The Sexual Misconduct Case That Has Rocked Anthropology (sciencemag.org) 264
sciencehabit writes: An investigative report in Science describes allegations of sexual misconduct against noted paleoanthropologist Brian Richmond, as well as the field's response. The story highlights a major shift in how academic communities deal with sexual misconduct, going beyond delineating rules on paper to striving to change the culture of the field at the institutional level. This shift – "a long time coming," according to many researchers – was spurred in part by recent high-profile cases in astronomy and biology. Now, as Balter notes, "paleoanthropology is responding to its own complex case." The first public allegation against Richmond, the curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, inspired a cascade of other allegations about him. This in turn motivated several senior paleoanthropologists, including one of Richmond's key mentors, Bernard Wood, to explore the allegations with peers. "As I talked to more and more current and former students at [George Washington University]," Wood said, "I became more concerned and alarmed about what I heard." In light of their findings, Wood and others in the field of anthropology are now tackling sexual misconduct head-on. The article details additional institutional efforts to stop sexual misconduct in science while trying to balance the rights of victims and accused, and provides the latest update on investigations into Richmond.
What? (Score:5, Informative)
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One for the reeducation camps.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Your're forgetting this is another fluff piece by timothy.
Nothing to see. Move along.
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Being continually hit on at work or by your boss/professor is not acceptable. If it happens once and discontinues then there's not a problem. But when it continues and is causing even your friends to wonder what the hell is wrong with you then it's time to clean stuff up.
It is often difficult to speak up. Everyone around may acknowledge that some professor is a troglodyte but may not feel able to say anything about it, because it's a senior professor or the like, and it can hurt your career even if it's
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What your reasoning about professors, careers, and powers reveals is that academia has become a fairly arbitrary playground of power and influence, instead of a meritocracy. In a meritocratic world, professors need good students in order to suc
Re: What? (Score:2)
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Your cynical remark
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While we shouldn't dismiss problems ranging from rape to unprofessional behavior as just being prude.
Academia is very hierarchical in structure, so there is a pecking order in power there. So having men who are in a higher power position hitting on women in lower power positions puts them in a disadvantage. While they can go forward, it will still mark them as being "Miss. Woman's Lib" and isolate them from working up the power command of academia.
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Either way, excusing victims for not coming forward serves no useful purpose.
That's only true if you think that treating humans like people and not like robots is useless. Me, I tend to think that recognizing that they are people with feelings and emotions and their own internal logic which can be damaged by trauma leads to making superior decisions than being totally intolerant of anything less than perfection from others so that you can make excuses for rapists.
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Exactly. Given the idea that all consensual sex is ok, and that just about anything is consent (as opposed to the old way, where the only consenual sex occurred within a witnessed marriage and everything else was rape) the definition has gotten murky at best.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The power dynamic is inescapable though. If you're stuck with that professor, or have to put up with the boss if you want to get a paycheck, then that's totally different than the power between rich and poor and the like. If a billionare started rubbing himself against women in a poor neighborhood he'd be punched and arrested. But if it's your boss and you're struggling to make ends meet, or your professor who is deeply involved in your research thesis, it's much harder to retaliate or get away. The downside is that no one will believe you without evidence, you can lose your job or career or even marriage, you'll be laughed at and told to grow a thicker skin, you may start getting nasty tweets from the anti-women crowd for daring to make a fuss, and so forth. This is nasty stuff and not to be taken lightly or brushed off as "men will be boys" or just another power dynamic.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Suing over it just is an admission that you think your field/company dispenses power arbitrarily and that you want your cut. If you believe that your work and your contributions are valuable, leaving is the best punishment you can hand out.
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If you just quit, the boss keeps doing his reprehensible behavior on someone else. Maybe the difference is between people who only care about their own welfare and those who care about others.
