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"University police essentially exist to cover up rapes on campus." Oh come on what kind of statement is that to make?

by larrys 13y ago

arkades 13y ago
One that I find sadly more accurate than not.
rdl 13y ago
A factual one, which has been widely reported over the years. Universities pay for their own police. The goal of the university is to avoid incidents which would deter parents from sending their children to the school. Rape, particularly date rape/incidents involving alcohol are quite common on campus, if only due to demographics (young, socially connected, etc.) There are three ways to solve it -- either actually addressing the underlying issues, or full prosecution of every incident, or sweeping it under the rug to the extent possible. #1 is obviously ideal, but difficult. #2 would end up with both scary stats and large numbers of other students with felony convictions. #3 is the standard university police outcome. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-l-gershman/campus-culture-complacency_b_1095510.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-l-gershman/campus-cult... is one article. Anyone who is a victim of a serious crime in a place with "internal" police should almost certainly report directly to the territorial police instead, or at least in addition to, since they have much fewer conflicts of interest, and probably more expertise in dealing with serious crimes. ("Real" police departments are also (theoretically) much more accountable to voters and the public, too. This is particularly an issue with weird transit or internal-to-agency police like the BART Police (who are tied with East Palo Alto PD as the worst department in the region).)
- larrys 13y ago
  Interesting. So you are saying it has to do with essentially restricting or retarding the flow of information that could be harmful to the University. Then I would expect over time with the Internet that that would not be as effective as it was in years past before the Internet. Do we have any data on how this has changed now that anyone can broadcast anything and get attention? I would expect that if the primary reason for existence of the police force was to control the information flow as I think you suggest (which it could do quite easily pre internet) that we should see much more of this negative information has come out because it has a path. Has that been the case? (Serious question).
  - rdl 13y ago
    Good question. I think it's more about having alternatives to official reporting channels so the stuff never actually gets reported, vs. hiding reports. But, we've seen citizen cameras as a huge force to accountability in cases of police abuse, too (Rodney King for a city PD; BART and Toronto for transit police, various people who came forward at Penn State after the Sandusky stuff blew the issue up there). So it seems plausible. I'm not saying the only thing the police do is hide rapes, it's that their essential differentiation vs. other LEOs would be to protect their employers from embarrassment which would be detrimental to the organization's mission, which rape would be. So the reason it exists as a distinct force is that, whereas they still spend a large percentage of their effort in duties totally in common with a city police force.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Really, leveling such an accusation at the university police is trying to deal with a symptom. Abolishing university police forces won't cause rape instances to decline appreciably, but it will accelerate the implosion of higher education as a whole. Precisely for the reasons you stated. Perhaps it would be better to look for a solution where universities are less motivated to compete for student head count, so that their police forces are less motivated to cover up incidents that would reduce it.
- cmsmith 13y ago
  Cities pay for their own police. The goal of cities is to avoid the appearance that the city is dangerous, to encourage investment and more taxable income. https://www.google.com/search?q=downgrade+crime https://www.google.com/search?q=downgrade+crime I'm not saying that we don't need checks on the system, but to say that university police don't provide any valuable service is ridiculous.
rayiner 13y ago
University police exist to insulate students from all sorts of crimes, rape just happens to be one of the crimes that happens on college campuses. Others include public intoxication, drug use, etc. There was a huge row a few years ago when Yale students were treated like commoners in a New Haven night club raid: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/02/news/new_haven/doc4ca7b9742a227081735620.txt http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/02/news/new_haven....
- tytso 13y ago
  Fun fact. In the 1960's the MIT Campus Police were elevated to be State Police officers, because back then the students were protesting, and as State Police officers they had the power to order the Cambridge City Police off of MIT grounds.... the goal was to protect the students (so they might get some kind of internal Committee of Displine sanctions for flinging sh*t at people as part of a protect, instead of getting treated as criminals by the Cambridge cops). One of the things which was mentioned in the report as a potential policy question to be considered is whether random visitors to the campus should be given some level of consideration as extended members of the MIT community. (If Aaron had been an MIT student or some other member of the MIT community, the situation would have probably been handled quite differently, and it might have gotten escalated to someone higher level inside MIT --- i.e., one of MIT's Deans ---- much more quickly, instead of having the Cambridge police get involved, who then brought in a Secret Service buddy of his, at which point things escalated down a very different path, one which was largely out of MIT's control.) One important thing to remember is that when people talk about "MIT decided", it's really not MIT as the entire organization, but individuals who happen to be MIT employees making various decisions on the spot. So from the perspective of the institution, if someone makes a decision which is within their scope of their responsibility, and that decision was consistent with the policy in force at that particular point in time, and that person was acting in good faith, MIT the organization has to really protect that person, and not offer that person up as a sacrificial lamb to hordes of ravening Internet denizens screaming for revenge. It might have been the case that if someone like Hal Abelson had been brought in that fateful night, he would have made a different choice at multiple points in the timeline. But until Aaron committed suicide, it seems pretty clear that this whole affair wasn't considered something that required the attention of senior MIT administration officials, or the consideration of senior faculty members such as Prof. Abelson. In some ways, the way some folks have been complaining about MIT is very similar to how the Republicans have been certain that decisions made by lower level staffers in the IRS must be something where direct blame must be laid at the feet of someone senior in the White House.

