Dad

My father died last Friday. Pneumonia finally took him, and despite two years to intellectually prepare for his death, it hits in emotional ways that are simply not possible to prepare for. Jerome “Jerry” Heldman was born on February 24, 1937, in Fargo, North Dakota, was raised in Seattle, lived in southwest Washington starting in the early 1970s, and died on October 11, 2013, in Yacolt, Washington.

My dad was different from other dads I knew. He was an ill-fitting transplant in rural, isolated Yacolt where he settled down at the foothills of Mt. Saint Helens to raise six kids. He told stories of travelling the globe during his stint in the Air Force (1955 – 1959), playing the drums nearly every night at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, hitchhiking the West Coast as a hippie musician, and running the fabled underground Seattle jazz club The Llahngaelhyn (1965- 1968). I would only later come to understand that my dad had played with some of the biggest names in jazz — bassists David Friesen and Gary Peacock, guitarists Ralph Towner and Larry Coryell, horn players Nat Adderley and Jay Thomas, wind players Joe Brazil, Carlos Ward, and Cannonball Adderley, and pianists McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea, to name a few. In Paul de Barros’ book Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle (1993), he writes that “The Llahngaelhyn scene is a kind of missing link in Seattle jazz history. For a while it was a hotbed of avant-gardism and free jazz, the music played there also remained grounded in blues, bebop, and swing tradition.”

Baker Street Station, London Underground, 1950 Something

My dad was a high school dropout who got caught smoking cigarettes a week before graduation and opted to quit school rather than tell his dad. He joined the Air Force that same year and was stationed in various Europe countries during reconstruction under The Marshall Plan. President Truman had desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948, and my father learned his first jazz licks from African American soldiers in his squadron. He was discharged from the Air Force after getting visibly upset at the racist mistreatment of an African American soldier in his squad.

When he returned home to Seattle, my dad opted for a desk job over a patrol beat with the Seattle Police because of the open racism demonstrated by patrol officers. He was still working for the Seattle PD when he started managing jazz clubs, and officers would often come by and harass him for playing “n***** music.” Eventually, his boss gave him the ultimatum that he could have a club or be a cop. It was an easy choice.

My dad’s first steady gig in Seattle was with The Seattle Jazz Quartet (with dad on bass, Dick Dunlap on piano, Joe Brazil on reeds, and Rick Swann on drums) at Larry Coryell’s sessions at the Queequeg. He would also have steady gigs with The Playboys during that era. When Coryell left for New York, my dad took over these sessions and eventually moved into new digs at the south end of University Bridge. The Llahngaelhyn was born.

The Llahngaelhyn Coffeehouse

Jam sessions at The Llahngaelhyn sometimes went all night long. In an interview in 2001, my dad recounted that “After hours, we locked the front door and left the back door open. We played sometimes until 6 or 8 in the morning. One night Roland Kirk came in and set out all of his horns on the table. Our piano player didn’t show up, so Roland got up on the drums, then switched around to the vibes, bass and piano. He played everything except his horns.” Jimi Hendrix also played at The Llahngaelhyn a few times, a fact that made my dad seem uber cool when I was a kid. McCoy Tyner, legendary jazz pianist and man of few words, once said “there was no place like the Llahngaelhyn.”

Collage of Happenings at The Llahngaelhyn by Cary Tolman, Seattle PI. Julia (Selvidge) Heldman Top Left.

My dad met my mom, Julia Selvidge, at The Llahngaelhyn. She was a young student at the University of Washington who performed children’s theater with Howard Thorsen, Bill Billings, and my mom’s best friend, Peggy Bull (who would tragically die in the 1997 Heaven’s Gate cult’s mass suicide). My mom and dad married on December 18, 1965, and the first of six kids, Clara, would come along within a year. My siblings and I – Clare, Christian, Sarah, Caroline, Kathleen, and Joy – are spaced about two years apart. My dad nicknamed us Peanut, Po, Pea, Poo, Plum, and Puffin, respectively, and would sometimes run through this entire list and our seventeen cats’ names before calling us by our proper names. I definitely got the short end of the stick on the nickname.

By the time I came along, there were only rare glimpses of my dad’s former life – dad’s jazz playing, Lamborghini-driving friend paying a visit to our drafty two-story house and leaving a $100 bill in the family bible;  my first exposure to public nudity at a Rainbow Gathering; being somewhat envious of dad’s musician friend Heather Hammond who visited with her kids on the colorful bus they called home; and the occasional visits to performance artist Jesse Bernstein’s house. Bernstein once had a conversation with a rodent in his mouth. He assured my wide-eyed toddler self that the mouse had crawled up his sleeve and into his mouth of her own volition.

Jesse Bernstein, Sans Mouse

When his family started to grow, my dad gave up his dream of “making it big” in New York as so many of his friends had done, but it was difficult to find employment as a high school dropout during a recession. Aside from playing music, his favorite job was working as a temp through President Jimmy Carter’s CETA (job training) program under Howard Pearson with the Ridgefield Parks and Recreation Department. He would take us on hikes through the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge like a pied piper, playing one of his handmade Shakuhachi flutes and mesmerizing humans and water fowl alike. His next and last “day job” would not be so rewarding.

For three decades, he worked the night shift as a janitor at the technology firm Tektronix/later TriQuest where he was routinely mistreated. Aside from all of the nasty class-based mistreatment that janitors receive all the time from people who need to feel “better than,” TriQuest paid him almost nothing, refused to move him to the day shift when he suffered health problems from his sleep schedule, and laid him off a few months before his thirty year mark so they could deny him a full pension (as they had done to the previous head janitor). Since he was relegated to the night shift, my siblings and I would sometimes help my dad at work when he was sick so he would not lose his job.

On the weekends, dad would load his upright bass into the car and drive to gigs in Portland, Seattle, and everywhere in between. He had a standing gig with pianist Tony Klugel at the Colombia Gorge Hotel for years that fed his musical soul, and he continued to record on studio albums. Some of my dad’s fellow janitors respected his musical brilliance and came out to support him at shows, but it was apparent that the white-collar employees at TriQuest did not know or appreciate my father. It is important to mention this because he suffered in silence for three decades while managing to home school us and put half of us through college.

Because TriQuest did not pay a living wage for one person, let alone a family of eight, we managed through government assistance (Food Stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, free cheese, and Financial Aid) and dad’s incredible couponing prowess. On a good shopping day, the supermarket would pay him for items. On a so-so day, he would walk out with a few boxes of cereal and cans for which he paid only pennies. We survived on his couponing, dented cans, expired food, and a summer garden out back. When we ran low, dad would throw together flour, salt, and water to create massive, mouth-watering biscuits he would smother in butter. Like my other siblings, I was eager to contribute to the household income, so at fourteen, I had my first job through the Summer Youth Employment Program… as a janitor.

My hippie-cum-Evangelical parents did not allow a television in the house, although we wheeled one of the garage once a year or so to watch “Roots” and classics on Masterpiece Theater. For entertainment, my dad recreated the jam session environment at home with us kids, giving each of us parts to play on various instruments and turning us loose. I accompanied dad by playing the bass line on the piano, and later sang with him for six years in the Christian rock band, Selah. After relocating to the East Coast, I worked for months on various jazz standards before each visit so I could sit in with him. Dad was exuberant whenever his kids or grandkids played songs we had written or shared YouTube videos of live performances: Joey on guitar, Nettie and Tristan on piano, Christian and I in various band projects.

The Christian Rock Band, Selah

Perhaps the most lasting remnant of my dad’s early hippie lifestyle was the thousands of hitchhikers he brought home to stay for a few days, sometimes longer. Since dad worked the night shift, we would often wake up in the morning with a new “stranger” on our couch. He never forgot how hard it was on the road when motorists would speed by and not think to pick up the cold, hungry hitchhikers with their thumbs out. This steady stream of travelling folks included professional bubble blowers, a member of the Harlem Globetrotters (who had missed the tour bus departure), missionaries, Beatnik poets, a gentleman with a van full of monkeys, musicians of all stripes, and Jorge Gallegos, who lived with us for years and offered me my first marriage proposal at age fourteen. (Despite the fact that he played a mean bar guitar and had beautiful “bad boy” tattoos, my dad was not amused.)

At some point in the 1960s, my parents became born-again Christians, and my dad mixed hippie sensibilities with Jesus’ words, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). This was his mantra, so despite our abject poverty, my dad never passed a motorist or hitchhiker in need, and always assisted homeless individuals with money, clothing, food, and sometimes a roof over their heads. When we drove past accidents, he would fervently clutch his hands together and tell us to “pray for the people.” His remarkable generosity was evident in the little things, like the fat sandwich bags full of candy he passed out at Halloween with those bible tracts that would remind the kids about the eternal damnation that comes with sins (gluttony, among others).

Because of my father, I grew up constantly concerned about and praying for the well-being of people I had never met. He truly was a Good Samaritan who harbored none of the petty fears most people have of the downtrodden. I try to emulate him as much as I can by picking up hitchhikers, stopping at accidents, and frequently communing with homeless individuals and street musicians. I refuse to live in the cold, fearful world of “strangers” that we have created because my dad has shown me (and so many others) an alternative reality.

While my father taught us not to live in fear of strangers, he himself was trapped by irrational fears from undiagnosed mental health issues during a time when mental illness was even more stigmatized than it is today. He self-medicated for years, and ended up leaving Seattle to get away from the drug-infused lifestyle. My dad’s mental health issues mostly manifested through paranoia. He wore a tin foil hat and put aluminum foil over the windows to “ward off evil vibrations.” Late in life, he admitted to me that he heard and spoke with voices, both of angels and God, and was fixated on the end of the world as laid out in the book of Revelations. He had our family collectively read at least an hour from the Bible each night, and to this day, I can quote the Bible better than the most devoted of the protesters at Planned Parenthood. Like many of his gifted musician compatriots, despite mental health challenges, my father was able to accomplish extraordinary things during his living years. His quirkiness simply made him more interesting than ordinary folks, a fact I would not appreciate until I grew up.

And my dad was an interesting cat. He was a political leftist who was vehemently pro-life. He loved Jimmy Carter and had no kind words for his successor, although he prayed for President Reagan a lot. He also loved his Dr. Pepper and bear claws and jojos and Doritos and microwavable burritos. He was a heavy smoker (Kool menthols) for decades, but I never saw him with a cigarette in his mouth. My dad took great pleasure in cruising around in his 1989 white Firebird, and he did not age like the rest of us, in spirit or body. He still looked 45-years-old when he was pushing seventy, and passed away with a full head of thick, dark hair. He sported a floppy mustache for most of his life that he thought looked really cool and could conjure up Bible verses like a computer. He used to cover for me when I would sneak home from church to watch Sunday auto racing with him. (Sorry Mom.)

My father gave me many gifts, not the least of which is my love of coffee (although he favored the instant flavored “coffee” granules know as Café Francis). My father also gifted me my feminist sensibilities by being an unrepentant, but ultimately failed, misogynist. He did not let the girls in the family cut their hair or wear pants until we were teens. He refused to listen to “chick musicians” but was exceedingly proud of his different daughters’ musical accomplishments. He rebuffed “chick authors” but was beaming when I published my first piece. He refused to let me enroll in martial arts training, but when I secretly did, he was not-so-secretly happy about my tournament trophies. In other words, he constantly undermined his overt sexism by being a proud and supportive parent, and it is no surprise that all of his daughters are feminists.

