

College students are adults, so the most serious (and possibly violent) sexual offences can be prosecuted according to criminal law, and the rest is just something two adults should be able to figure out by themselves.

Cases like the one described in the article are simply impossible to be correctly assesed by the judge or jury: too little information, and all the reasoning rules that one could apply are subjective and culture-dependent.

I agree. In Europe universitys expect you to be an adult capable of managing your life and don‘t involve themselves in it.

American colleges seem more like closed communitys with their own rules. Maybe that‘s because most of the time only exchange students live on campus.

Title IX is a fine law overall, it's just certain specifics that need amending.

Game theory meets sex-life. Prison dileman applied and first strike means you win, but at the same time, you have to go cellibate to not give a weak spot for revenge hook-ups.

Very soon, joining a amercian fraternity, will be equivalent to joining a monastry. Which means, the political correctness is attacking the universitys where it hurts- attractivenes to party students.

In the left corner, PC-Culture, in the right corner the dean and his accounting.

What a tragedy, what a farce.

Sorry if this sounds old fashioned and traditional, but shouldn’t universities primarily focus on the quality of their education? I’m not exactly keen on my tax dollars going to make schools better for parties and hooking up. Tinder exists, if early twenty somethings want to hook up why are they spending $30K and up of loans and parent’s savings on it? Heaven forbid they go to class and study for midterms instead of fucking around at a frat...

I'm currently attending University and I'd say for the majority of Universities focusing on education the ship has long sailed. The alternative to the "hookup" scene these days, which most people view as the "traditional" college experience you refer to has been morphed into job seeking. Most students do not go to class to learn, but rather to receive accreditation, concerned only with how future employers will view their GPA or classes taken

There are a small or large number of people seeking to further their own knowledge (depending on which specific university you are attending, it seems), however most university curriculum could be reduced to a year or two of self study. Most of the focus is on the schools perceived performance (as measured by testing, GPA, attendance, etc) My particular University stops giving programming projects after 2nd year for students following the Software Engineering course meaning many students have not programmed in 2 years when they graduate, although from what I hear this is not normal for all schools in my area, however I suspect it is because many students could not handle programming above a 101 level.

This has led to an increase reliance of student groups: those that have a thirst for learning great student groups focusing on self study whether for improving class performance or just learning for the sake of learning. However often times if a group gets too successful the college they are a part of entices them with offers of making their group into an official class for school credit, which transfers control to a professor, again creating the problem where performance is measured by tests, and the cycle repeats when a new wave of students join the college.

> Most students do not go to class to learn, but rather to receive accreditation, concerned only with how future employers will view their GPA or classes taken

I’m super skeptical of this. In any engineering or science field the only thing a diploma gets you is an interview. I don’t consider myself an especially adept interviewer but I think I can tell in the first five minutes if a new grad didn’t learn anything in school.

Startup idea: proof of consent as a service.

A website/app where you can quickly declare consent for a specific activity, and share that declaration privately with a specific other user of the app. Each entry is secure/private to only you and the person you share it with. The entries are timestamped, you cannot delete them.

Then before the act, you quickly do a consent exchange and each person has the proof that the other consented.

You could make the entries visible only for a period of time to their own users, after which they are only accessible if there is a legal process, to avoid them being used as trophies/outing.

Obligatory Dave Chapelle Love contracts: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/jwmvxd/chappelle-s-show-love-c...

Such a service does exist: https://legalfling.io/

But such services won't work as consent can be revoked anytime. It doesn't matter if you signed a contract, you can at any point say "No" and the consent is gone.

It's funny cause i live in a very sexually active community, with bdsm, porn pro, ex prostitute, etc. The people being recognize as the sexiest and having the most partners never, ever ask anything.

I have the very unique life style that makes half of my friends also hard core geeks, d&d players, hairy sysadmin, or able to tell which multiverse this particular batman costume is. They are also doubting every of their moves : is it allowed, it it disrespectful, will the other one be offended or hurt ? They really don't have much sexual success.

I love both of my groups, and none in them exhibit any signs they are better or worse persons. But i didn't experience that explicitly asking for consent made things better.

Not being an asshole does, and is pretty much unrelated to sex.

Still can’t detect whether the consentor/s are legally capable of consenting.

Signing with your private key, only for this purpose, should be considered consent.

Private keys don’t prove you don’t have a gun to your head.

Entering a trap phrase elicits a success response for the attacker's benefit, and then surreptitiously gives coordinates to law enforcement, emergency contacts, Mark Zuckerberg, whoever.

See, we've almost got this built!

What’s stopping someone from entering a trap phrase to... entrap the other party?

The cops showing up to a non-rape would probably be the kicker.

Not that I think this tech should exist or be necessary in the first place.

or that you aren't drunk, had your phone weakly secured and accessed by someone else (passed out and they used your fingerprint or something), or probably a number of other possibilities

Huh. That almost sounds like requiring someone to take some personal responsibility for their own security!

Something we as a society, especially when it comes to tech, need to strive for much more.

I'm...pretty sure I just became in support of that controversy, for no other reason than to improve cryptographic proof UX.

Hopefully, this is the start of people realising that Obama's 'Dear Colleague' change in interpretation of title IX was a mistake.

This seems an obscure reference to something people outside U.S. will not get. Care to elaborate?

Title IX is part of an education bill that outlaws discrimination or exclusion based on sex in public schools. Violating this results in a loss of federal financing or fines.

During the 90's and 00's, the courts ruled that sexual harassment constitutes an exclusion based on sex, and a failure to address it is a Title IX violation. In 2011, a government agency tasked to enforce civil rights laws published a "Dear Colleagues" letter clarifying what steps are necessary to ensure compliance in sexual harassment cases.

And this caused universities to set up what amount to kangaroo courts to adjudicate sexual harassment complaints

Sounds like a pretty run of the mill sexual assault. Guy follows drunk girl home and is too aggressive in trying to her to do something she doesn’t want ending with him forcefully putting her hand on his junk against her will. Only ofcause this is all very “troubling” because the sexes are reversed.

I think such issues can be avoided to an extent by a wearable device which can track your alcohol content or track if you are conscious. If at any point it detects you are not in control of you sense, maybe raise alarm, send alerts to friends/family etc. Maybe it will help in avoiding such incidents under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.

Netflix created something for fun to detect if you are awake or not: http://makeit.netflix.com/projects/socks . I wish someone creates something similar to save people from horrible situations.

This woman is an anti-feminist nutjob, I can't believe she'll still writing opinion pieces for the Atlantic...

If you seriously want to defend a practice where two people do the same thing and then one of them is declared the victim and the other the perpetrator, based on either gender or whoever complains first, then you are the nutjob.

If you drill hard enough, what comes out is actually not a interest in justice or society - quite contrary- its about power, pure, un-diluted power, to chase out and behead, whoever you wish to declare to be a missfit.

And it has been here before, in all shapes and sizes. Its the social skill superiors equivalent of facism.