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The fact that we want your marks at the end of the year to be somewhat objective. In the same way that you can 'bribe' your spouse to do something in the house that you don't like doing, but you're not allowed to bribe your professor. Granted, this should be a private issue, not a legal one.
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I don't think Hillary gave any support or tacit approval. I think Bill was sleeping in the dog house for several years. I know some people assume that because she didn't divorce him that she must have approved but that's just bizarre and assuming that everyone will act the same way if rational. A married couple that have invested much of their life together will sometimes divorce after such an incident but sometimes they will genuinely reconcile, there is never one and only one way to resolve the problem
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Your correct. Hillary in no way just stood there. She participated in and in some ways headed up the attacks on Bill's accusers. I think it was Rush Limbaugh who called her the head of the bimbo eruption squad because of her obvious and public participation in the degradation and attempted discrediting of his accusers.
If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
...it had been paleontology or geology that had been 'rocked' by this case. But I'm struggling to understand why such a story is relevant to a science/technology news website?
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...it had been paleontology or geology that had been 'rocked' by this case. But I'm struggling to understand why such a story is relevant to a science/technology news website?
Because one of the big questions about the science and technology fields are why women are so under-represented.
Stories like this contain at least part of the answer.
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But only if you believe there is such a thing as sexual misconduct. It's pretty clear that on /. the number of posters that think such a thing as "inappropriate behavior" below the level of "unwanted penis insertion" even exists.
Re:If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do women flood into the medical industry because of the overwhelming respect and lack of inappropriate male behavior in those industries? What about all the women in marketing - did all of the sexists vanish? Women don't need the insult of being treated as an economically protected class because you think they're too stupid to choose the right careers - they're happier in their career choices than men.
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Stories like this contain at least part of the answer.
Only if stories like these happen in the science and technology fields and not elsewhere. It seems banal enough, albeit tragic, that it could have happened in any field.
A person in senior position trying to get their subordinates to bed? Shocking! I would never have imagined such a thing!</sarcasm>
Re:If only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it is a matter of degree? Consider:
People who dedicate themselves to the science and technology fields tend to be somewhat lacking in social graces, prone to "blunt instrument" conversational skills. Contrast that with other fields, especially in management, where "people skills" tend to be some of the most valuable assets to acquiring positions of authority.
I would imagine that the inappropriate socialite boss is more likely to be skilled at "not crossing the line", gauging their victims tolerance for their unwanted advances and backing off before things escalate to the point that might drive them away or invite repercussions. Contrast that with a geek attempting the same thing - for the same level of inappropriate intent, most will be far less graceful about pursuing their goal, which is likely to make things more unpleasant for the victim. Up to and including the issuing of ultimatums where a more skilled predator might bide their time or seek less recalcitrant prey. I know which predator *I* would prefer to have to tolerate every day.
And then of course there's positive feedback aspect which doesn't create the problem, but does intensify it: sci/tech are currently abnormally male-dominated fields, which means there's likely a higher ratio of predators per woman. That would tend to make the fields less appealing for women even if predators were no more numerous or unpleasant among geeks than in the general population.
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I quite agree that my argument is based on stereotypes. But those stereotypes only have to be valid on average for the argument to be sound.
Would you really care to argue that geeks are, on average, at least as socially skilled as the larger population?
As for women who game the system, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, but I imagine even most of them would rather deal with the more socially sophisticated predators - I suspect such sophistication tends to make more profitable marks as well.
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If so, I would say that's a completely different subject. A mutually beneficial exchange of favors is a far cry from sexual predation.
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Assumptions are the mother of all really bad fuck ups
I've always preferred "When you ASSume you make an ASS out of you and me".
Re:If only... (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's rather sad that you aren't shocked, and shows we still have some way to go.
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That question has largely been answered, it's just that feminists don't like the answers: women statistically are less concerned with status and high income, and women have babies and biological clocks.
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...it had been paleontology or geology that had been 'rocked' by this case. But I'm struggling to understand why such a story is relevant to a science/technology news website?
