blueollie

Fake Scandals, Parasites, Fracking and Calculus

Mathematics This is an interesting (and lengthy) post about Gottfried Leibniz: he was one of the cofounders of calculus and one who was credited with inventing the $\frac{df}{dx}$ notation, as well as the “product rule” in calculus.

IQ and race Mano Singham has a gift for writing about tough subjects; his ideas about “race and IQ” are worth reading. We pretty much agree.

Education
Should we use blood types, as a class project, to demonstrate genetics? That SOUNDS nice, but there are some pitfalls (hints: possibly adopted and unaware…or….the offspring of an extra marital affair?)

Academic Freedom: are there limits to this, especially when teaching at a public university in the United States? I say: “yes, there are limits”; we cannot use our students as a captive audience to promote religious beliefs. Note: I am NOT talking about “best teaching practices” but rather “what is legal.” Teaching incompetently is legal but ill advised.

The Obama Scandals: Paul Krugman says it well:

I picked a good week to be away — and I am still away, mostly, although playing a bit of hooky on the notebook right now. For it has been the week of OBAMA SCANDALS, nonstop.

Except it seems that there weren’t actually any scandals, just the usual confusion and low-level mistakes that happen all the time, in any administration.

Fracking I know that many who vote the same way that I do are anti-fracking. It is my opinion that fracking CAN be done competently. But when it isn’t, the consequences are disastrous. So when one considers a practice, one has to also consider safeguards and the likelihood that it will be “done right.”

Evolution, medicine, Malaria and Mosquitos
This is fascination. We’ve known for some time that a parasite can influence the behavior of its host. Now, there is solid evidence that the malaria parasite can make a mosquito more likely to “bite” a human, thereby helping the parasite spread. Read about the experiment at Jerry Coyne’s website.

May 17, 2013

Right Wing Fantasies, Military, Amish, Football

Ok, what is that President Obama going to do NOW…something that takes away our freedoms? Well, look no further:

Can websites be forced to change to accommodate the disabled — by using “simpler language” to appeal to the “intellectually disabled,” or by making them accessible to the blind and deaf at considerable expense?

[...]

But now, the Obama administration appears to be planning to use the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to force many web sites to either accommodate the disabled, or shut down. Given the enormous cost of complying, many small web sites might well just go dark and shut down. The administration wants to treat web sites as “places of public accommodation“ subject to the ADA, even though they are not physical places. Courts used to reject this argument when it was made just by disabled plaintiffs, but now that the Justice Department is making it, too, some judges are beginning to buy it, opening the door to trial lawyers surfing the web and sending out extortionate demand letters to every small business whose web site is not accessible to the blind (or perhaps too hard to understand for the mentally-challenged).

As Atlas’s Alexander Cohen notes, “the Department of Justice may soon issue regulations on website accessibility. Jared Smith, an accessibility consultant, even urges businesses to use simple language for the intellectually disabled.” (Bye, bye, speech similar to Shakespeare or the Gettysburg Address, with their archaic or flowery language that violates supposed best practices about how to write.)

Hmmm, the last I checked bookstores still had quantum mechanics text books.

Us missile force
This isn’t good: some morale problems (“dead end for officers”) may have contributed to sloppy practices. We don’t need that.

Writing about what you don’t understand. Interesting: Rolling Stone talks about “rape in the military”. But they start with the case of a woman who clearly drove while intoxicated…evidently after having been drugged (by a drink) and raped. However the author of the article didn’t seem to get that driving while intoxicated is serious (and would lead to some severe punishments) and that toxicology reports showed no known date rape drugs in the system. They also don’t seem to get that people in the military (NOT necessarily the lady in question) will make stuff up to get out of things; hence investigators have to take a skeptical attitude toward charges that don’t have “in your face” evidence from the start.

The Learning Channel: I used to like The History Channel and TLC; now it mostly shows junk. Here is but one example. Note: yes, this is a Salon article and the title is misleading. The article is about the network making stuff up and NOT about it being bad to record someone leaving their religion and religious community.

NFL Ever wonder what happens to players a decade or so after they quit playing, when the body starts its “payback” from all of those injuries? Much to my astonishment, the NFL players union didn’t negotiate long term disability or long term (past 5 years) health insurance. Hence some of the guys end up in pretty bad shape and unable to find health insurance.