Jerry, Julia, Kathleen, Sarah, Caroline, Joy, Christian, and Clara Heldman

In his final years, my dad was a doting grandfather to his seven grandchildren – Jonathan, Jordan, Joey, Zaid, Jennette, Tristan, and Declan. He supported their music lessons, collaborated with them on compositions, and doled out lots of candy (notice a theme here?). He also ran services at the Yacolt Full Gospel Community Church after Pastor Hannes and Anita Wirkkala’s passing. My father’s services were rich with ruminations on Revelations and groovy music featuring dad on bass/piano and grandson Joey on guitar.

59-year-old Jerry with grandsons Joey, Jordan, and Zaid.

In 2001, my dad worked with accomplished musician Heather Hammond to host a Llahngaelhyn reunion that brought back many of the original players: Eric Apoe, Ronnie Pierce, Pete Leinonen, Jay Thomas, Dale Evans, Dick Dunlap,  and others. It was an amazing event, brimming with love and good food and great music. Whitey Black wrote “It took a spirit like Heldman’s, free of greed and vanity, to bring jazz back to Seattle. Now let us return the favor and keep it here.” Members of the press described my dad as an “all-around inspiration” and a “jazz wizard.”

“This wizard never slept, and played extraordinary jazz bass and piano, from dusk till dawn. Every night, his friends – many of whom would later become famous musicians – came to play with him.”

We’re still playing, dad, but we’re missing the bass player.

By Caroline Heldman & Danielle Dirks

On October 15, Slate Dear Prudence advice columnist Emily Yoffe wrote a piece titled, “The Best Rape Prevention: Tell College Women to Stop Getting Drunk.” A crowd of critics harpooned Yoffe for her victim blaming approach (Jezebel, Feministing, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, and even Slate’s own Amanda Hess). On October 18, Yoffe responded to the backlash by digging in her heels, citing data on the correlation between survivor intoxication and rape and admonishing her critics for silencing those who want to give “practical advice” to young women. Just last week, Southern Methodist University student Kirby Wiley penned a similar piece in the school newspaper encouraging women to drink less, writing that, “of course the perpetrators are the one’s responsible for the crimes, but to solve the problem they can’t be the only ones taking blame.”

Campus Activism Calling Out Victim Blaming

Beyond the implied victim blaming in Yoffe’s pieces and the blatant victim blaming in Wiley’s piece (rape is the only crime where the victim is put on trial), both of these authors are terribly misguided in thinking that they are offering practical advice. The fact is, rape reduction tips for potential victims are just not effective. (Only perpetrator and bystander interventions have shown some effectiveness.) The idea that sexual assault survivors could have controlled the criminal actions of others reflects a profound misunderstanding of how perpetrators operate.

The reality is that campus rapists’ principal weapon is alcohol and they are able to hide in plain sight within a male-dominated party culture where men provide the venues, parties, and drinks to women, often with the explicit purpose of hooking up.

Activists Exposing Victim Blaming

While the vast majority of rapists are men, the vast majority of men are not rapists and cannot identify with rapists’ mindsets. Research shows that rapists exhibit high levels of hypermasculinity and anger toward women, they need to dominate women, and lack empathy, including sex offenders on campus. Dr. David Lisak’s research on undetected rapists finds that just 4% of young men on campus are the serial rapists who commit nine out of ten rapes on college campuses, with an average of six rapes over the course of their college career. According to Lisak, undetected college rapists:

• are extremely adept at identifying “likely” victims, and testing prospective victims’ boundaries;

• plan and premeditate their attacks, using sophisticated strategies to groom their victims for attack, and to isolate them physically;

• use ‘instrumental’ not gratuitous violence; they exhibit strong impulse control and use only as much violence as is needed to terrify and coerce their victims into submission;

• use psychological weapons – power, control, manipulation, and threats – backed up by physical force, and almost never resort to weapons such as knives or guns;

• use alcohol deliberately to render victims more vulnerable to attack, or completely unconscious.

Virtually all rapes on campus are perpetrated by these calculating criminals, but despite this evidence, many people continue to blame alcohol for rape rather than rapists. These same people likely have a difficult time imagining the profile of a white, well-heeled, and college-educated sex offender who is not only cold, but calculating in seeking out his victims. Lastly, these individuals tend to ignore the overwhelming data that rapists rape sober women too.

Activists in India Taking a Stand Aainst Victim Blaming

When people like Yoffe and Wiley blame alcohol rather than rapists, they make it easier for rapists to hide (and continue) their crimes by perpetuating the idea that rape on college campuses is simply an alcohol-fueled miscommunication.

In fact, Yoffe and Wiley are mirroring the same bogus “blame it on the alcohol” rationales that two-thirds of college rapists use themselves to excuse their acts of forced sex! Perpetuating a national discourse that blames alcohol for rape simply emboldens college rapists to continue to use their weapon of choice – alcohol – with full license and with impunity.

Such misguided voices also serve to intensify women’s self-blame and nearly guarantee women’s silence in the aftermath of rape. This intense self-blame makes women less likely to:

• confide in friends or loved ones;

• seek much-needed professional assistance; and

• report their rapes to law enforcement or their schools – perhaps the most effective way to expose and prevent the 4% of mostly undetected college rapists from raping again.

In short, messages to women that blame them for their rape rather than the criminal perpetrators function as a silencing machine that enables rape to remain a mostly hidden national epidemic.

Beyond the damage inflicted by Yoffe and Wiley’s victim blaming, their argument is also logically flawed. As any student in an introductory statistics course can recite, “correlation does not equal causation,” so a correlation between intoxication and rape does not mean intoxication causes rape. In fact, nearly all college students consume alcohol, just under 40%  are heavy drinkers, and male students drink more often and more heavily than female students. Logically, then, if victim intoxication were a primary cause of rape, then men would be raped more often than women, but they are not. So untangling Yoffe and Wiley’s “logic,” drinking isn’t the problem: being female and drinking is the problem. The implication is that women should not be allowed to participate in campus party culture (or their everyday lives) without paying the penalty of rape.

So why, in 2013, are writers for prominent publications still engaging in barefaced victim blaming when it comes to rape? We believe that the lion’s share of blame lies with editors. When news sources publish a piece on Syria of the growth of job in the high tech industry, editors call upon experts, typically with advanced degrees, who have been thinking and writing about their subject for years. But when it comes to incredibly complex gender issues like sexualized violence, editors too often engage in outdated identity politics and assign stories to the nearest available woman. This is how we get mainstream “news” stories about gender issues from veritable laypeople, like Yoffe or Hanna Rosin or Caroline Kitchens, who have not spent a sustained period of time reading, researching, and writing about gender, and don’t bother to use the work of those who have. Having collectively spent three decades doing just that, we have learned that gender is a remarkably intricate system of power that takes decades to gain even a slim grasp on how it functions and operates. Our society will remain in the Neanderthal cave in our common “knowledge” about rape as long as uninformed public figures continue to recycle inaccurate, sexist myths packaged as “helpful” advice.

Alcohol Used to Excuse Stubenville Rape in Social Media

*** Trigger Warning for Violence, Including Sexual Violence***

Dr. Patricia Esparza

39-year-old Patricia Esparza embodies the fabled American Dream. She spent the first five years of her life in El Taray, a small farming community in Southern Mexico with no running water and unpaved streets. Her mother migrated to the United States where she worked long hours in factories and as a janitor. Esparza’s exceptional academic abilities landed her a merit scholarship to the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from DePaul University. Esparza was hired as a professor at Webster University Geneva and works as a consultant for the World Health Organization.

Yesterday I watched as Esparza was hauled away in handcuffs, charged with a murder she did not commit.

The Rape: “Colleges and universities have a responsibility to their students.”

Rewind two decades, back to when Esparza was a 20-year-old Pomona College sophomore. On March 25, 1995, she met Gonzalo Ramirez, 24, at a bar while visiting her sister in Santa Ana. The following morning, Ramirez met up with Esparza, Esparza’s sister, and a friend for breakfast. Ramirez then offered to drive Esparza back to her dorm room where he raped her. Esparza went into a state of shock during the ordeal, and when he left, Ramirez scoffed, “you have big issues.”

Esparza, a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of her father from the age of five until twelve, could not turn to her family and felt too humiliated and afraid to go to the police. She sought help at the Pomona student health center where the nurse blamed Esparza for her rapist’s criminal behavior and offered her little help and no resources. As Esparza shared in our recent interview,

I remember the nurse’s reaction like it was yesterday. She gave me the morning-after pill to ensure that I did not get pregnant and she walked away. It sent a strong signal of shame. If only that college nurse would have helped me that day, the horrible series of events that took place would have been prevented. Colleges and universities have a responsibility to their students, especially when they are most vulnerable.

Beyond not helping Esparza in her time of dire need, this nurse violated the federal Clery Act and the Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights by not reporting Esparza’s rape or offering her support services.

The Murder: “These people were dangerous, and I needed to stay quiet.”

On April 15, 1995, two weeks after the rape, Esparza’s ex-boyfriend Gianni Van visited her, hoping to rekindle their previous six-month relationship. Esparza was obviously distraught and Van stayed for hours trying to coax the story out of her. She finally broke down and told him about the rape. Then Van exploded. He verbally attacked Esparza for not stopping the rape. He also told her that he wanted her back, even though she had been “dishonored.”

Van quickly hatched a revenge plan that involved four friends – Kody Tran, Shannon Gries, Diane Tran and Julie Ann Rojas. Van bullied Eparza into going to the club where she first met Ramirez to identify him. Esparza testified that Van was “insisting, yelling, telling me that I had to point out the rapist, point out the attacker. And at some point Gonzalo Ramirez walked by, and I cringed and I told Gianni that that was the person.” Esparza told a grand jury that she believed that “the worst that would happen is that [Van] would rough [Ramirez] up.”

When Ramirez left the bar, Van’s friends rear-ended Ramirez’s truck and kidnapped him. They took Ramirez to a transmission shop owned by Tran and beat him bloody. During the beating, Esparza was taken against her will to another bar by Rojas at the direction of Gries, then called back to the transmission shop by Gries about an hour later.

At the shop, Gries ordered Esparza to come upstairs to see the bloodied Ramirez. Esparza noted that the attackers were armed. Gries then threatened to do the same thing to Esparza and Rojas if they “fucked him over.” Esparza recounts her terror that night:

I retreated downstairs to a corner and stayed quiet. I was trapped. I was out-numbered by four older and bigger people. I was four feet 9 inches, 98 pounds, and I was miles away from my home late at night in a non-residential area. I had no car and didn’t even know how to drive. I feared for my life and felt that the only thing I could do was to submit. All I knew is that these people were dangerous, and I needed to stay quiet. 

While [Van] and [Gries] took my rapist away, the other man, Kody Tran, explicitly threatened me and added he would also hurt my mother if I said anything about what I had witnessed. “This was done for you. You better not turn against us, or we will get you,” he said. I believed him too. He had shown me what they were capable of doing.

Van drove Esparza to her mother’s house that night and told her they had let Ramirez go. The next day, Irvine police found Ramirez’s body on the side of the road, hacked to death with a meat cleaver. Esparza was not aware that Ramirez was dead until weeks later when police questioned her.

