response 25 of 128:

May 31 17:17 UTC 2002

Wouldn't I?  Hmm...  I might, depending on what kind of mood I was in.  Thing
is, I dislike the concept of "responsibility" for one's actions.  I feel it's 
unhelpful, even harmful, to the discussion of real-world problems and their
solutions.  It's one of those words that different people use to mean different
 things, without noticing, and get all confused.  I prefer to use it in such a
way that "Each person is responsible for all of his or her actions" is not just
true, but tautological; one's actions are defined as precisely the things one
is responsible for.  Other people use it as kind of a shorthand for the
question of, basically, who should we punish when something goes wrong.  It
boils down to the fact that there are two questions, "what happened", and "what
should we do about it".  
  Suppose five year old Johnny, say, gets ahold of a beer, chugs it 
down (you go, kid! :) and knocks over a table lamp.  What does it mean to 
ask me whether or not he's responsible for knocking over the lamp?  Let's
ask the two questions.  What happened? Here's the cast of characters:  
  Johnny, five years old, is running around the house on a hot summer day, 
not a care in the world.  He runs across a shiny open can on the table.  The 
only shiny cans that shape he's ever seen have been soda, which he knows
he's not allowed to have but wants anyway.  He grabs it, hides in his
bedroom and drinks it down.  Then he feels sick and wanders in search
of his parents, walking unsteadily enough to break a nice lamp.  
  Nicole, age 15, is Johnny's older sister.  She's supposed to be
watching Johnny, but got distracted by a phone call from her best
friend Ruth.  She was chatting happily and completely forgot about
Johnny, who then slipped off to his little adventure.  The first she 
knows of it is the sound of the lamp crashing down.  
  Uncle Ted, age 45, is over to watch the game, and sets his fresh
beer down on the table to go to the garage and look at the new mower
during halftime.  
  Joe is Johnny's father, who invited his brother Ted over for the
game and gave him the beer.  He saw Ted put it down on the table and
did nothing about it.  He didn't really have any idea where Johnny was
or what he was doing, because the game was tied.  
  Sue is Johnny's mother, who put Nicole in charge of Johnny while she
went to the store for munchies during halftime.  She knew Nicole has a
habit of forgetting about Johnny if she gets distracted, but she
figured it was just a few minutes.  
  
  Next, what should we (being, say, Johnny's parents) do about it?
There are a number of behavior modifications we might like to effect
to prevent a reoccurrance.  We might give Johnny a lecture about not
drinking things without asking permission.  We might ground Nicole for
not watching Johnny.  We might mention to Ted that he should keep an
eye on his beer when Johnny's around.  We might resolve to pay a
little more attention ourselves to what's going on around the house.

It doesn't completely make sense to say that Johnny is "responsible"
for breaking the lamp, since every one of our cast of characters
contributed to the incident somehow.  Each person had an opportunity
to act in such a way as to prevent the lamp breaking, but neglected to do
so.  But it also doesn't make sense to say that Johnny is "not
responsible"; he clearly misbehaved and as a result, the lamp was
broken.  It's really rather a waste of time to try to figure out who
was responsible for the lamp breaking.  It's much more productive and
sane to ask what happened and what to do about it.  

The same kind of reasoning applies to this girl.  It makes just as
little sense, to me, to claim that the first football player raped her
as it does to say that Nicole broke the lamp.  

response 27 of 128:

May 31 17:57 UTC 2002

So if you get me drunk enough to be confused and totally wasted, I can indeed
consent to sex, and it'll be okay? What about using roofies? The point is that
this girl was definitely drunk the first time, and that having sex with a
drunken person who can't legitimately consent or fight in a coherent way is
rape. Whether or not the rest of the team used the same stratagem, each of
them is guilty of statutory rape, and perhaps actual rape (depending on if
this girl was made drunk/stoned every time).

And use a little common sense, here, too. If you are socially backward, and
have been sheltered all your life, you are not going to have the skills to
deal with someone who's paying attention to you in order to use you. Yeah,
it's easy to say she should have known better, or her parents should have
known better, but her parents did try to keep her from some of the worse
consequences of going to such a big school -- me, I would have made sure she
was at a small school, like Adrian (which is where I went when I was sixteen),
which at the time had chaperones, strict sex-segregated dorms, and the
lock-down/bed-check thang happening (okay, not the bed-check, but you had to
sign out of your dorm after dark, and you had to sign back in by eleven). I
did my best by Rhiannon (who is slightly socially retarded) by making sure
that she went to a small high school and college. 

response 29 of 128:

May 31 18:05 UTC 2002

#26> The drug issue is independent of her age (except inasmuch as it makes
providing the alcohol illegal, but most of the football players were probably
underage, too). The answer to the question, "Was she too young to have sex
anywhere in the United States?" is clearly, "No." That was my point.
 