May 12, 2013

On updating Gun Laws….

Yes, the Second Amendment says:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

But no, you can’t own WMD’s, etc. As far as guns…well…watch this short video:

April 19, 2013

A note on the background check amendments…

Yes, President Obama isn’t happy and neither am I. But I saw this on Facebook:

The bill itself was sort of milquetoast:

But it failed to attain cloture.

Five Democrats voted against the amendment: Mark Pryor of Arkansas; Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota; Mark Begich of Alaska; and Max Baucus of Montana. Reid voted against for procedural reasons, so he can bring the proposla up in the future. Four Republicans who voted for: Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; Mark Kirk of Illinois; Susan Collins of Maine; John McCain of Arizona.

There weren’t a lot of split states. Bottom line: Senators know their constituents and let’s be blunt: a Senator from Alabama, Idaho or Wyoming isn’t going to care what I think or how people like me think. Conservatives are grossly overrepresented in the Senate to begin with and the filibuster rules just amplifies that effect.

Saying “X percent of Americans want this” really doesn’t mean that much.

April 17, 2013

Salon’s article on the “New Atheists” and “Islamophobia”

If you are interested, read the Salon article here.

This is the gist of it:

Richard Dawkins, the preppy septuagenarian and professional atheist whose work in the field of evolutionary biology informs his godless worldview, has always been a prickly fellow. The British scientist and former Oxford University professor has expended considerable ink and precious breath rationalizing away the possibility of cosmic forces and explaining in scientific terms why those who believe in a divine creator are, well, stupid.

It appears, however, that some of those believers are stupider than others. At least according to a recent series of tweets by Dawkins, who served up a hostile helping of snark this week aimed at followers of the Muslim faith.

[...]

Four days after the tragedy [9/11], Dawkins could barely contain his intellectual triumphalism. “Those people [the terrorists] were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards,” he wrote in the Guardian. “On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East, which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place.”

[...]

Conversations about the practical impossibility of God’s existence and the science-based irrationality of an afterlife slid seamlessly into xenophobia over Muslim immigration or the practice of veiling. The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason. “Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death,” writes Harris, whose nonprofit foundation Project Reason ironically aims to “erode the influence of bigotry in our world.”

For Harris, the ankle-biter version of the Rottweiler Dawkins, suicide bombers and terrorists are not aberrations. They are the norm. They have not distorted their faith by interpreting it wrongly. They have lived out their faith by understanding it rightly. “The idea that Islam is a ‘peaceful religion hijacked by extremists’ is a fantasy, and is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge,” he writes in “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

That may sound like the psychobabble of Pamela Geller. But Harris’s crude departure from scholarly decorum is at least peppered with references to the Quran, a book he cites time and again, before suggesting it be “flushed down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.”
[...]

Dawkins, in a recent rant on Twitter, admitted that he had not ever read the Quran, but was sufficiently expert in the topic to denounce Islam as the main culprit of all the world’s evil: “Haven’t read Koran so couldn’t quote chapter and verse like I can for Bible. But [I] often say Islam [is the] greatest force for evil today.” How’s that for a scientific dose of proof that God does not exist?

A few days later, on March 25, there was this: “Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read the Qur’an. You don’t have to read “Mein Kampf” to have an opinion about Nazism.”

There is more in the article. The main thrust of the article is that the New Atheists have climbed aboard some “Bash Islam” bandwagon in order to, uh, sell more books?

1. The benevolence of a religion has nothing to do with whether it is is true or not.
2. Sometimes the New Atheists go beyond the “true or false” part of religion to answer the question: “even if the religion is based on false beliefs, what harm does it cause?” And in that case, Islam, at least as it is practiced in much of the world, causes a great deal of harm.

Why do I say that Islam, as widely practiced in the world, is harmful?

Well, there is this:

At least 23 people were killed and more than 130 wounded after car bombings rocked four Shiite mosques in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and another mosque in Kirkuk.

The wave of blasts erupted within an hour of each other in northern and southern Baghdad, as well as in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, just as worshipers were leaving after Friday prayers.

Police and health officials said that 20 people died in the Baghdad attacks.