Esparza feared for her life from Kody Tran and Van, and was pressured into marrying Van to prevent her testimony against him. Van told Esparza that the marriage orders came from Tran, the leader of the group who had cornered and threatened Esparza that night.  “Tran was scary. He was violent (he died recently in a shoot-out with the police). I did not want his fury turned against me.” This was a sham marriage that officially ended in 2004.

The Arrest: “I cannot accept because it would essentially be a lie.”

Esparza stayed quiet about this crime because she feared for her safety and her family’s safety. In 2010, when Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas re-opened this cold case with new DNA evidence linking Ramirez to blood found at the transmission shop, Esparza cooperated fully with the investigation. Authorities told Esparza on multiple occasions that they “were not interested” in her and that she “was not a target.” Because of Esparza’s testimony, they were able to file murder charges against Van, Gries, and Diane Tran. (Kody Tran committed suicide in 2012 and Rojas was granted immunity in the case.)

Top: Patricia Esparza, Gianni Van
Bottom: Diane Tran, Kody Tran, Shannon Gries

But everything changed in February, 2013, when police arrested Esparza at the Boston airport on her way to an academic conference. She was charged with special circumstances murder during the commission of a kidnapping with the possibility of life in prison without parole.

Despite a murder charge, Esparza’s bail was set at $300,000, and for nine months, she was free and able to travel between the states and her home in France. It is simply unheard of for people charged with murder to be out on bail and allowed to keep their passport, a clear indication that the Orange County DA did not actually think Esparza committed this heinous crime. Yesterday, Esparza was taken into custody after rejecting a plea bargain for voluntary manslaughter with a sentence of three years in prison. “I cannot accept because it would essentially be a lie.”

According to Susan Kang Schroeder from the DA’s office, because Esparza rejected the plea deal, “She’s no longer cooperating with police and we believe that she’s a flight risk.” This statement does not ring true given that Esparza had nine months to flee to a country without an extradition treaty, and she willingly travelled to the Orange County courtroom yesterday knowing that the odds were not in her favor.

The Today Show Coverage of Case

Local CBS News Coverage of Case

If Esparza was truly a murder accomplice, why would the perpetrators have her taken to another location during the violence, then force her to view a bloodied Ramirez in order to threaten her into silence? If she was an accomplice, why did Kody Tran feel the need to threaten violence against Esparza’s mother? If she was an accomplice, why didn’t she know Ramirez had been murdered until weeks after his death? And if she were an accomplice, why did Kody Tran force her into a sham marriage with Van in order to maintain her silence? Setting aside Esparza’s claims that she was a victim in this case, the actions of others leave little doubt that Esparza did not willingly participate in this crime.

Esparza told me that, while Ramirez hurt her terribly, he did not deserve to die. “A life is never to be taken by another human being, under any circumstances.” Esparza’s compassion for Ramirez does not fit with a murderous revenge motive.

The Questions: “All I knew is that I wanted to survive.”

 Some question why Esparza did not report her rape to the police, a query that efficiently serves the dual purpose of challenging her victim status and her credibility. Esparza’s actions, however, are the norm. Most rape survivors say that reporting to the police is “the last thing they want to do right after being attacked,” which is why only one-third end up filing a police report. Esparza not reporting her rape to law enforcement is in no way an indicator that the rape did not happen. Rape has a false reporting rate of only 2%, and Esparza’s behavior at the time (“shutting down”) is consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and disassociation as a coping mechanism after years of childhood sexual abuse.

As a side note, challenges to Esparza’s rape claim are primarily coming from those who are arguing for her guilt in the murder, but this is inherently contradictory because the revenge motive evaporates without the rape.

Others question why Esparza did not come forward to report the crime once she relocated to Europe. She was asked this question at a recent press conference where she clarified that Van and his friends also directed threats at her family who still reside in Orange County. She lived in fear of Van, Kody Tran, and Gries (a.k.a., “Jailbird”) for years: “All I knew is that I wanted to survive.” Esparza was unwilling to jeopardize her family’s safety, an especially prudent choice considering the brutality of Ramirez’s murder and Tran’s violent record (up until he committed suicide in 2012 as a SWAT team surrounded his estranged wife’s home that he had broken into).

The Betrayal:  “Shield her from the pain of this experience.”

Esparza’s story is a classic story of institutional betrayal. She was betrayed by her family when they ignored her father’s sexual abuse. She was betrayed by college officials who failed to properly and legally respond to her rape (which is still a problem today, hence the new national campus sexual assault movement). Now she is being betrayed by a legal institution that is sending a chilling message to survivors that they will not be believed.

The inconceivably traumatic events in Esparza’s life quieted in the last decade. She completed her Ph.D., married acclaimed neurobiologist Jorge Mancillas, landed a job in Geneva and bought a home in a neighboring French town. In 2009, her daughter Arianna was born. Esparza was “filled with hope, thinking of how different her life would be to mine…. After years of hard work, I was now poised to pass on to my daughter everything I had achieved.” As they placed Esparza in handcuffs yesterday, she implored her husband to “take care of our daughter Arianna and to shield her from the pain of this experience.”

In her professional biography, Dr. Esparza writes that she lives by the Chinese proverb, “Keep a green bough in your heart, and the singing bird will come.” As she sustains her green bough in the face of grave injustice, we must all be her chorus of singing birds.

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Caroline Heldman is the Chair of the Politics Department at Occidental College and a co-founder of the Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition (OSAC). She is also the lead complainant on the Clery and Title IX complaints filed against Occidental College on April 1, 2013 and April 18, 2013, respectively. Dr. Heldman is one of eleven people that reporter Jason Felch used to source his stories on Occidental College’s ongoing issues with sexual assault/rape. She was the primary source for Felch’s December 7, 2013 article asserting that Occidental College failed to report 27 cases of sexual assault/rape in 2012.  

The Retraction

On March 14, 2014, The Los Angeles Times issued a retraction of an article in which reporter Jason Felch stated that Occidental College failed to disclose 27 sexual assaults in its 2012 Annual Security Report (ASR). The retraction states that “Occidental representatives approached The Times early this month to seek a correction. Documents reviewed by The Times this week show that the 27 incidents did not fall under the law’s disclosure requirements for a variety of reasons.”

However, The Los Angeles Times did not perform due diligence in their investigation of the numbers, and they never should have issued a retraction. Felch had incontrovertible evidence that the College did not include anonymous cases in their 2012 ASR and had verification that the college could not lawfully account for 27 missing cases.

Given the evidence, The Times should issue a mea culpa, and especially after Occidental spokesperson Jim Tranquada recently admitted to the LA Weekly that Dean of Students Barbara Avery ignored federal Clery reporting requirements that year. “In 2012, out of concern for student confidentiality, the Dean of Students office did not always communicate to Campus Safety when a student initiated the sexual-misconduct process or otherwise reported a sexual assault.”

Due to the complexities involved, it is easy to see how institutions are able to dissemble with data. To really understand how the College and The Times have failed in their duties, we must pay close attention to several key dimensions: the specific demands of the Clery Act, the multiple and contradictory reporting numbers given by College officials, and the multiple and contradictory reasons provided for the reporting gap.

The Clery Act

The Clery Act was passed in 1990 in response to the rape and murder of Lehigh University student Jeanne Clery. Clery is intended to increase transparency about crime on and around campus, but many schools continue to distort their crime numbers.

Clery’s two primary reporting documents are the Daily Crime Log and the Annual Security Report (ASR). The ASR is published on October 1^st of each year, and it includes crimes reported during the previous calendar year (January – December), regardless of when the crime occurred. The ASR includes statistics on eight crimes — homicide, sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson, and hate crimes.

Schools are only required to report incidents that occur within the Clery reporting area, which includes the campus proper, property immediately adjacent to campus, and non-adjacent property that the campus owns or controls (e.g., fraternity houses).

For Clery, reports of a crime must be included in the daily crime log and the ASR, even if a formal complaint or police report is never filed, and even if the crime is not upheld in an adjudication proceeding. Additionally, student privacy laws cannot be used to circumvent Clery reporting requirements. Lastly, Occidental College is required to include reports of sexual assault/rape it receives through its anonymous reporting form if the crime occurred within the Clery reporting area.

The Number 27

In December, 2013, Felch wrote a story claiming that he had uncovered “27 additional sexual assault allegations made in 2012 that have not been disclosed. Dozens more may have been ignored by the dean of students’ office since 2009 because they were made anonymously, records and interviews showed.”

How did Felch arrive at the number 27?

He subtracted 7 (cases reported in the 2012 ASR) from 34 (cases reported by the Dean of Students to have occurred in 2012).

So the key number here is 34. This number was taken from the federal Clery complaint that we filed on behalf of nearly forty Occidental students, faculty, and staff on April 1, 2013 (a full eight months before Felch began an “inappropriate relationship” with one of his eleven Oxy sources that led to his firing).

Our federal complaint included this number because Dean of Students Barbara Avery stated that her office had received 34 complaints of sexual assault/rape in 2012 during three official meetings with the Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition on this issue:

• Monday, May 21, 2012, 10 a.m. (Barbara Avery, Caroline Heldman, Danielle Dirks, six administrators, and three students were in attendance.)

• Thursday, September 27, 2012, 3 p.m. (Barbara Avery, Caroline Heldman, Danielle Dirks, and the Dean of Faculty were in attendance.)

• Friday, October 19, 2012, 3 p.m. (Barbara Avery, Caroline Heldman, Danielle Dirks, and the Title IX Coordinator were in attendance.)

During the first meeting where the Dean reported the 34 cases (May, 2012), Avery asked us (the Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition) to revise the sexual assault policy because her office was “buried” under the 34. Avery clarified in this meeting that she was referencing cases that had come in since January, which made this statistic even more staggering because the reporting year was not yet half over. And there was never any question that the 34 referred to sexual assault/rape cases since we were there to discuss this specific crime, not motor vehicle theft or arson or cyber harassment.

During the second meeting where the Dean discussed the 34 cases (September, 2012), Avery confirmed that her office had received 34 reports of sexual assault/rape “that year.” When we pressed her about why this number did not match the crime log, she replied that only 13 of the 34 had gone to adjudication, suggesting that only formal complaints need to be reported (a violation of Clery reporting requirements). The College has since established that Dean Avery did not lawfully report these cases in 2012 (see above).

During the third meeting where the Dean discussed 34 cases (October, 2012), we again pressed her about the inexplicable gap. Avery and the Title IX Coordinator gave two concrete reasons for the gap: 10 anonymous reports that were not included in the ASR (a blatant violation of Clery), and two cases involving Oxy students that occurred at other campuses. When I noted that the numbers still did not add up, the Title IX Coordinator made a vague reference to “non-sexual cases.” In other words, the Deans were not able to lawfully explain the gap, they admitted to violating Clery by excluding anonymous cases, and they provided a set of “explanations” that differed from those that would later be given to the Los Angeles Times (see below).

We repeated the number 34 in about a dozen private and public meetings in 2012 and 2013, including a campus-wide informational session on October 25, 2012 with President Jonathan Veitch in attendance and the Faculty Meeting on November 13, 2013 where this number was entered into the meeting minutes. The number 34 was common knowledge on campus, and not a single administrator ever challenged it in a year and a half.