"University police essentially exist to cover up rapes on campus." Oh come on what kind of statement is that to make?

by larrys 13y ago

"University police essentially exist to cover up rapes on campus." Oh come on what kind of statement is that to make?

arkades 13y ago

One that I find sadly more accurate than not.

rdl 13y ago

A factual one, which has been widely reported over the years. Universities pay for their own police. The goal of the university is to avoid incidents which would deter parents from sending their children to the school. Rape, particularly date rape/incidents involving alcohol are quite common on campus, if only due to demographics (young, socially connected, etc.) There are three ways to solve it -- either actually addressing the underlying issues, or full prosecution of every incident, or sweeping it under the rug to the extent possible. #1 is obviously ideal, but difficult. #2 would end up with both scary stats and large numbers of other students with felony convictions. #3 is the standard university police outcome. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-l-gershman/campus-culture-complacency_b_1095510.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-l-gershman/campus-cult... is one article. Anyone who is a victim of a serious crime in a place with "internal" police should almost certainly report directly to the territorial police instead, or at least in addition to, since they have much fewer conflicts of interest, and probably more expertise in dealing with serious crimes. ("Real" police departments are also (theoretically) much more accountable to voters and the public, too. This is particularly an issue with weird transit or internal-to-agency police like the BART Police (who are tied with East Palo Alto PD as the worst department in the region).)

larrys 13y ago
Interesting. So you are saying it has to do with essentially restricting or retarding the flow of information that could be harmful to the University. Then I would expect over time with the Internet that that would not be as effective as it was in years past before the Internet. Do we have any data on how this has changed now that anyone can broadcast anything and get attention? I would expect that if the primary reason for existence of the police force was to control the information flow as I think you suggest (which it could do quite easily pre internet) that we should see much more of this negative information has come out because it has a path. Has that been the case? (Serious question).
- rdl 13y ago
  Good question. I think it's more about having alternatives to official reporting channels so the stuff never actually gets reported, vs. hiding reports. But, we've seen citizen cameras as a huge force to accountability in cases of police abuse, too (Rodney King for a city PD; BART and Toronto for transit police, various people who came forward at Penn State after the Sandusky stuff blew the issue up there). So it seems plausible. I'm not saying the only thing the police do is hide rapes, it's that their essential differentiation vs. other LEOs would be to protect their employers from embarrassment which would be detrimental to the organization's mission, which rape would be. So the reason it exists as a distinct force is that, whereas they still spend a large percentage of their effort in duties totally in common with a city police force.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Really, leveling such an accusation at the university police is trying to deal with a symptom. Abolishing university police forces won't cause rape instances to decline appreciably, but it will accelerate the implosion of higher education as a whole. Precisely for the reasons you stated. Perhaps it would be better to look for a solution where universities are less motivated to compete for student head count, so that their police forces are less motivated to cover up incidents that would reduce it.
cmsmith 13y ago
Cities pay for their own police. The goal of cities is to avoid the appearance that the city is dangerous, to encourage investment and more taxable income. https://www.google.com/search?q=downgrade+crime https://www.google.com/search?q=downgrade+crime I'm not saying that we don't need checks on the system, but to say that university police don't provide any valuable service is ridiculous.

rayiner 13y ago

University police exist to insulate students from all sorts of crimes, rape just happens to be one of the crimes that happens on college campuses. Others include public intoxication, drug use, etc. There was a huge row a few years ago when Yale students were treated like commoners in a New Haven night club raid: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/02/news/new_haven/doc4ca7b9742a227081735620.txt http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/02/news/new_haven....

tytso 13y ago
Fun fact. In the 1960's the MIT Campus Police were elevated to be State Police officers, because back then the students were protesting, and as State Police officers they had the power to order the Cambridge City Police off of MIT grounds.... the goal was to protect the students (so they might get some kind of internal Committee of Displine sanctions for flinging sh*t at people as part of a protect, instead of getting treated as criminals by the Cambridge cops). One of the things which was mentioned in the report as a potential policy question to be considered is whether random visitors to the campus should be given some level of consideration as extended members of the MIT community. (If Aaron had been an MIT student or some other member of the MIT community, the situation would have probably been handled quite differently, and it might have gotten escalated to someone higher level inside MIT --- i.e., one of MIT's Deans ---- much more quickly, instead of having the Cambridge police get involved, who then brought in a Secret Service buddy of his, at which point things escalated down a very different path, one which was largely out of MIT's control.) One important thing to remember is that when people talk about "MIT decided", it's really not MIT as the entire organization, but individuals who happen to be MIT employees making various decisions on the spot. So from the perspective of the institution, if someone makes a decision which is within their scope of their responsibility, and that decision was consistent with the policy in force at that particular point in time, and that person was acting in good faith, MIT the organization has to really protect that person, and not offer that person up as a sacrificial lamb to hordes of ravening Internet denizens screaming for revenge. It might have been the case that if someone like Hal Abelson had been brought in that fateful night, he would have made a different choice at multiple points in the timeline. But until Aaron committed suicide, it seems pretty clear that this whole affair wasn't considered something that required the attention of senior MIT administration officials, or the consideration of senior faculty members such as Prof. Abelson. In some ways, the way some folks have been complaining about MIT is very similar to how the Republicans have been certain that decisions made by lower level staffers in the IRS must be something where direct blame must be laid at the feet of someone senior in the White House.