In Kirkuk, a car bomb detonated near the al-Rasul al-Aadham mosque, and killing three and wounding 70, a local health official told AFP. The bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a group of worshippers as they were departing from the mosque, Col. Najat Hassan said.

“We were listening to the cleric’s speech when we heard a very strong explosion. Glass scattered everywhere and the roof partially collapsed,” Mohammed, a victim wounded in the Kirkuk blast, told Reuters.

This hardly an isolated incident. See, for example, Sunni terrorism against Shiites in Pakistan. There are the actions in Islamic Republics as well: people are executed for apostasy, atheism, homosexuality and a number of other non-crimes.

People are given death sentences for writing a book that they don’t like.

They pull crap like this:

Now you might say: aren’t there ill behaved Christians and Jews? Sure! But one of the main differences is that Islamic backwardness is often backed by the pulpit and often by the sanction of a government. For example: an idiot who bombs an abortion clinic is not only denounced but brought to justice.

Now I’ve talked about this before. I’ve talked about Muslim riots OVER CARTOONS. On the whole, they appear to have no concept of free speech.

In the spirit of honesty, I should say something about Muslim outrage though: many of the riots (which were inexcusable….protests are ok) were in countries that have far weaker “free speech” laws than we (in the United States) do. In some countries, it is illegal to “insult religion” or to, say, engage in hate speech or to, say, deny the Holocaust, and some Muslims think: “if they are protected, why aren’t we?”

I don’t know but I think that many liberals have an instinctive “stick up for the underdog reaction”. And unfortunately too many Americans don’t think that “Freedom of Religion” applies to religions that they don’t like.

For example, there was the “Ground Zero Mosque”:

Opponents of the planned Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan have public opinion firmly in their corner. According to a new TIME poll, 61% of respondents oppose the construction of the Park51/Cordoba House project, compared with 26% who support it. More than 70% concur with the premise that proceeding with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Opposition to the project appears to derive largely from the conviction that the proposed site of the project — just two blocks from Ground Zero, in a building that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory outlet — is so close to “hallowed ground,” as President Obama put it.

Yet the survey also revealed that many Americans harbor lingering animosity toward Muslims. Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim. In all, just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim.

MURFREESBORO, TENN. — For more than 30 years, the Muslim community in this Nashville suburb has worshipped quietly in a variety of makeshift spaces — a one-bedroom apartment, an office behind a Lube Express — attracting little notice even after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But when the community’s leaders proposed a 52,900-square-foot Islamic center with a school and a swimming pool this year, the vehement backlash from their neighbors caught them by surprise. Opponents crowded county meetings and held a noisy protest in the town square that drew hundreds, some carrying signs such as “Keep Tennessee Terror Free.”

“We haven’t experienced this level of hostility before ever, so it’s new to us,” said Saleh M. Sbenaty, an engineering professor who is overseeing the mosque’s planned expansion.

The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida in recent months, raising questions about whether public attitudes toward Muslims have shifted.

My opinion: in the United States: if you have the proper permits for your church, synagogue, temple or mosque, then go ahead and build it. I will not protest; in fact I stand for your right to do so. Our government is NOT allowed to pick sides. And yes, I was firmly for the right of citizens to build their New York City Islamic community center where ever they wished, proper zoning permitting.

Worship how you wish.
Of course, your religion (and I am thinking more of our Christian majority here) doesn’t have a right to a captive audience, to dictate how science is taught nor to punish theological “crimes” such as “blasphemy” or “insulting your prophet”, “deity” or whatever.

A U. S. citizen is a U. S. citizen, period. So, I appreciate the sentiment for sticking up for the non-believer.

But the condemnation of clerical approval of “death sentences” for “insulting speech” is well warranted, so this Salon article is way off base here.

March 31, 2013

No, the Starbucks CEO did NOT say that he didn’t want conservative customers. And about the lesbians are fat study….

For the record, here is what the Starbucks CEO said, and in context:

Howard Schultz, the outspoken CEO of global coffee chain Starbucks, calmly but firmly defended his company’s support of same-sex marriage last week at a shareholder meeting.

In response to a challenge from a shareholder that the company’s support of same-sex marriage was hurting the company’s stock price, Schultz explained that it’s not about the bottom line but about “respecting diversity,” according to KPLU-FM, a local affiliate of NPR.