A few days ago, college spokesperson Jim Tranquada told the LA Weekly that Dean Avery was “speaking informally” when she repeatedly reported 34 cases, despite the fact that Avery presented this statistic in formal meetings on sexual assault/rape in her professional capacity as the head of the office that receives these complaints. Tranquada also responded that Avery was referring to the 2011/12 school year, not the 2012 calendar year, but even if this were the case, it still does not add up since the total number of cases reported in 2011 (11) and 2012 (7) equals 18 – far short of the 34.

Felch’s Due Diligence

Jason Felch worked for nearly two months on his December 7, 2013 story on the 27 cases. He spoke with sources from the federal complaints who confirmed that Dean Avery could not legally account for the 27-case gap. The more evidence we provided, the more Felch seemed convinced that the College was purposefully covering up cases. Furthermore, Felch contacted Tranquada on multiple occasions for clarification on whether anonymous reports were included in the 2012 ASR, as documented in Felch’s statement of March 19, 2013:

Regarding the Dec 7th story, I began seeking information and comment from Occidental on Oct. 14th. Suspecting the 27 cases may not have been disclosed because they were reported anonymously, I wrote the college spokesman Jim Tranquada on Oct. 14th: “I’d like some details on Oxy’s sexual violence anonymous reporting form. When was the system first put in place? Who administers the system? What is the process for including reports submitted here into the Clery data? Has that process changed in recent years? In addition, please provide me with a copy of all data submitted through the form for the past five years, excluding the name of the accused. Finally, has this data been accurately reported in Clery Act reports in years past?”

On Oct 18, I received the following statement from Tranquada: “Given the two investigations currently underway by the Department of Education, we believe our students will be best served by the conclusions reached through these comprehensive, thorough, and public reviews. In the meantime, Occidental continues to move ahead with its efforts to improve its policies and procedures to ensure the College is a national leader in dealing with sexual misconduct.” I immediately followed up with another email: “Jim, my understanding is that none of the complaints filed through the college’s anonymous reporting form were being included in Clery reports. This oversight was discovered in the spring of 2013. So: How many reports have been made through the anonymous reporting page since the page was created in 2009 (the date of creation you provided in our conversation today)? Were all of those reports included in Occidental’s annual Clery reports in a timely way?” His reply: “Our statement will have to stand as is.”

I continued to press Tranquada during October and November, including the claim made in the federal Clery complaint that the Dean of Students’ office had received 34 reports of sexual assaults in 2012, while Occidental only reported 7 of them. Tranquada said he had not seen the federal complaint and could not comment beyond his earlier statement. He requested a copy of the confidential complaint and I declined. Instead, I described the story in detail and requested interviews with three administrators who would be named in the story. He declined to provide any of them, and they did not return calls to home and work over several weeks. When pressed repeatedly on and off the record about the discrepancy in Occidental’s reported statistics, Tranquada conceded the college had made reporting errors, without specifying what they were. To reflect this admission, he agreed to be quoted saying, “Clery reporting is clearly an area where we need to improve.”

Felch was right to focus on missing anonymous reports since the Deans admitted they excluded these cases during our October 19, 2013 meeting. Also, the College had previously acknowledged that they failed to report 19 anonymous cases in their 2010 ASR to a Huffington Post reporter. Campus Safety Director Holly Nieto was quoted in Felch’s story saying that a rapid jump in sexual assault reports in the daily crime log in 2013 “came from an anonymous reporting form that we — the institution, bigger than me — now understand need to be included in our stats. So we caught up, if you will.”

Zero Anonymous Reports in 2012

Setting aside Dean Avery’s repeated report of 34 cases for a moment, our federal complaint includes hard evidence that Occidental College did not report a single anonymous case in 2012, evidence that I shared with Felch last fall. The 2012 ASR includes a total of 7 cases, and our federal complaint includes a total of 7 students who reported this crime in person to the Dean of Student’s office that year. This means that the 2012 ASR includes zero cases from the anonymous reporting system in 2012.

(As an aside, it is highly unlikely that our federal complaints would include all of the assaults/rapes that occurred on campus in 2012 since we only included cases that were woefully mishandled. If the College’s ASR number is accurate, this means that 100% of survivors reported that administrators mishandled their case in 2012.)

So just how many anonymous cases did the College fail to report in 2012? We cannot know for sure since the College refuses to release this information, but we can generate an estimate based on a December 19, 2013 email from Jim Tranquada that the College averages “between 5-6 online anonymous reports per month.” Using unrealistically conservative assumptions (5 reports per month during the 8 months students are on campus, and assuming that only half occurred within the reporting area), we can confidently estimate that College failed to report at least 20 anonymous cases in their 2012 ASR.

The Retraction

Last month, Oxy representatives from the crisis management PR firm G.F. Bunting met twice with Los Angeles Times editor Davan Maharaj. (President Veitch hired Bunting because of the firm’s professional ties to The Times and personal ties to Felch. Senior Executive Ralph Frammolino is Felch’s co-author and arch-enemy due to a contract dispute.) Bunting representatives convinced Maharaj that the College was not legally required to disclose any of the 27 cases to the public. It remains a mystery as to why they came forward now with information that the College has had for nearly two years but has repeatedly refused to share with others.

College representatives presented a new set of explanations for the gap — 18 involved sexual misconduct but not sexual battery, assault, or rape; 6 occurred off-campus; and 3 cases had already been reported in the 2011 ASR. They made no mention of the missing anonymous cases. The College has refused to release the PowerPoint presentation to reporters and the Oxy community, even to a committee that President Veitch established to improve sexual assault issues.

A week after The Times’ retraction, a College representative furnished a fourth, contradictory explanation for the gap — that some of the 27 cases were explained away because the adjudication process found them to be consensual. This criterion is a clear violation of Clery reporting requirements.

So how did Occidental representatives convince the leadership of The Los Angeles Times to issue such a drastic response to Felch’s story given that the numbers do not add up? The red herring revelation of Felch’s “inappropriate relationship” with an Oxy source undoubtedly backed Maharaj into a corner. The relationship is a red herring because the source in question was one of 11 sources, and any information she provided was duplicative of the federal complaints and other sources. I advised Maharaj that he had been misled about the numbers in a March 17, 2014 email, to which he never replied. But beyond the relationship, it is apparent that Oxy representatives played upon ignorance of Clery reporting requirements. For example, when faculty asked what information was provided to The Los Angeles Times, President Jonathan Veitch claimed that “people” were confusing “Clery reportable numbers” and “Title IX reportable numbers.” There is no such thing as “Title IX reportable numbers.”

In conclusion to a story that is far from over, Occidental College administrators have given conflicting explanations for the 27-case gap in the 2012 ASR, and some of their explanations are blatant violations of federal Clery reporting requirements. Furthermore, we have hard evidence that the 2012 ASR does not include a single anonymous report. Oxy under-reported its 2012 sexual assault/rape numbers, and The Los Angeles Times should not have issued its retraction. And if the numbers played any role in Felch’s firing, The Times has an ethical obligation to reconsider this decision as well.

Related Stories

Los Angeles Times Retraction and Firing of Jason Felch

Los Angeles Times and Its Fired Investigative Reporter: A Critical Look

Jason Felch Statement, and a Clarification on Occidental College

Inside the Sexual Assault Civil War at Occidental College

Break-Ins and Cover-Ups at Occidental College? LA Times’ Felch Firing Raises More Questions

Occidental Controversy Intensifies with Allegations against Longtime Athletic Trainer

This post was written by my dear friend and sister, Kathleen Heldman.

I am a runner and an avid rock climber. I practice yoga every day and surf when I can. I live to be moving, working, organizing, and getting stuff done.  I don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs.  I am a vegetarian who eats mostly organic, locally grown food. I do my yearly pap smears and physicals. I am watchful of my body and take care of myself, and, according to societal standards, I am a very healthy person.

I nearly died this past weekend from a blood clot the doctors found lodged in my lungs (a pulmonary embolism).  I have very few risk factors for this ailment, and my doctor concluded that this blood clot was caused by my use of the Nuva Ring birth control device.

I am in my late 30s, when I decide to go on hormonal birth control a little over a year ago,  I discussed the risk factors with my doctor. She assured me that this product releases a low dose of estrogen and thus has fewer side effects than other forms of birth control. My husband and I read even the fine print of the drug pamphlet, and we concluded that I would be safe because I do not smoke.

We should have taken an extra step and googled “Nuva Ring side effects” or “Nuva Ring lawsuits” to discover the many articles on the this dangerous product. Pharmaceutical company Merck just settled a $100 million class action lawsuit by Nuva Ring users and grieving family members of those who died from blood clots in the prime of their lives. A lot of these women were in their 20s with no risk factors for blood clots, other than the Nuva Ring. One was 20-year-old elite athlete Megan Henry who never made it to the Sochi Olympics because of ten blood clots in her arteries and lungs. She asked her doctor, “could it be the Nuva Ring?” He replied, “absolutely not.”

The Nuva Ring is riskier than first generation daily birth control pills that most women have grown accustomed to, and far more deadly. I am shocked that it is still on the market, but when Merck is making about $700 Million in one year on a product for which they settled a class action for $100 million, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Thousands of people have had their lives derailed or taken prematurely by blood clots from the Nuva Ring. My clot was very painful and required three days in the hospital, but I am one of the lucky ones. I am alive and can breathe freely again, but I will be on dangerous blood thinners for at least the next six months and will have to avoid many of my favorite activities, like rock climbing.

Please warn the women in your life that the Nuva Ring is dangerous, and join efforts to increase awareness about its potentially lethal effects.

The Department of Education (ED) made headlines on May 1 when they published a list of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for their handling of sexual violence on campus, a number that has since gone up to 63. This list has been profoundly misinterpreted by many. Instead of avoiding the schools on this list, parents should send their students to these institutions because this is where the conversation is taking place.

My four-part thesis for this post is simple:

(1) Every school has a sexual assault problem;

(2) While some schools handle it better than others, no school handles it well due to a lack of evidence-based best practices;

(3) Schools under investigation by the ED are forced to pay more attention to sexual assault than other schools; and

(4) Schools on the ED’s list are there because of student activism, activism that has put this issue on the national agenda.

Ignore the glossy brochures and passionate assurances from college presidents that students are safe on their particular campus. They are not. About 1-in-5 female and 1-in-33 male students at co-ed, residential schools will face an attempted or completed sexual assault or rape during their time at college. Going to college is a risk factor for rape, and the only way these statistics will change is if institutions orchestrate a drastic change in campus rape culture. No school has figured out how to effectively do this. If they had, it would have made headlines.

Virtually all campuses have a rape-prone culture, but no campus has a rape-free culture. The Campus SaVE Act that went into effect this year (!) is the first law that requires schools to actively prevent sexual assault/rape through programming and training. And while the weight of the Obama Administration is behind this issue, the first report from the White House Task Force reads more like a wish list for future research rather than a best practices manual. In other words, even though school administrators are now required to allocate resources and develop mechanisms to shift campus culture, they lack the knowledge and tools to do so. Bystander intervention programs are a good start, but they are not enough.