#27, first para> So I should never go to a bar and try to pick up a one-night
stand, because if she's had a cocktail, I'm a rapist? Or I should never have
sex with my wife after we've had a few drinks, because even though we're
regular sexual partners, I could be raping her *this time*? You might think
I'm being ludicrous in these examples, but they HAVE appeared in the courts
as rape cases. I can't believe any 14 year old is so sheltered that they don't
know at least the general effects of alcohol, and if she REALLY felt so
violated afterwards that it was psychological rape, why did she keep doing
it? (Oh yeah, that's typical of rape victims... that's also typical of sluts.
There's no way to conclude from the data provided which one she really is.)

response 31 of 128:

May 31 19:39 UTC 2002

Indeed. From my own experience, I would be more inclined to think that a
fifteen-year-old child prodigy is more likely, not less likely, to be able
to process the intricacies of college life than an eighteen-year-old
barely-got-into-college sort. And would nearly as much hoopla be made of an
eighteen-year-old in a similar position as this fifteen-year-old? I know it
wouldn't, because this sort of drug-and-sex decline happens frequently to
young coeds. If the fifteen-year-old was maturationally equivalent to a
just-barely-got-into-college eighteen-year-old (and I don't know if she was
or not), why is this situation more tragic than the same fate befalling the
eighteen-year-old, and why should the university take more care of their
charge? The only reason I can imagine is the arbitrary "age of consent" (not
just for sex, but for guardianship) that we mandate, when there are fourteen
year olds who could indeed take care of themselves, and twenty-four year olds
who can't.

response 33 of 128:

May 31 21:23 UTC 2002

I am in awe of the promises allegedly made by the university recruiters to
the parents.  If the UAB made claims to act in place of parents for Ms
Benefield and failed to follow through, the negligence appears nearly willful.
Regarding Mark's comments [#3], the parents probably know of the hazards for
a minor on campus and would never have enrolled their daughter with out the
promises of extraordinary supervision.

Re #28: "Statuatory rape depends heavily on intent, and intent is very
hard to demonstrate."  

I believe that statutory rape is a strict liability law:  Intent to
have sexual relations with a person younger than the age of consent is
unnecesary for prosecution.

Nonetheless, I wonder what the age of consent in Alabama is?

response 35 of 128:

May 31 21:42 UTC 2002

Alabama Code (1975)
Section 13A-6-61

Rape in the first degree.

(a) a person commits the crime of rape in the first degree if 

(3) He or she, being 16 years or older, engages in sexual intercourse with
a member of the opposite sex who is less than 12 years old.
---

This is what I found and it seems somewhat dated, for it doesn't offer
protection from same sex offenses.  Well, maybe there's an amendment or case
precident later.

response 37 of 128:

May 31 23:52 UTC 2002

Someone back there cited "boredom in school" as a reason to advance 
kids quicker through the school system.  Move a smart kid into a higher 
grade, and then the kid is bored with the work at the next level, and 
also more removed from his social life.  The older kids still aren't as 
smart as the smart kid.  Also, the school work still isn't challenging, 
except it might be more challenging for him to relate to it, since it's 
for older kids.

I think a lot of people who were smarter than their classmates, but not 
really considered as candidates for skipping grades, fantasize about 
how great it would have been to be able to do more advanced work 
earlier.   I don't think it's a good idea.  I'm very much set against 
my kid skipping any grades.  So, I believe and hope, is his mother, who 
did skip a grade in elementary school.

response 39 of 128:

Jun 1 00:52 UTC 2002

They wanted to skip me a grade and my parents vitoed it.  That was about the
time I began to get bored with school.  I was in a mixed fourth/fifth grade
during my fourth grade year.  I was at the head of the class, the whole class.
It was suggested that I was ready for sixth grade, socially as well as
academically.  My father had a friend that skipped a grade and couldn't handle
it and didn't want me to face that.  I didn't find out about it until much
later.  I was hurt that he felt I couldn't handle it and didn't respect me
(I felt at the time) to ask how I felt about it.