Last year, the Seattle-based company openly supported Washington state’s referendum that legalized same-sex marriage. As a result, the National Organization for Marriage launched a boycott of the coffee giant. During the company’s annual meeting in Seattle last week, shareholder Tom Strobhar spoke up, suggesting that the boycott was affecting the company’s stock value: “In the first full quarter after this boycott was announced, our sales and our earnings — shall we say politely — were a little disappointing,” he said.

(MORE: Starbucks’ Big Mug)

Schultz shot back that Starbucks’ endorsement of marriage equality wasn’t bad for business:

“If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38% you got last year, it’s a free country. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much,” Schultz said, to applause from the audience.

But Schultz was quick to underscore that it wasn’t even an economic decision to support gay rights. It was simply right for its people. “The lens in which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people. We employ over 200,000 people in this company, and we want to embrace diversity,” he retorted.

This had NOTHING to do with customers; this was only a reply to someone who thought that the company’s endorsement of same sex marriage had hurt its stock prices.

Of course that is too subtle for some people:

(facepalm)

And about Rush Limbaugh talking about the “why are lesbians fat” study: here is information about the real study:

The study, according to its abstract, is in fact examining the connection between obesity and sexual orientation. But there’s more here than the knee-jerk (and not very subtle) lesbian fat joke. It’s important to remember that nearly half of straight women are obese, too, and that the study is also figuring out why straight men are more often overweight than gay men:

It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women. In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males. Despite clear evidence from descriptive epidemiologic research that sexual orientation and gender markedly pattern obesity disparities, there is almost no prospective, analytic epidemiologic research into the causes of these disparities.

In short, it is seeing if there is any causation to sexual orientation and obesity; either way, for either sex.

Oh boy…if you chat on the internet for any time at all, you can see evidence that many people simply don’t understand what they read (and that is a politically neutral condition)

March 26, 2013

Gay Marriage in Illinois

Right now: the gay marriage act passed the Illinois State Senate and the Governor said that he’d sign the bill. But now it is held up in the State House, which, yes, is under Democrat control. But many of these Democrats come from regions where churches have influence.

So I made my voice heard in today’s Peoria Journal Star:

I see the gay marriage issue in terms of public health. There is statistical evidence that marriage enhances both the health and longevity of the couple, and it would be wrong to deny this benefit to our homosexual friends and neighbors.

I note that the current bill has religious exemptions; that is, “faith communities” would not be forced to perform marriages that violate their beliefs.

I strongly urge our state representatives to lead on this issue rather than merely taking polls. I remind people that if it weren’t for some politicians of yesteryear having the courage to lead on civil rights issues, I might not be allowed to be married to the woman that I am today.

xxx

I was a bit disappointed in that I haven’t gotten any hate filled responses yet. I was pleasantly surprised that some conservative Republicans actually agreed with me (I know that Dick Cheney does).

March 8, 2013

A case study of non-critical acceptance….

Workout notes: yes, the piriformis is moderately achy, but I walked two easy miles and did some PT, yoga, exercise ball stuff, etc. It should be feeling ok by the end of the week.

Posts

See the flaw here? If you don’t ask yourself:
1. Did Ronald Reagan collect more revenue than, say, Teddy Roosevelt? (yes, he did).
2. What happens to revenue collections when incomes go up? Remember that the proponents of supply side economics often repeat the mantra “low tax rates leads to high tax revenues”.

Of course, this is aimed at conservatives that absolutely despise President Obama, and so few ill ask if this makes any sense at all. And, yes, some won’t see why this is a bogus argument, even when it is explained to them…and many of these people see themselves as “smart”. Yes, this phenomenon is not one sided; liberals do it too.

Now for this phenomenon applied to science:

this is a viral video and I admit that the graphics are cool. But:

Well, one (correct) take away from this is that while we have a (sort of) two dimensional solar system model with the sun as the reference point, one can also take a galatic point of view to see that the sun traces out an orbit in the galaxy; therefore the planets do too. For that matter, one can take a universal look and see our galaxy (and hence our solar system) expanding within our spatial universe, but never mind that.