The other part of the campus safety equation is how schools respond to survivors after they report their experiences. The ED’s list is almost entirely the result of survivor activists filing federal complaints after experiencing issues with the reporting, adjudication, and sanctioning process at their school. Some of these cases are more egregious than others — especially those at the more politically powerful, brand-obsessed Ivies – but every school has issues handling these cases. Survivors from different institutions across the country report similar problems, and only a fraction of them have actually filed complaints. Campus sexual assault legislation has been on the books since 1990, but only one-third of schools are in compliance with federal law. A 2005 Department of Justice study found that fewer than 1% of schools had “promising practices” for addressing sexual assault/rape (based on a representative sample of schools, using a 29-point measure of “promising practices”).

Even the best case scenario of ample research funding, only a moderate backlash, and institutional commitment to student safety over brand preservation, still puts us about a decade away from having best practices in place. And the early signs are not promising. Many college presidents are retaining crisis management lawyers to institute cosmetic changes that look great in the glossy brochures instead of making hard changes to get to a rape-free campus. This is why it is so important to have a vocal student body and an active faculty to maintain internal pressure for change.

To sum up, the ED’s list of schools is not a “worst offenders” list. It is a list of schools where survivors are more active and vocal. Parents should know that every school has issues preventing and handling sexual assault/rape and that no school is forthcoming about their problems. If I were sending a daughter or son off the college, I would encourage them to select a school that is being closely scrutinized by the ED, where campus dialogue makes students more aware of the problem, and where survivors feel empowered to hold their institution accountable.

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Dr. Heldman is the lead complainant on the Title IX complaint against Occidental College. She has previously written about the new anti-rape movement on college campuses. 

By Caroline Heldman & Baillee Brown

In the past year, survivor activists and allies have effectively put sexual violence on the national agenda, spurring White House, congressional, and state-level policy action. Movement leaders have worked tirelessly to make this happen, namely, Wendy Murphy, Alexandra Brodsky, Wagatwe Wanjuki, Annie E. Clark, Laura Dunn, Andrea Pino, S. Daniel Carter, and Dana Bolger. These leaders have created awareness and momentum through hands-on survivor assistance, lobbying, petitions, and the creation of new organizations (e.g., Know Your IX, End Rape on Campus, and SurvJustice). But this is not the first time activists have organized around issues of sexual violence in the U.S. Current efforts are the fourth peak of organized work that started over a century ago. We briefly describe the first three peaks in this blog post.

President Obama Creates a New Task Force to Address Campus Rape, 2014

The First Peak

“The history of the rape crisis movement in the United States is also a history of the struggle of African American women against racism and sexism” (Greensite, 2009). The first peak of organized activism occurred after the Civil War. During slavery, black women were often at the mercy of white men since the rape of slaves was both common and legal, and many masters raped slaves to produce more slaves. An estimated three-fourths of black Americans in the U.S. today are descendants of at least one white ancestor, including First Lady Michelle Obama. In spite of President Lincoln’s prohibition against rape during the war, soldiers raped women of all races across the South, but especially black women. “Just as the rape of white women implied that Southern men were unable to protect their mothers, wives and daughters, the rape of slave women told whites they could no longer protect their property” (Feimster, 2013).

After the war, the industrializing North developed a modern criminal justice system, but in the South, vigilantism was used as informal law enforcement to maintain former slave hierarchies. With slavery outlawed, many white men reestablished racial control over black men through lynching and over black women through rape. Between 1882 and 1946, approximately 5,000 African-Americans (mostly men) were lynched, and countless women were raped. The Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877 was particularly violent when the Ku Klux Klan and other terror organizations raped black women and burned black homes and churches with alarming regularity.

The earliest organized anti-rape efforts can be traced back to 1866 when a group of African-American women testified before Congress that a white mob had perpetrated gang rapes during the Memphis Riot. This riot took place over three days during which time white policemen and civilians rampaged through black neighborhoods, injuring over 100 African-Americans, killing 46, and raping at least five black women. Seventeen-year-old Lucy Smith testified that seven white men, including two police officers, demanded dinner before raping her and her elderly, crippled friend, Frances Smith. Both women (along with others) testified before congress, but in the end, their perpetrators were not punished. In the 1890s, Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams and other activists formed Black Women’s Clubs in response to this unceasing post-war sexual violence. Their work laid the groundwork for future organized activism against different forms of violence.

Ida B. Wells

The Second Peak

The second peak of activism led up to the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks was a leading anti-rape activist a decade before she refused to sit at the back of a city bus. In 1944, she formed the Committee for Equal Justice to fight sexual violence against women. She and other activists were galvanized by the experience of Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old mother who was raped by six armed, white men on her way home from church. Activists also fought back when 15-year-old Flossie Hardman was raped by her boss, the owner of a grocery store. When he was found “not guilty” after five minutes of jury deliberation, African-American shoppers put him out of business with a boycott. According to historian Danielle McGuire, these anti-rape efforts were pivotal in launching the Civil Rights Movement.

Rosa Parks

The Third Peak

White feminists joined anti-rape efforts in force in the 1960s, and this new coalitional movement effectively raised public awareness of the issue. “The plight of Inez Garcia in 1974, Joanne Little in 1975, Yvonne Wanrow in 1976, and Dessie Woods in 1976, all victims of rape or assault who fought back, killed their assailants, and were imprisoned, brought the issue of rape into political organizations that had not historically focused on rape” (Greensite, 2009). The first rape crisis centers opened in 1972, and the Feminist Alliance Against Rape (FAAR) was formed in 1974. In 1975, Susan Brownmiller published Against Our Will acknowledging the systemic role of rape in maintaining the social order, a conclusion African-American activists had arrived at a century earlier. Activists organized consciousness raising groups and speak-outs, and successfully lobbied to make it illegal to rape one’s spouse and to consider a survivor’s previous sexual activities during trial. They also implemented more equitable legal definitions of “rape” and better enforcement of rape laws, and they vastly expanded governmental support for prevention. Their sustained efforts culminated in passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994, the first national law requiring law enforcement to treat gender violence as a crime rather than a private family matter. Then-Senator Joe Biden led the charge to pass VAWA, and the law was reauthorized in 2000, 2005, and again in 2013 over Republican opposition to extended protections for Native American, gay, lesbian, and transgender survivors.

March Into the National Women’s Conference, 1977

The first anti-rape efforts on college campuses also started during the third peak. Campus activists collaborated with community rape crisis centers to provide advocacy, support services, and self-defense workshops. Students effectively lobbied for the first campus-based rape crisis center at the University of Maryland in 1972, a women’s studies program and rape crisis center at the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, and campus-wide prevention programs for the University of California system in 1976. Campus rape received media attention for the first time in 1985 when Ms. Magazine published “Date Rape: A Campus Epidemic,” featuring the groundbreaking research of Dr. Mary Koss. Most Americans still conceived of rape as an act perpetrated by strangers, but Koss’ three-year study of over 7,000 students at 35 schools showed that most sexual assault is committed by an acquaintance or friend. In 1988, Robin Warshaw published I Never Called It Rape, a book with personal stories that confirmed Koss’ data-driven findings. The Clery Act was passed by congress in 1990 that requires colleges and universities to report rape and other crimes in a daily crime log and an annual report. Prevention programs were established on many campuses during the third peak, including annual events such as Take Back the Night, the Clothesline Project, The Vagina Monologues, and Denim Day USA.

The Fourth Peak

The fourth (contemporary) peak of anti-rape activism has once again put sexual violence on the national agenda. This peak was enabled by attorney Wendy Murphy’s expansion of Title IX, the rise of social media allowing for networked activism, and the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter from the Department of Education. Activists today are using powerful new tools — Title IX and Clery complaints, group lawsuits, and social media campaigns. These efforts are the latest in the long struggle against sexual violence that African-American women initiated more than a century ago.

Ed Act Now Rally, Washington, D.C., 2013

Dr. Heldman is the lead complainant on the Title IX complaint against Occidental College. She has previously published on the new anti-rape movement on college campuses. 

Baillee Brown is a Politics senior at Occidental College. 

By Caroline Heldman and Baillee Brown. Crossposted at Ms. Blog

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In the past two years, anti-rape activists have put campus sexual assault on the national policy agenda—but in recent months, the backlash against these efforts has intensified. A band of political conservatives are now openly challenging the existence of the campus rape epidemic and denigrating survivors, including talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham, columnists George Will, Jay Ambrose, Cathy Young and Naomi Schaefer Riley, representatives from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the American Enterprise Institute, and many others. This is not the first time conservatives have orchestrated a backlash against anti-violence efforts on college campuses.

What is happening today is a tired re-enactment of the backlash that started in 1985 with the publication of “Date Rape: A Campus Epidemic” in Ms. The article reported on Dr. Mary Koss’s three-year study of more than 7,000 students at 35 schools that found sexual assault was common and mostly committed by acquaintances and friends. Koss’s groundbreaking work made “date rape” a part of the national dialogue, but it also inspired a tremendous backlash from men’s rights activists (MRAs), Playboy and others over whether or not this type of sexual assault constituted “real rape.” The backlash was so intense, in fact, that in 1994, Katie Roiphe, an undergraduate English major with no social science training, garnered a book contract and national attention for her anti-date-rape tome, The Morning After: Fear, Feminism, and Sex. In it, Roiphe dismisses Koss’s data based on a gross misunderstanding of basic statistics, and clings to the idea that victims of date rape are partially to blame because of their drug and alcohol intake. This concerted effort by conservatives effectively dampened public outrage and action around the issue.

Much like the backlash of the 1980s and ’90s, today’s rape apologia comes in four distinct, but interconnected, forms: denying the problem exists, blaming the victim, vilifying whistleblowers and turning perpetrators into victims. Below, we outline the ways in which conservative backlashers are attempting to undermine the work of anti-rape activists—and, thankfully, how they’re failing.

Rape Truthers

The most popular backlash tactic is to challenge the data. “Rape truthers,” as we like to call them, criticize the sample selection and response rate of the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) study, the basis for the White House statistic that 1 in 5 college women face attempted or completed sexual assault. What these rape truthers fail to mention is that the CSA figures are almost the same as a 2007 Medical University of South Carolina study, a 2010 Centers for Disease Control study and a 2010 Harvard School of Public Health study, all of which used different methodologies. The stat also dates back three decades to Koss’s Sexual Experiences Survey.

Other rape truthers challenge the 1 in 5 statistic because they do not think that “incapacitated sexual assault” is “real rape.” Conservative columnist Cathy Young writes that “a far better solution would be to draw a clear line between forced sex (by violence, threats or incapacitation) and unwanted sex due to alcohol-impaired judgment, miscommunication or verbal pressure.” Naomi Schafer Riley states that “there’s been no epidemic of sexual assault but instead a preponderance of sexual encounters fueled by bad judgment and free-flowing alcohol.” These ideas sound oddly similar to men’s rights activist Warren Farrell‘s assertion in the 1990s that “date rape” was “buyer’s remorse.” Today, MRAs are challenging the definition of rape, taking to the streets to plaster posters with “just because you regret a one night stand doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual” and targeting the anonymous rape reporting systems at Occidental College and Dartmouth College.

The problem with the “real rape” argument is that it ignores state law. All 50 states have laws that say an incapacitated party cannot consent to sex, with some variations on the definition of “incapacitation.” For example, “incapacitation” in Colorado is defined as being “physically helpless,” “unconscious, asleep, or otherwise unable to indicate willingness to act,” or “substantially impaired from any drug or intoxicant.” Florida defines “incapacitation” as “mentally incapacitated” or “temporarily incapable of appraising or controlling a person’s own conduct due to the influence of a narcotic, anesthetic, or intoxicating substance administered without his or her consent or due to any other act committed upon that person without his or her consent.”