Because one of the big questions about the science and technology fields are why women are so under-represented.
Stories like this contain at least part of the answer.
Perhaps, but I suspect that's a significant oversimplification. Gender interests in various topics are generally "dialed in" by mid-high-school age or before -- college major gender preferences reflect high school preferences. I strongly suspect high schoolers aren't choosing topics of interests based upon expectations of future harassment in related careers.
A much more viable theory revolves around "caste effects" -- we tend to internalize the perceived characteristics of groups with which we identify.
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If only that solution was available to deal with immature trolls channelling the kind of douche who uses 'Alpha' non-ironically.
TL;DR (Score:2, Insightful)
Male, therefore guilty.
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Male, therefore guilty.
Yeah I'm sure it's just a bunch of women with no obvious connections engaging in a giant conspiracy for no apparent reason like they did to Bill Cosby.
Most importantly your automatic assumption that the man innocent and is only being persecuted for his gender, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, is in no way evidence that you might be sexist.
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"If you really think it's about "male => guilty by default", you are a dumbass."
No, it's more like "male and not particularly attractive, hence guilty by default."
Irrelevant, inflammatory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irrelevant, inflammatory. (Score:4, Interesting)
Anthropology covers human behavior; maybe some relevance in mis/applying domain knowledge?
Re: Irrelevant, inflammatory. (Score:2, Troll)
It's inflammatory by the second paragraph. Woman in bar shouts she was raped. If she hasn't called the police first, this is base character assassination. A woman's allegations should not automatically be believed despite all the PC rhetoric to the contrary.
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Because... patterns. (Score:2)
Why does the area of academic research matter?
Humans love patterns and "big things" more than insular and isolated cases.
Article quotes heavily the Survey of Academic Field Experiences [plos.org] which was featured here at Slashdot at least twice.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Both times it was presented as a science-wide issue - though the survey only covered anthropological fields.
Nearly half of the study participants self-identified as anthropologists from several subfields (applied, biological, linguistic, medical, physical, psychological, and socio-cultural) (N=319/666, 47.9%).
Nearly a quarter of the sample self-identified as archaeologists (N=159, 23.9%).
The rest of the sample comprised biologists (N=68, 10.2%); zoologists (N=31, 4.7%); geologists (N=29, 4.4%); other life, environmental, and agricultural scientists (N=22, 3.3%); and other social scientists (N=12, 1.8%).
This time on the other hand, that survey actually CAN be used to show that this particular case is a part of a PATTERN of sexual harassment in anthr
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Electricians tend not to behave inappropriately towards their customers because they lose business and because people will report any illegal conduct to the police. That is why politicians have to be extra nice to their customers.
The fact that it is academia matters because academics are exempted from such mechanisms. Merely being elevated to the position of a tenured professor gives people massive power and influe
Re:Irrelevant, inflammatory. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you bother reading the article? Hint: when your supervisor who is extremely powerful and can ruin your life does this kind of thing to you, you think twice before blowing the whistle.
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Because, yeah, lots of different women telling pretty much the same story is a "he said, she said' kind of thing.
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Misleading headline. (Score:4, Funny)
When I read "The Sexual Misconduct Case That Has Rocked Anthropology" I was thinking that it would be something about neanderthals and apes having sex or whatever. Sexual misconduct among modern humans in positions of authority is still shocking?
To the tune of "when the moon's in your eye, like a big pizza, pie, thats's a-mor-e
When the local priest does it
And then the pope hides it
That's a-mor-e [youtube.com]
When the cellmate you call Bubba
Says "on your knees, sucka"
That's a-mor-e [youtube.com]
When the guy at the bar
Slips you ludes, goes to far,
That's a-mor-e [youtube.com]
When the cop says "Let's say"
"We can make this go away."