I was totally bored with fifth grade and for much of school after that.  I
lived in the library both at school and the local public library chasing my
own interests which kept me ahead of most of my classmates.  That and teachers
who wouldn't answer questions from the textbooks "until the rest of the class
got there" killed my respect for the public school system.

I tried college twice and got the same sort of garbage and dropped out since I

couldn't bear to pay for that kind of treatment.  Fortunately which only a
couple of exceptions I haven't faced it at WCC.  The instructors have gone
out of their way to answer questions, if not in class than after class.  I
still get very frustrated with students that hold the class back because they
feel that they don't have to have the pre-reqs needed for that class and keep
insisting that they be taught them now.

response 41 of 128:

Jun 1 01:41 UTC 2002

Let's put the 15-yr-old off as irrelevant to the issue.  The problem
is the athletes and the athletic programs.  Athletes all across the
country get picked up for rape, for drugs, for sexual harassment and
a laundry list of other offenses *and the coaches do their best to
get them off*.  The fix is in for them, so they feel invincible to
the point of getting a minor drunk and screwing her (I don't have a
problem with 15-yr-olds having sex so long as they're responsible,
but the use of alcohol and drugs to break down resistance is
reprehensible and worthy of a rape charge even if the victim was of
age).

The solution is to keep the coaches out of the loop, handle matters
via the police or other authorities, declare offenders ineligible
for play in all leagues (and ineligible for pro sports too), and
even terminate whole teams if the authorities won't keep their boys
in line.  If the coach knows that his team and his job go bye-bye
if he lets his crew get out of hand, he'll keep them on the straight
and narrow.

response 43 of 128:

Jun 1 02:41 UTC 2002

re #38: Did it benefit you, in your opinion?

re #39: Do you think you'd have been less bored with 6th grade work a 
year earlier, or two years earlier?

re #41: I hope, if there's a crime, it's "rape" and not "being 
associated with collegiate sports".

While a coach is too often the only father figure for some of the 
players on his team, the head coach of a Division I college football 
team is the coach for 85 players, plus walk-ons, a dozen or so coaches, 
and a practice team of maybe a few dozen more.  He may act as a mentor 
for a few hundred former players, and he certainly does recruiting of a 
few dozen high school players each year.  Then there's administrative 
work, publicity work, supervising a summer camp for high school 
players... and now you think he should be responsible for the private 
lives of his players as well, away from the practice field and football 
instruction?  Why not just directly ban all college sports, rather than 
do so indirectly like that?

College sports is not the problem.  I'm sure most of the football 
players at UAB neither did, nor much wanted to, have sex with (or rape) 
the girl.  They weren't the problem.  That some people did have sex 
with (or rape) the girl was the problem, and that no one helped her 
when she needed it.

response 45 of 128:

Jun 1 03:23 UTC 2002

We have seen it here in Ann ARbor, where the coach has attempted to get
criminal activities overlooked.  We have even seen it in local High Schools.
What we need is along witht eh interest in football, that a code of HONOR be
installed, signed onto, and the athlete be ejected if the code is violated,
and turned over to local authorities.

response 47 of 128:

Jun 1 06:35 UTC 2002

Bear in mind that the article in #0 was a bit slanted.  It mostly told the
girl's story and not that of the players.  And the fact is there have
never been criminal charges filed in this case.  The parents have filed a
civil suit for $80 million.  This story is in fact so lurid, so
outrageous, implicates so many people, including the team mascot, that the
first thing defense lawyers will say is "she's making it up"  They will
say this is a teenage girl who had a drug problem she was hiding from her
conservative parents, and when they found out and put her in rehab, she
made up this wild story to cover for herself and make it seem like it
wasnt her fault.  Blame it all on the big evil football players.  

When is the truth ever really that simple?  As long as there've been no
criminal charges filed-- and there won't be likely due to statue of
limitations-- what you could easily have is a story exaggerated way out of
proportion by the family's lawyer who told them they could ask for $80
million and all retire rich.  

response 49 of 128:

Jun 1 14:13 UTC 2002

The team mascot is being sued? Who/what *was* the mascot? (I thought it was
usually something like a goat...) Or was the 15 year old the mascot?