Victim Blamers

There are many outspoken conservatives we’d consider “victim blamers”—including Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe— who place the onus on young women to prevent rape in ways that are both damaging and distracting. For example, on October 15, Yoffe penned a piece entitled, “The Best Rape Prevention: Tell College Women to Stop Getting Drunk.” Beyond blaming survivors, Yoffe inaccurately classified rape as a drunken miscommunication problem instead of a serial rape problem. Dr. David Lisak’s research on undetected rapists found that just 4 percent of young male students commit nine out of 10 rapes on college campuses, with an average of six rapes each over the course of their college careers. Serial campus rapists’ principal weapon is alcohol, and they are able to hide in plain sight within a male-dominated party culture where men provide the venues, parties and drinks to women, often with the explicit purpose of hooking up. Perpetuating the misconception that raping a drunk woman isn’t “real rape” simply emboldens college rapists to continue to use their weapon of choice—alcohol—with full license and impunity. Victim blamers also tend to ignore the overwhelming evidence that shows rapists rape sober women, too.

Silencers

Some backlashers are what we call “silencers”—those who go after survivors who speak up. On June 6, 2014, Washington Post writer George Will published a column arguing  that being a rape survivor is a “coveted status” that “confers privileges,” and implied that those who report rape are “delusional.” Other silencers have levied brutal attacks against survivors by encouraging MRAs to troll their social media profiles and publishing private documents with revealing personal details. In the spring, A Voice for Men, a website affiliated with original backlasher Warren Farrell, published an illegally obtained copy of a Title IX complaint against Emerson College that includes deeply private details about several sexual assaults/rapes. The website included the names of the survivors but redacted the names of all of the alleged rapists, effectively scaring future survivors from filing complaints. This summer, FIRE published lawsuit documents filed by a student rapist expelled from Occidental that included the names of witnesses in the case. One witness spoke to The Huffington Post about the silencing effect of online harassment: “Future witnesses might not step forward or tell the whole truth because they do not want their friends and family—let alone the world—to know that they had been drinking or smoking the night of an incident, all important pieces to a testimony.”

Doublespeakers

The last major tactic of the backlash comes from “doublespeakers” who frame perpetrators as victims. Doublespeakers argue that alleged rapists are the real victims because they are seen as “guilty until proven innocent,” and the standard of evidence in campus proceedings is lower than a court of law (it is, it should be and it is widely misunderstood). Doublespeakers also argue that men are demonized by feminists on college campuses and plagued by false rape reports. This push to turn perpetrators into victims has emboldened rapists, and a growing number are suing the institutions that expelled them. In truth, most perpetrators are treated quite well on campuses because they are rarely caught, and when they face adjudication, few receive real sanctions. Only 12 percent of sexual assaults are reported to authorities, and of those that are reported, about half are found responsible. Of those rapists found responsible, just 10 to 25 percent are expelled. False reporting is almost non-existent: men are 32 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be falsely accused of rape. In other words, given low rates of false reporting, reporting in general, findings of responsibility, and meaningful sanctions, fewer than 2 percent of campus rapists are held responsible for their actions.

Will the Backlash Silence Activists?

The backlash will not be as effective this time around due to the rise of social media, the feminist blogosphere and support from the White House. The general public is better informed about the causes and consequences of sexual assault, and while rape myths persist, they can now be debunked in real time by experts. For example, Yoffe’s victim-blaming piece inspired instant and searing renouncements from Jezebel, Feministing, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, and even Slate’s own Amanda Hess. Another example was the rapid response from CNN, Salon, U.S. News & World Report, and other major outlets condemning  George Will’s comments. The editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dropped Will’s syndicated column and issued an apology stating that the piece was “offensive and inaccurate.” Of course backlashers can also reach wider audiences with social media, sometimes with dire consequences, but with a vast network of thoughtful commentators and independent fact-checking websites, truth has a better chance of winning out than the rape truthers, victim blamers, silencers and doublespeakers.

Crossposted at Ms. Blog.

Bloomberg News took the campus sexual assault backlash to a new low last week with a piece describing how “hook-up culture” is on the decline at elite colleges now that there’s a heightened awareness of sexual assault on campuses. The focus of the article is the “burden” male students carry as a result of new interest in the campus rape epidemic. So what is the burden that is so heavy it warrants an entire article?

• Having to be more cautious about gauging the interest of a romantic pursuit
• Having to avoid making romantic pursuits “feel uncomfortable”
• Having to learn what constitutes consent
• Having to be more cautious about making decisions while drunk
• Having to be more cognizant of how social media comments may appear to others

In other words, the new campus anti-rape movement has made male students more thoughtful and less predatory, but journalist John Lauerman and former Bloomberg intern Jennifer Surane frame this in negative terms.

The authors indulge in gross victim-blaming throughout the piece and reinforce the notion that women are responsible for not getting raped. One example is this lengthy quote from Chris Herries, a 22-year-old Stanford student:

Some men feel that too much responsibility for preventing sexual assault has been put on their shoulders. While everyone condemns sexual assault, there seems to be an assumption among female students that they shouldn’t have to protect themselves by avoiding drunkenness and other risky behaviors. Do I deserve to have my bike stolen if I leave it unlocked on the quad? We have to encourage people not to take on undue risk.

Herries could not have said it more clearly—women who get drunk or engage in other “risky” behaviors “deserve” to be raped—and the authors made the decision to print this without exposing it as a rape myth.

Lauerman and Surane also mischaracterize the campus rape epidemic as a muddy miscommunication problem, effectively portraying rape as difficult for men to avoid. For example, in a passage describing a male student having to think twice about whether he should offer a coed a beer, they use this quote from a 20-year-old economics major: “I don’t want to look like a predator … It’s a little bit of a blurred line.”

In case there was any doubt, Lauerman and Surane wrap up their piece by overtly portraying male college students as victims. In a section titled “Witch Hunt,” they quote liberally from William Pollack, a Harvard psychologist and head of the Centers for Men and Young Men: “While sexual assault is undoubtedly a real problem, heightened attention in the media has created a ‘witch-hunt’ environment. Most males would never do anything to harm a young woman. We’re starting to scare the heck out of the wrong people.”

Articles that perpetuate rape myths matter because they shape public opinion, and this is not Lauerman’s first time making harmful claims. He previously wrote about the “hardships” men face when they are found responsible for rape on campus, arguing that alleged male perpetrators face bias in campus adjudication processes (despite overwhelming bias in the opposite direction that leads to about 2 percent of campus rapists being held accountable). I’ve worked with Lauerman in the past but stopped after getting into an argument over whether or not opening an article about a survivor by saying she was drunk framed the assault in victim-blaming terms. When I told him the feminist blogosphere would call him out on it, he had a good long laugh. I hope that the feminist blogosphere has the last laugh by holding Lauerman and other irresponsible reporters responsible for promoting dangerous rape myths.

By Caroline Heldman and Baillee Brown, crossposted at Ms. Blog.

One in five women and 6 percent of men will face sexual assault/rape during their time in college. But no college in the U.S. has come up with a plan to effectively shift rape culture on their campus. It’s not an impossible task, but it is fraught with competing political and economic pressures. Below, we share ways to effectively shift rape culture on college campuses, and expose how schools benefit from not shifting this culture.

Rape culture describes a society in which rape is common and normalized by societal attitudes and practices. In the U.S., rape is tacitly condoned through denial of the rape epidemic, denial of the harms of rape, not considering rape a “real” crime, victim-blaming, trivializing rape, and the normalization of female sexual objectification and rape eroticization in pop culture.

While the cultural knowledge, agreement and coordination it would require to shift rape culture will not materialize anytime soon, campuses can shift away from rape culture and better protect students by doing four things:

1) Establish a clear definition of consent.

Many schools have moved away from a verbal consent standard in favor of a verbal or physical consent standard, but physical consent is based on non-verbal cues that are often misread, the reading of which is particularly impaired by alcohol, and that some students on the autism spectrum cannot send or receive in an accurate way. If campus administrators cannot provide a clear definition and examples of “non-verbal consent,” then students cannot be asked to use this as the basis for determining whether sexual activities are consensual.

Another way consent has been clarified is by moving from a “no means no” standard to a “yes means yes” standard. California recently passed a “yes means yes” law requiring that parties give affirmative consent prior to engaging in sexual activities. According to this new law, “Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.” This law effectively shifts the burden from survivors—who previously had to prove that they did not consent—to both parties proving they did consent, a clearer basis for determining whether a rape has occurred.

2) Educate students about sexual violence laws.

Rape culture involves a spectrum of violence, ranging from sexual harassment and sexual battery to sexual assault and rape. A key step in shifting campus rape culture is to educate students about what constitutes each form of sexual violence under state and federal law.

3) Send a clear message that sexual violence of any kind will not be tolerated on campus.

When students come to campus, most of them bring nearly two decades of attitudinal baggage that sexual violence is normal and is not really that bad. These beliefs are reinforced at campus functions that are rife with condoned sexual violence: “surprise” grinding at dances; non-consensual grabbing and fondling at parties; pledging and party rituals that include sexual battery and assault, etc. Survivor and federal complainant Rebecca Cooper notes that sexual violence is so commonplace that it is “widely regarded as a right of passage from high school to college.” To shift rape culture, officials have to send the clear message that no form of sexual violence will be tolerated on campus, or at campus-related or student events.

4) Establish, publish and enforce strong sanctions for sexual violence on campus.

All schools have a sanctioning scheme for sexual violence based on the type of offense and the perpetrator’s previous offenses. However, almost no schools publish specific sanctions for different types of sexual violence, and many schools apply sanctions on a case-by-case basis. Instead, most schools publish a range for punishments (e.g., from probation to expulsion), but this is analogous to expecting an armed robber to be deterred by knowing they will receive anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison. Ranges that include a slap on the wrist are not effective deterrents.

It seems like common sense that schools would have clear sanctions and publish them, like they do for plagiarism, theft and other violations of the student code of conduct. But officials are reluctant to develop standard sanctions and advertise them because they would lose the ability to apply sanctions in an individualized way that takes other factors into account, such as how much money the perpetrator’s family might contribute to the institution or the likelihood that the perpetrator will sue the institution.

That’s one reason so many schools reluctant to draw that line and enforce it. But here’s another ugly truth: schools benefit from not challenging rape culture.

Keeping rape culture under wraps means reported-rape numbers remain low. If more survivors spoke out, schools would have to provide more staff resources to handle the complaints and, at the same time, the allegations would threaten the school’s reputation and bottom line.

Schools also benefit from hazy definitions of consent and ad hoc sanctions because, as noted above, this creates unnecessary ambiguity that gives administrators the power to consider other factors when determining responsibility and sanctions. Title IX complaints filed with the Department of Education include claims of administrators conducting biased investigations and adjudication processes that resulted in light sanctions for athletes, student leaders, perpetrators with donor parents and perpetrators who threatened to sue the college.