There are some problems with this video. For one: “vortex” isn’t the right word; the video author means that, if one uses a center of the galaxy as a reference point, then the trajectory traced by the planets is a (sort of) helix. The other thing: the planets don’t “drag after” the sun as it moves; in fact the angle of inclination of the “orbit planes” (they are slightly different) is about 60 degrees with respect to the sun’s trajectory around the galaxy and not 90 degrees; hence at times the various planets actually “lead” the sun. There are other problems as well; here is a very nice summary.

Just because something looks cool doesn’t mean that it is reality.

Back to Politics
This is expensive stupidity for the sake of helping people feel better:

To fight the specter of poor people spending taxpayer money on drugs, a Republican congressman has reintroduced legislation to make welfare applicants pee in cups to prove they’re clean.

Rep. Stephen Fincher’s (R-Tenn.) bill would require states to randomly test 20 percent of people receiving benefits from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which spends roughly $16 billion per year supporting poverty-stricken parents with monthly checks averaging$392.

“Currently the federal government enables drug abusers a safety-net by allowing them to participate in the TANF program,” Fincher said in a statement. “Instead of having to make the hard-choice between drugs and other essential needs, abusers are able to rely on their monthly check to help them pay their bills.”

In Congress and in state legislatures across the country, Republicans have sought to implement welfare drug testing programs in recent years. Few measures have become law, as testing can be expensive and there’s not much data reflecting a widespread drug problem among welfare recipients. Civil liberties advocates successfully sued to halt the most sweeping drug screening law, implemented in Florida in 2011.

In fact, here is what happened in Florida:

Florida’s four-month drug-testing run in 2011 yielded 108 negative drug tests, according to Department of Children and Families data. Only 2.6 percent of applicants who took the test failed, though supporters of the law say that does not account for people who walked away from the application process because they were on drugs.

The pass rate was 96.3 percent, leaving the state to pay more than $100,000 to adults who paid for the test and passed. The average time an adult receives TANF is four and a half months, said DCF spokesman Joe Follick. In short, you are paying a lot of money to screen out a few slackers (those who failed, and those who walked away). This makes no fiscal sense, but it is politically popular because “everyone is against druggies getting welfare”. No money was saved: From July through October in Florida — the four months when testing took place before Judge Scriven’s order — 2.6 percent of the state’s cash assistance applicants failed the drug test, or 108 of 4,086, according to the figures from the state obtained by the group. The most common reason was marijuana use. An additional 40 people canceled the tests without taking them. Because the Florida law requires that applicants who pass the test be reimbursed for the cost, an average of$30, the cost to the state was $118,140. This is more than would have been paid out in benefits to the people who failed the test, Mr. Newton said. As a result, the testing cost the government an extra$45,780, he said.

And it is the Republicans that have all that good “business sense”??

By the way, when I was in the Navy, I was subject to drug testing. But I served on a nuclear submarine; the consequences of someone serving while “high” (which did happen) were potentially catastrophic; it was a serious safety issue in that case.

March 4, 2013

Thoughts prior to my first spandex chase of the year

The roads seem ok, so I’ll probably run that local spandex chase (5K in West Peoria). I am already signed up.

I have no idea how I’ll do or if there are ice patches on this course. Many of the roads look ok but we’ll see when we get out there. The piriformis “ache” is down to a dull roar.

Posts
Reading ability: this is a real weakness among today’s college students:

Today, though, I had them read an essay. In class. Aloud to me. After each paragraph, I stopped them and asked them to paraphrase.

Student: “He’s arguing that gerbils are hamsters.”
Me: “Where do you see that?”
Student: “‘Although some people are inclined to the foolish and idiotic opinion that gerbils are hamsters, we know from overwhelming evidence that this is not the case.’”
Me: “Why does he call it foolish if he thinks that?”
Student: “I don’t know. He just does.”

Me: “Okay, what’s he assuming in this passage?”
Student: “That black people can’t raise gerbils effectively. He’s racist.”
Me: “Where does he say that?”
Student: “‘Of course, there is no correlation between race and effective rodent cultivation.’”
Me: “That’s kind of the opposite of what you just said he said.”
Student: “I feel that he’s racist.”
Me: “I feel a headache. Moving on . . . “

Here’s the thing I realized. They sound out words, sure, and read the sight-words with great ease. But they don’t know what they mean. [...]