That's a-mor-e [youtube.com]
Humans are really, really f*cked up
Say it's not rape, you're a slut
And claim its a-mor-e [youtube.com]
Burma shave
Requisite... (Score:2)
He probably just wanted to show her his large fossil pelvic specimen.
Damn it (Score:4)
But.
I think it is ultimately likely that if we persecute every reported affront before due diligence has its day in the courts, we are increasing the probability someone will exploit the system.
Remember People (Score:4, Insightful)
Sexual misconduct is a TERRIBLE crime, and we must confront it vigorously wherever it appears.
Unless you're running for President as a Democrat. Then it's OK and Gloria Steinem will endorse you anyways.
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I don't see where this man ever exceeded his 'one free grope'.
You don't get a free grope, you nut-head.
Scholar of cavemen busted for acting like caveman. (Score:2)
woke up hours after blacking out? (Score:3, Insightful)
This crap again? (Score:2)
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According to the survey, 73% of women had no unwanted physical contact, so it's m
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Except standards are different in Europe. When I worked in the Netherlands, everyone was screwing everyone else at work. Well known but no one talked about it. One manager who was high up ended up leaving his wife for his secretary. He was promoted along with his secretary.
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Well, yes, different countries have different standards. I can remember a company outing to build morale to a ski slope, and most people ended up in the sauna afterwards (fully nude). In the US, anybody getting naked in front of a coworker, or suggesting to go to such a place would be sacked immediately, but there it was quite normal.
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However.
If she should wind up drunkenly in the room of an equally intoxicated senior colleague, his ability to misunderstand intent must be considered as an extenuating circumstance.
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Re:This crap again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't she say she was drunk, going to his apartment seemed like a good idea and they became intimate until she had second thoughts?
The story has too many holes in its timeline for this not to be a plausible explanation. You can create worse scenarios from the same facts, but it seems questionable that Richmond carried her passed out to through the streets of Florence to his hotel. She most likely agreed to it and was self-ambulatory even if she was intoxicated.
The sexual contact was probably ill desired, but it sounds like it stopped when she wanted to stop and again, we have no good explanation what put her on the bed in that situation to believe in unless you're subscribed to the idea he brought her home in a passed out state and put her on her bed.
The worst you could say that Richmond was opportunistic and a cad.
My belief is you can't call buyer's remorse sexual assault and you don't get a pass for getting intoxicated and making bad decisions that result in unwanted circumstances. It doesn't justify forcible assault, but it doesn't condemn sexual advances when you've willingly gotten into bed with them or agreeing to have sex for that matter.
Too many women are making bad decisions and having cognitive dissonance about it afterward and then seeking absolution through blame because they can't live with their mistakes.
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Why can't she say she was drunk, going to his apartment seemed like a good idea and they became intimate until she had second thoughts?
Because she's married.
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If someone's drunk you may not even be permitted to let them go. If someone is visibly incapable of going anywhere safely, then you can confine them until they either get better or get medical attention.
Anthropologists vs. Paleoanthropologists (Score:5, Funny)
It's important to be clear on the difference between anthropologists and paleoanthropologists. Anthropologists get real live humans to anthropologise on. Paleoanthropologists do the same thing, but they avoid grains, legumes and sugar.
'Research assistant' and the free holiday .. (Score:2)
'a research assistant
Sexually assault is a criminal matter, why not make a formal complaint on the night instead of months later in a roof top ba
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Because if anyone made a criminal complaint that started out with her getting so drunk she doesn't know what happened next, the prosecutors would realize that it would be impossible to prove a case like that in court, file it away and forget it.
And because if the crime consisted of his lying on top of her and groping her under her skirt, the prosecutors would realize that this isn't
What about all the women who use sex to advance? (Score:4)
Maybe it's because I went to school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but I'm remembering a lot of women who made their career by having an affair with their professors.
In one case, a friend of mine was the first woman to major in a male-dominated field at a big university. All the guys in my circle of friends really looked up to her for that.