To sum up, colleges cannot effectively shift broader rape culture because this would require multiple societal institutions working together to address deep-seated sexist beliefs upheld by men and women. But colleges can address the manifestations of rape culture on their campuses by establishing clear definitions of consent, sexual battery, sexual assault and rape, conveying these definitions to students, and establishing and enforcing universal sanctions for different forms of sexual violence. It’s time for schools to step up.

On October 15th, 28 current and retired Harvard Law professors penned an op-ed calling upon the university to abandon its new sexual harassment policy on the grounds that it violates the due process rights of the accused. According to emeritus professor Alan M. Dershowitz, the new policy is “political correctness run amok.”

In this post, I briefly summarize Harvard’s new policy and analyze the critiques of the Harvard-28. Instead of thoughtful, reasoned, and well-supported arguments befitting a group of elite professors, their critiques are vague, fail to evidence bias against respondents, and do not reflect a contextual understanding of the campus rape crisis. Their misguided critiques appear to be more about protecting Harvard Law than protecting students.

The Harvard Policy

Back in July, Harvard unveiled its new sexual harassment policy. After two years of deliberation, the school created a central office with a team of independent investigators and instituted the “preponderance of evidence” (more likely than not) standard as mandated by the Department of Education in 2011. Harvard also replaced criminal law definitions of sexual violence with a civil rights standard of proving that the conduct was “offensive” and “unwelcome.” Student activists criticized the new policy for leaving out affirmative consent (that has since been instituted in California and New York), making Harvard the only Ivy League school without this standard. Harvard has a history of fighting real reform on campus rape, and while their new policy is an improvement over persistent and willful non-compliance with federal law, it is certainly not as cutting edge as other schools.

The Harvard-28 Critique

The Harvard-28 cite five major concerns with the new sexual harassment policy, each of which I address in turn.

1) “The absence of any adequate opportunity to discover the facts charged and to confront witnesses and present a defense at an adversary hearing.”

Harvard’s policy does allow equal opportunity for both parties to present evidence to investigators, and to review and respond to the other party’s account of events, but the Harvard-28 would like this to happen face-to-face. The problem with this is that false rape reports are rare, which means the Harvard-28 want to allow rapists to interrogate the person they raped. Presently, only one-in-ten rape survivors report the crime, and if they know they will face an interrogation by their rapist in an “adversary hearing,” even fewer will come forward to be re-traumatized. And since a small number of serial rapists perpetrate over 90% of sexual assaults/rapes on campus, and six-in-ten rapists rape again, any campus policy that discourages reporting makes the campus less safe.

Additionally, the Harvard-28 do not make a convincing case that the absence of an adversary hearing favors complainants. Both parties have access to written accounts from the other party, and both have the ability to respond, so what facts would a hearing uncover that could not be discovered through an investigation run by professionals, and how does this bias one party over the other?

2) “The lodging of the functions of investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review in one office, and the fact that that office is itself a Title IX compliance office rather than an entity that could be considered structurally impartial.”

Campus sanctions for sexual assault/rape are similar to sanctions for plagiarism and other violations of the student handbook, and like other violations, the entire adjudication process is typically managed within one department. To treat this like a criminal proceeding would be time and cost prohibitive, and would net less effective results when it comes to keeping students safe (see below).

The second part of this critique, that the Title IX office cannot be “structurally impartial,” is flawed logic. Title IX “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools,” so the argument here is that the office tasked with enforcing sex discrimination laws at Harvard will be biased in favor of those who bring claims. Not only does this idea run counter to a reality where fewer than 2% of campus rapists face real sanctions, and where half of rape survivors report institutional betrayal, this flimsy logic could be applied to dismiss the impartiality of any judge or administrative body with the responsibility of upholding a specific body of law. This is akin to saying OSHA cannot impartially process workplace safety claims or the EEOC cannot impartially adjudicate discrimination claims because they are tasked with upholding these specific bodies of laws.

Once again, the Harvard-28 do not make their case that housing adjudication in one office, or housing it specifically in the Title IX office, constitute bias against respondents.

3) “The failure to ensure adequate representation for the accused, particularly for students unable to afford representation.”

Like the first two critiques, this third critique approaches the policy from a criminal justice lens instead of what it is – a campus administrative process. Of the small fraction of cases that are reported, about half of the respondents are found responsible for sexual assault/rape, and of those, fewer than one-in-three are expelled. Many rapists are able to simply transfer to another school because their transcripts do not list the crime. In other words, rapists at Harvard and elsewhere get nothing like a criminal sentence, so it makes no sense to apply criminal standards or procedures.

It especially makes no sense to use criminal standards when the legal system is so woefully incapable of holding rapists accountable. Only 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail. Campuses have a legal obligation under Title IX to provide an equitable learning environment – one where male, female, and transgender students have the same shot at getting an education without having their life thrown off the rails by sexual violence. If schools used current criminal processes, they would expel only one-third of 1% of campus rapists (3% of the 12% of rapes that are reported).

Most colleges do not allow attorneys at rape adjudications because it is not a criminal proceeding. Harvard does, but they do not provide free legal counsel. Once again, it is unclear how this favors complainants. If attorneys are more effective than advocates or students in campus rape adjudications, as the Harvard-28 seem to suggest, then free legal counsel would benefit both complainants and respondents. And since the Harvard-28 are suddenly so concerned about this issue, why not set up a clinic at Harvard Law to offer free legal counsel, and why not extend it to students charged with plagiarism and other violations of the student handbook?

4)  “Adopting a definition of sexual harassment that goes significantly beyond Title IX and Title VII law.”

Under Title IX, sexual harassment is defined as “unwanted and unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature.”

Under Title VII, “Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.”

Harvard’s definition of sexual harassment is “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, including unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, graphic, or physical conduct of a sexual nature, when: (1) submission to or rejection of such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a condition of an individual’s employment or academic standing or is used as the basis for employment decisions or for academic evaluation, grades, or advancement (quid pro quo); or (2) such conduct is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that it interferes with or limits a person’s ability to participate in or benefit from the University’s education or work programs or activities (hostile environment).”

The comparison above reveals three areas where Harvard goes beyond federal law, (which they and every other school are entitled to do). First, nonverbal conduct of a sexual nature, such as grabbing one’s crotch, is considered sexual harassment. Second, graphic conduct of a sexual nature, such as sending unwanted sexually explicit photos, is also considered sexual harassment. Thirdly, the Harvard policy includes language about academic standing and academic effects in its definition of sexual harassment as befits an educational institution. It ensures that faculty members are held accountable for sexually harassing employees and students. The Harvard-28 is not clear about how the school’s new policy “goes significantly beyond” Title IX and Title VII, but the differences analyzed here are minor and consistent with an academic setting.

5) “Adopting rules governing sexual conduct between students both of whom are impaired or incapacitated, rules which are starkly one-sided as between complainants and respondents, and entirely inadequate to address the complex issues in these unfortunate situations involving extreme use and abuse of alcohol and drugs by our students.”

The Harvard policy defines incapacity as follows: “a person is considered incapable of giving consent if he/she is asleep, unconscious and/or losing and regaining consciousness, or clearly mentally or physically incapacitated, for example, by alcohol and/or other drugs (signs of being incapacitated include, but are not limited to, difficulty walking, inability to speak in a coherent manner, vomiting or the presence of vomit, etc.).” The Harvard-28 do not clarify how this rule is “starkly one-sided,” but we can assume they mean that this clause is biased because it only applies to complainants.

Of course this clause only applies to complainants because intoxication is never an excuse for committing a crime. A useful analogy here is a drunk driver who hits someone. We do not give the driver a free pass because he was drunk, or say that it’s a “complicated” situation because his judgment was impaired. The same applies to drunk students who initiate sexual activity with a person who is incapacitated and thus not able to consent. The Harvard-28 signed their name to a document that implies that a serious crime should be excused by “extreme use and abuse of alcohol and drugs”? Do they extend this logic to other crimes as well?

Hyperbole

The Harvard-28 op-ed is vague, does not make its case of bias against respondents, and does not reflect a contextual understanding of the campus rape crisis. It also plays upon public ignorance by stating that, “Harvard acted under pressure imposed by the federal government, which has threatened to withhold funds for universities.” This is true on paper, but as the Harvard-28 surely knows, the Department of Education “has never once punished a university for sexual assault-related violations of Title IX in the entire history of the agency.” Instead, they work with institutions for years and years to gain compliance.

The claim that Harvard’s policy will “do more harm than good” is hyperbolic, as is the proposed remedy of entirely throwing out the policy. So what is really at stake here? Maybe Harvard Law wants to keep sexual harassment and rape adjudications in-house so they can more effectively manage competing economic and reputational pressures. Regardless of underlying motives, the Harvard-28 have join the backlash against the new campus anti-rape movement instead of being productive critics and contributors. I expect more from faculty members.

Co-authored with Baillee Brown. Cross-posted at Ms. Blog.

There’s one question about campus rape that comes up again and again: Why isn’t the crime handled exclusively by law enforcement? In a perfect world, the legal system would effectively arbitrate this crime, but given law enforcement’s dismal record on sex crimes, schools have no choice but to adjudicate campus rapes in order to comply with federal Title IX law.

Law enforcement is not a viable solution to campus rape because police do a terrible job of holding rapists accountable. According to a recent analysis of Department of Justice data, only 3 percent of all rapists—not just campus rapists—will ever spend a day in jail. Only 40 percent of all rapes are reported to police, and of those, only 10 percent will lead to a felony conviction with slightly fewer seeing the inside of a jail cell.

The numbers are no better when it comes to law enforcement’s handling of campus sex crimes. In 2011, the Chicago Tribune published the results of a study involving 171 campus sex complaints at six Midwestern universities. Twelve of the accused perpetrators were arrested, and only four were convicted. The Tribune concludes that such low arrest (7 percent) and conviction (2.3 percent) rates leave “untold numbers of college women feeling betrayed and vulnerable, believing that their allegations are not taken seriously.”

Law enforcement is hampered in prosecuting rape because this crime is rarely witnessed by a third party. Plus, physical evidence may look similar to consensual sex, the standard of reasonable doubt is high (approximately 95 percent certainty) and, in most states, the burden of proof is on the survivor to prove s/he was raped instead of the defendant proving that s/he obtained consent.

Additionally, trauma impairs the prefrontal cortex, which is crucial to decision making and memory, so survivors may come off as less believable to authorities when they report the crime. Survivors often recount their rapes with little emotion and are unable to remember details or give a linear account of events due to impaired brain functioning.

Furthermore, widely held rape myths work against reporting, arrest, and conviction rates for rape, including the myth that only “stranger rape” and interactions that result in physical damage constitute “real” rape. Prosecutors have broad discretion in whether to prosecute a case or not, and they tend to be more concerned about their win-loss record than pursuing justice in cases that are difficult to win.

One of this article’s authors, Caroline, has worked with more than a dozen campus survivors who have reported rapes to police in recent years. Not a single case resulted in an arrest, and in addition to being a waste of time, the experience often re-traumatized the survivors. A district attorney in California closed USC student Tucker Reed’s case without taking an official statement from her, despite the fact that she had a recorded conversation with her alleged perpetrator apologizing for raping her.

When Morgan Carpenter filed a rape claim in New York, an assistant district attorney told her, “Well, I met him. He’s really cute. Maybe you just had a weak moment and you thought maybe you could get away with it.”

