I was casually reading CNN when I came across an article that sounded familiar to discussions we recently had in class. To summarize the article, a young man, probably in his late teens, early twenties attended Yale, and was the captain of the basketball team. He was expelled from Yale "February 10th after a panel of the Yale University-Wide Committee found that he had nonconsensual sex in October 2014 with a female student who is currently a junior at Yale." According to the young man, he had consensual sexual relationship with her back in 2014. In fact, on the day of "Montague(young man) and the woman had consensual sex and then went separate ways. The statement said that later that night, she reached out to him to meet up, returned to his room voluntarily and spent the night in his bed with him. However, the woman stated she did not consent to sexual intercourse, while Montague said she did." In my opinion, it's a game of he said, she said and it's hard to determine what actually happened that night.
But, here is the plot twist to this whole story. The young man plans on suing the to vindicate his rights. How do y'all feel about this whole encounter? Do you feel as if he has the right to sue the university after being expelled his second semester of senior year?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/14/us/jack-montague-to-sue-yale/index.html
This is a hard situation to encounter!! My opinion is that if Yale had enough evidence to expel the young man, then they did the right thing. As we have unfortunately noticed, universities are often reluctant to take action on sexual assault cases. For example, the young woman at Columbia University who pledged to carry her mattress around campus with her in protest of Columbia's lack of action against her rapist. Yale University did investigate the situation and decided that the young man was guilty. I think they did the right thing in taking charge of the situation in a no-tolerance fashion.
ReplyDeleteI find this to be an interesting blog. In the discussion we had in class we talked about situations exactly like this and how it was hard to prove someone innocent or guilty. However, to sue the university I think is a bit ridiculous. However, if they could not confirm nor deny that it was a consensual or nonconsensual encounter, I think it is not right that they expelled him and kicked him off of the team his last semester of senior year! In this case I think they should look to see what kind of student he was prior to the situation to decide whether or not he should have been expelled. That is the problem with situations like this though... it is a tough call to make.
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