Then she once casually mentioned that she was having an affair with her (married) professor.
People have a right to have sex with anybody they want, but I hated it because it confirmed a stereotype that I hated - - "Women will use sex to advance their career."
Last I heard, she didn't go into the field at all, but got a job as a programmer.
I wonder if anybody else here has seen things like that.
Rebecca Ackermann shows quite a bit of cleavage (Score:2)
Did anybody else think that in the illustration accompanying that story, Rebecca Ackermann had a pretty low neckline?
I know there have been studies of cleavage in women's photos on dating sites, but this seems to be somewhat revealing for a professional setting. Especially for someone who wants to de-emphasize sexuality in academia.
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Did anybody else think that in the illustration accompanying that story, Rebecca Ackermann had a pretty low neckline?
do you mean the photograph? Maybe it's just my ad blocker, but I'm not seeing any illustrations. If you mean the photograph, the answer is no. She's barely showing any boob. Build a bridge and get over it.
Halter top and a miniskirt (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
If you're the kind of person who will be psychologically traumatized by having your professor acknowledge your sexual attractiveness, I would think that you would be better off wearing something more professional than a halter top and miniskirt to the lab at night. Maybe you should learn something from those fruit flies.
If this is a problem, then you should have a dress code for female employees.
Actually, I used to work at the American Foundation for [deleted], and we had a temp employee come in wearing a halter top and a bare midriff. She made quite an impression, some of it favorable (on her boss) and some of it unfavorable (on the other women in the office). Somebody talked to her about it, and she covered it up, to some disappointment by the men in the office.
If anybody claims that women never dress in revealing clothes to be sexually attractive, they're denying reality.
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The problem is people will always assume the absolute worst, so you have to be incredibly careful with your language and fully enumerate all possible behaviours you are referring to. Or don't, and just rely on the people actually dealing with this stuff to use their judgement.
When it says "without being touched or made uncomfortable by her professor", it means "no touching, no leering, no standing uncomfortably close and breathing down her neck, no overtly sexual comments etc."
By constantly mis-interpreting
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We don't trust your judgment, and you did it to yourself.
SJWs routinely define the existence of the patriarchy as harassment, and males as being part of the patriarchy.
When we hear vague accusations, we understand that there is a non-zero chance that it is bullshit, because you've been trying to feed us an ever increasing stream of bullshit for the last few decades. We don't trust you any more. We want to know exactly what happened, so that we can use our own judgment.
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So what you are saying is that instead of making the most minimal effort to understand what I'm saying, you prefer to just live in your own little world where you don't have to worry about me calling your bullshit.
Case in point, the patriarchy is a system. Every member of a society us part of it by definition, but that's irrelevant because it's an institutional problem.
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Oh yes, but they have certain people in mind who they want to acknowledge that. Or at least a class of people. If you're not in it, they want you forbidden by law and custom from acknowledging it.
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Perhaps the real problem is that our educational institutions are authoritarian to begin with? That students are indoctrinated into believing that the world we live in is one in which people are elevated to positions of "authority figures" and the way to become one yourself is through politics and lobby
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You can hold whatever position on dress code you like, and that one seems reasonable to me, but it has no relevance to
Re:"sexual misconduct"? (Score:5, Funny)
Its gotten to the point where you can't even give some a friendly smack on the buttocks with a rubber dildo anymore without them taking it the wrong way.
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without them taking it the wrong way.
Well, if they move when you're trying to do it, accidents will happen.
Re:"sexual misconduct"? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA. It means: "kissing her and groping under her skirt" while the woman wakes up from blacking out. It means "Dr. Richmond smiled and grabbed P1[’s] breast,”. It means "put his arm around me, and plunged his hand down the back of my skirt all the way to my thighs, and forcefully grabbed my posterior,". And all of this happened while Richmond was an instructor in the program and had a position of authority over the women involved.
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RTFA. It means: "kissing her and groping under her skirt" while the woman wakes up from blacking out.
