06-07-2016, 08:21 AM
Robin, with all due respect to your personal experiences, I think that to take the actions of individuals and project that onto an entire group is not appropriate.
My objection to the press release is that Stanford did not do everything it could. Not even close.
- Has Stanford provided counseling to the woman who was assaulted by its student on its campus outside a party in one of its buildings being run by other students? No, but Stanford should be paying for this woman's counseling/psychiatric treatment - not because it's legally obligated but because that's the right thing to do.
- Has Stanford mandated training on sexual assault for EVERY student and EVERY member of its faculty and staff? Because it's not just the young men who need it to reduce the occurrence. It's the RA's in the women's/coed residences and the faculty & staff who interact with students who need to know what signs to look for. And sexual assault doesn't just happen to students - it can happen to faculty & staff too.
- Has Stanford done any kind of honest assessment of the frequency of sexual assault on campus so that it can have some reasonably unbiased and non-anecdotal data on what's happening on its property? No, it hasn't.
I really hope the new President and Provost tackle this issue head-on, and I hope that alums like us encourage the SAA to speak on our behalf that this must be a top priority of the new administration.
My objection to the press release is that Stanford did not do everything it could. Not even close.
- Has Stanford provided counseling to the woman who was assaulted by its student on its campus outside a party in one of its buildings being run by other students? No, but Stanford should be paying for this woman's counseling/psychiatric treatment - not because it's legally obligated but because that's the right thing to do.
- Has Stanford mandated training on sexual assault for EVERY student and EVERY member of its faculty and staff? Because it's not just the young men who need it to reduce the occurrence. It's the RA's in the women's/coed residences and the faculty & staff who interact with students who need to know what signs to look for. And sexual assault doesn't just happen to students - it can happen to faculty & staff too.
- Has Stanford done any kind of honest assessment of the frequency of sexual assault on campus so that it can have some reasonably unbiased and non-anecdotal data on what's happening on its property? No, it hasn't.
I really hope the new President and Provost tackle this issue head-on, and I hope that alums like us encourage the SAA to speak on our behalf that this must be a top priority of the new administration.