I’ve noticed this is mathematics classes. 15 years ago or so, those who couldn’t read the applications problems on a math exam couldn’t do the calculations either. Now, many who can’t read the problem accurately can actually do the calculations. I wonder what is going on in high school or before.

You see some of this after college. Example: a Daily Kos diary discusses an ugly incident in which a lesbian was beat up in a playground; it turns out that the person doing the assaulting yelled anti-lesbian stuff. However a dispute in a playground started the confrontation (the lady had stepped in when she thought that a kid was being bullied by older kids) and, as a commenter pointed out, Texas hate crimes law is very specific as to what constitutes a hate crime:

But lost in this debate has been something important. That is, the ACTUAL language of Texas’s hate crime statute. Because every person thinks they know what a hate crime is, and that’s fine, but it’s not really germane to the conversation. Really what matters (in terms of getting all pissed of at the police) is what’s in the statute. And it says:

In the trial of an offense under Title 5, Penal Code, or Section 28.02, 28.03, or 28.08, Penal Code, the judge shall make an affirmative finding of fact and enter the affirmative finding in the judgment of the case if at the guilt or innocence phase of the trial, the judge or the jury, whichever is the trier of fact, determines beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally selected the person against whom the offense was committed or intentionally selected property damaged or affected as a result of the offense because of the defendant’s bias or prejudice against a group identified by race, color, disability, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, gender, or sexual preference.

I have bolded what I believe to be the relevant part of this statute.

Of course, some understand. But others really don’t; they said that because the attacker was prejudiced against gays (certainly the case here) and yelled out anti-gay stuff (also clearly the case) this was a hate crime. But that isn’t the standard for hate crimes.

Of course, some “activists” just like to yell and really don’t consider things like, well, what the actual statute says.

Social Stuff

Can you believe that the predominately black gang, The Crips, and a local KKK group are banding together to do something?

Basically, Memphis decided to rename some of its parks; they had been named after Confederate “heros”. Some outside KKK groups are protesting this change, and the local KKK group and the local Crips say “this is our city; it is none of your business.”

Wow….

Wal Mart
I haven’t been inside a Wal Mart in years; perhaps a decade. Nevertheless the last few times I went there, I thought that the store was a dirty, unkempt dump. Perhaps that is catching up to them? I admit that I might be the one who is out of touch; perhaps sales are declining and inventory is dropping for some other reason.

March 2, 2013

A Classic Case of Jumping the Gun….the U. North Carolina rape case

(cross posted at Daily Kos)

What generates this post: it is this article from Common Dreams which appeared on my Facebook feed:

After going public with her story of sexual assault, a student at the University of North Carolina faces expulsion or other sanctions for being “disruptive” and “intimidating” her alleged rapist – who she hasn’t publicly named, but who still lives across the street from her – thus possibly violating the school’s “Honor Code.” No doubt completely coincidentally, before she got hauled before the “Honor Court” sophomore Landen Gambill was one of three students and a former assistant dean to file a federal Civil Rights complaint on behalf of 64 other sexual assault victims alleging university officials pressured the dean into under-reporting such cases. At an earlier hearing, Gambil charged school officials were “offensive and inappropriate,” blaming her for her assault and trying to use her history of depression against her. Apparently, UNC has a bit of history on the issue.

Oh my gosh, sounds bad doesn’t it? Well, you might want to read one of the source articles.

This is from the student newspaper:

Gambill said she was charged Friday with a conduct violation of the University’s Honor Code that claims she engaged in disruptive or intimidating behavior against the man she has accused of raping her.

Ok, so who filed the charges? The university did NOT.

But University officials play no role in determining Honor Court charges, said a UNC spokeswoman, who added that any claim of retaliation is unfounded.

So who did? The ex-boyfriend and alleged rapist:

Gambill said she learned a complaint was filed against her in January, citing that her intimidating behavior — going public with her case — adversely affected her ex-boyfriend’s pursuits within the University.

“What my ex-boyfriend is saying is that by speaking out about how the University has handled my case, I’ve created an intimidating environment for him on campus,” she said.

When students bring charges (in this case, the charge that she lied), they can’t just be summarily dismissed. Nor can the University comment on the specifics, even if the charges have no merit at all.

What we have right now is: a charge has been filed by the ex-boyfriend, period. The University isn’t responsible for that.

February 27, 2013