They were kissing, and she claims she was too drunk to remember what happened before that. There is no evidence that she was passed out.
By itself, it proves nothing, however other women since reported similar stories.
When work colleagues are away from home, drinking heavily, and in one of the most romantic cities on Earth, things are bound to happen.
Some of them will be regretted. There is a simple old-fashioned way to avoid such problems: chaperones.
If the university does not want such encounters, ban
Re:"sexual misconduct"? (Score:5, Informative)
If you gave the whole quote, it would mean something else:
They were standing around a bonfire, they were drinking, she was drinking a lot, he made a pass at her, she responded favorably, he continued, she declined, and he left her alone.
This is normal sexual behavior in modern western cultures.
These are fucking anthropologists. They're supposed to understand mating rituals.
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Seems like alcohol played a role in these accounts,... You wanna run him out of the field for thes???
I'm sure I'm far in the minority, here, but having actually read the article, I found the heavy drinking to be more troubling than the sexual messing around.
My own PhD experience (biomedical research) was that everyone understood that there was too much at stake professionally to risk getting drunk with one's PhD supervisor. Even leaving aside risks of sexual misunderstandings, the risk of getting drunk and saying or doing something offensive or insulting to one's supervisor was an unthinkable risk. Even un
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Well, let's think about it. Very powerful person who can ruin careers has a pattern of making unwanted sexual advances on very junior subordinates. Gee, do we
a) let the guy continue?
b) get him out of his position of authority that he's been abusing?
Wow, what a tough moral dilemma...
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Yes. Suddenly it occurs to the SJWs that perhaps the standards we impose on minors should now be imposed on people that are supposed to be adults.
I can understand the power issues with letting adult students consort with teachers. Although banning such relationship has not been the rule previously. It simply wasn't the standard.
Now the standard is changing.
So things that were once thought perfectly fine are now suddenly "illegal".
Perhaps a memo should be distributed to everyone regarding the new rules.
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The way the woman stated it, they went out drinking, she got "way too drunk," she couldn't find her way back to her Air B&B, she doesn't remember anything after that until they wound up in bed together with Richmond kissing her and groping under her skirt.
There's a lot of things that could have happened between the time her memory blanked out and the time it started again. Like she could have made advances at him.
When she go
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If she was so drunk she couldn't remember how she got the room, that's a clear sign to Richmond that she couldn't consent and he should have stopped. Even if she was making advances to him, being that drunk is an automatic "no" because the capacity to consent does not exist.
Maybe it was Richmond who was sexually assaulted in that instance. He was very drunk and she engaged in sexual activity with him. If they are both so drunk that neither one can consent why is the onus upon him to stop and not upon her?
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It's entirely possible that is the case, which is why there needs to be an investigation... Which there is.
Re:"sexual misconduct"? (Score:5, Funny)
The waistband, usually.
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Yep... there is a difference between "you look nice today" and sticking your hand up a woman's dress. Apparently some people here don't get that.
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Of course we do. [liveleak.com]
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>Before reading the comments, I got the impression this male person had been the victim of sexual misconduct, and was thinking "WTF?".
It happens a lot. It just isn't reported as much as when it's the other way around.
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If both were drunk, aren't they both guilty of sexual misconduct? Legally, they would both be rapists; when you give someone the "privilege" of being accountable for their own actions, these things go away pretty quickly.
Either way, it's not up to other researchers/scientists to investigate this kind of crap, go to the police and/or sue if you think you were raped.
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Naa, most of us have seen so much bullshit of this sort that the first thing we think of when we see an accusation like this is not "Oh, how horrible, some dirty old professor has been sexually abusing his students" but "Oh, another witchhunt". Not the ones made famous by McCarthy, the ones made famous by Cotton Mather. The Salem witches often had numerous accusers as well.
Sure, it's possible in this case they've found a real witch. But I wouldn't bet money on it.