Caroline worked with a survivor who was raped in Michigan in the spring of 2013. She awoke in the middle of a rape in a fraternity house, kicked off her assailant, ran into the street half clothed and called the police. Her rape kit indicated serious physical damage that would not heal for two weeks. The DA refused to press charges, citing a lack of physical evidence.

A recent college graduate in Florida who was raped in the spring of 2014 in her off-campus apartment went straight to the police to report her rape and was told there “was nothing” they could do about it. She then documented the rape through a series of text messages and a recorded conversation in which the alleged perpetrator admitted holding her down, forcing her to have sex, and seeing the “pain on your face.” The DA refused to move the case forward due to a lack of witnesses and physical evidence, and even accused the survivor of “flirting” with the alleged perpetrator by contacting him to obtain his admission of the crime—as she was instructed to do by the police.

After her experience with the police, Columbia University student survivor Emma Sulkowicz said she would discourage other survivors from reporting to law enforcement:

If you want to go to the police, this is what to expect: You’ll be verbally abused. But at least no one will yell at you for not going to the police and getting verbally abused. Just take your pick.

Most schools do a poor job processing sexual assault/rape cases, but the criminal justice system is even worse. In the absence of a viable law enforcement option, schools have to conduct their own investigations and adjudications to be in compliance with federal law. These adjudication processes vary from campus to campus, but they are invariably less formal than a legal investigation.

But schools are uniquely positioned to identify and sanction rapists since the Department of Education has mandated the “preponderance of evidence” standard, the same standard of proof used in civil cases. Some have criticized this standard, but campus rape adjudications are not criminal proceedings, and the stiffest sanction (expulsion) is a rarely used slap on the wrist compared to a felony conviction. Rape on campus is currently treated as harshly as plagiarism. Additionally, perpetrators who are expelled are able to transfer with relative ease, both before and after they are sanctioned, because schools do not report rape as the reason for expulsion on student transcripts. (This is why we need a national database of campus rapists so schools can keep their student body safe by not accepting rapists from other campuses.)

Law enforcement is a terrible option for campus rape survivors because it is ineffective and often re-traumatizing for survivors. But because schools have a national mandate to provide a safe and equitable learning environment, they are in a unique position to best adjudicate campus rapes. Therefore it is incumbent on them to establish fair, effective, and transparent reporting, investigation, adjudication and sanctioning processes that reflect best practices. It is also incumbent on administrators to work with local law enforcement to improve the way both institutions respond to this heinous crime.

The CHIPS Test is an easy way to identify sexual objectification. If the answer is “yes” to any of the following questions, the image you are looking at is sexually objectifying.

1) Commodity: Does the image show a sexualized person as a commodity, for example, as something that can be bought and sold?

2) Harmed: Does the image show a sexualized person being harmed, for example, being violated or unable to give consent?

3) Interchangeable: Does the image show a sexualized person as interchangeable, for example, a collection of similar bodies?

4) Parts: Does the image show a sexualized person as body parts, for example, a human reduced to breasts or buttocks?

5) Stand-In: Does the image present a sexualized person as a stand-in for an object, for example, a human body used as a chair or a table?

30 Day Sexy Lie Cleanse

College administrators have known about the campus rape problem for three decades, and they have been mandated to address it for two decades, why has so little been done? The answer is failed presidential leadership.

Karen Barnett first documented the campus rape problem in her 1982 article “Date Rape” in Ms. magazine, and Ms. published another article on the same topic in 1985 featuring Dr. Mary Koss’ three-year study of over 7,000 students at 35 schools. Koss found that 1 in 4 college women faced rape or attempted rape during their time on campus—and not much has changed since then.

Schools have been mandated by law to address campus sexual assault for the past 20 years. The Clery Act of 1990 requires schools to accurately report their rape numbers, but campuses routinely underreport these figures. Schools were first mandated to provide support and accommodations to survivors in 1992 with passage of the Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights, but most schools still fall short. As a graduate student in the late 1990s in a leadership position in residence life, I can attest to the fact that campus administrators at national conferences I attended were well aware of the campus rape problem.

So why has so little been done by college administrators?

A recent survey of college and university presidents from Inside Higher Ed reveals that delusional presidents are the crux of the problem. Of all institutional players, college presidents have the most power to make change—through hiring decisions, policies, and day-to-day leadership. Despite reputable studies showing that 1 in 5 female students face sexual assault, only 1 in 3 college presidents agree with the statement, “sexual assault is prevalent on college campuses,” according to the new report. Furthermore, only 6 percent of college presidents agree that sexual assault is prevalent on their campuses, when plenty of evidence otherwise exists.

Seventy-seven percent say their schools are doing a “good job” addressing the problem, while only 4 percent were willing to admit that their school does not adequately protect students. The truth is that almost no schools expel rapists or take other basic measures to shift rape culture on their campuses due to perverse institutional incentives, such as concerns of being sued by perpetrators or financial and reputational loss from admitting there’s a problem.

We have seen evidence of this delusion thinking from college presidents who publicly deny the problem, take survivors to task for blowing the whistle, play upon rape myths of false reports and downplay the significance of campus rape:

• At a press conference in October of 2013, University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst said that survivor complaints of the school’s mishandling sexual assault were “astonishingly misguided and demonstrably untrue” before settling with survivors for $1.3 million in 2014. She still denies that UConn ever had a problem.
• In 2013, Occidental College President Jonathan Veitch scolded survivor activists who “actively sought to embarrass the college” (his words) when they shared concerns about the college’s handling of sexual assault cases with local media. The college settled with 10 survivors for a large sum in 2013, but President Veitch continues to deny that Oxy has ever had a problem, and even hired a team of discredited PR attorneys to write a report blaming survivor activists for problems on campus.
• In July of 2014, Hobart and Smith William College President Mark D. Gearan sent a campus-wide letter stating saying that he was confident the college had not violated federal law after students filed a Title IX complaint citing egregious mishandling of sexual assault.
• In August of 2014, University of Oregon President Michael Gottfredson stepped down after allegations surfaced that he allowed three basketball players accused of a gang rape to play during March Madness. President Gottfredson denied that he or the college mishandled the case, stating that local police requested the school not take action.
• In November of 2014, Lincoln University President Robert R. Jenkins gave a speech at an all-female convocation about how false rape reports ruin men’s lives. He resigned two weeks later after his rape myth comments brought national scrutiny.
• In November of 2014, Eckerd College President Donald Eastman III blamed survivors for campus rape in a campus-wide email with his suggestion that they drink less and engage in less casual sex.
• Earlier this month, Grinnell College President Raynard Kington openly challenged survivor claims that the college had mishandled their sexual assault cases with the insinuation that the public would later discover “gaps” in their stories.

College presidents across the country insist that they “take this issue very seriously,” but as the Inside Higher Ed poll and this pantheon of failed presidential leadership show, most college and university presidents simply do not.

My advice to college presidents (not that any of them will actually listen since I’m one of those “rowdy” faculty members who just won’t behave like a “dutiful daughter”) is to:

1. Admit there’s a problem. If survivor activists are telling you have a problem, then you have a problem. See this activism as a gift, a wake-up call if you will, and gather data on the scope of the problem on your campus through an annual, representative student survey.
2. Apologize to survivors who have been traumatized on your campus under your watch. Apologize to survivors who have dropped out of or graduated from your institution who were traumatized on your campus.
3. Make real change by telling the truth about your numbers, establish an affirmative consent policy, institute an expulsion policy for students found responsible for sexual violence, mandate ongoing annual bystander training to shift rape culture, and invest in a dedicated Title IX officer and independent staff to oversee fair, professional adjudication processes. And please spare us the long list of superficial changes that college presidents are so fond of trotting out as evidence of progress when the basic pillars of prevention are not in place.

Maybe we need new presidents who know how to read data. Or maybe we need new presidents who actually respect faculty experts enough to trust their data. We certainly need new presidents who aren’t steeped in rape myths and victim-blaming, who will treat this like a public health crisis instead of a public relations crisis.

This blog is cross-posted at Reuters.

I have a distinct memory of being a kid and witnessing my mother face sexism at a car dealership in the mid-1980s. She had recently learned to drive and gotten her license at the age of 41. On our way home from Clark College (which we attended together), she pulled into a used car lot because a shiny, red sedan had caught her eye. We walked around the car together to look for dings and scratches, and then she asked for a test drive. The car salesperson, an older white man, told her “you’ll have to get your husband.” My mother walked away while I informed the salesperson that he was a “bad, bad man.”

Fast forward to today. There is overwhelming evidence that car salespeople are still sexist, but I never thought I would have to work so hard to give away my hard earned money.

I have been travelling a lot lately, so the day was dedicated to running neglected errands. I had four things on my “to do” list:

1. mail letters
2. drop off dry cleaning
3. buy a car
4. buy two coffee cups

After checking off the letters and the dry cleaning, I hit the road to visit the five car dealerships in the Los Angeles area with black Challenger RTs in stock. I have had a love affair with muscle cars since I was about seven years old, and I have driven a succession of Camaros, Firebirds, and Trans-Ams since I was a teen. (You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl, er, woman.) After five years of research on and salivation over passing Challengers, I knew exactly what I was looking for.

When my partner and I arrived at the first car dealership, Pacific Motors #2 (see photo below), the sun was shining and the Challenger they had for sale was perfect. All blacked out with a humming Hemi and open-hole spoke wheels. I tried to hide my excitement when I asked for a test drive.

The salesperson, a man in his 50s (see photo below), told me that I could not test drive the car until I had met with his finance officer to “discuss the price.” I responded with “that’s ridiculous” and insisted on a drive. He shot back that he was “on my side,” but he could not authorize a test drive until I had met with his boss to discuss price and financing.

Like my mother, I was denied a test drive because I wasn’t taken seriously as a female car buyer. I am confident that the only way a salesperson passes up a chance to make money is if they fail to recognize the opportunity. My performance of femininity is such that I am often not taken seriously in “male spaces,” like car dealerships. Men and women are treated quite differently when purchasing a car, even though women make or influence 85% of car buying decisions. In my case, it was clear to me and my partner that the salesperson couldn’t possibly conceive of a petite, blonde-haired woman purchasing a muscle car, so it wasn’t worth his time to move seven cars to get to the Challenger. His loss.

I left the lot in disbelief at the overt sexism, and I returned a few hours later in the Challenger RT I had purchased from another car lot (see photo below).

I spoke with the manager to let him know the cost of his salesperson’s sexism, and the boss was taken aback that a woman would speak so assertively to him. He dismissed my concerns and flat out denied that I had been refused a test drive. I responded with some choice words about his sexism, and he proceeded to call me a “bitch” several times and a “woman with no class,” erasing any doubt that the gender issues at this business come from the very top. (I let him know that I can’t take the opinion of men who are stuck in the 1950s seriously.)

It was jarring to see my mother’s experience of sexism repeat itself so many decades later, but this time I fought back with more than words. I filed a discrimination complaint with the Attorney General’s office, a consumer complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and an honest review on Yelp. I have learned to pick and choose my feminist fights, but this one was for my mother.

I never did get around to those coffee cups…

#sexismdoesntsell

Becca Cooper (a.k.a. Wreck-It-Beck) and I travelled to Cleveland last week to interview everyday Americans who had gathered outside the Republican National Convention to express their political beliefs.

We spoke with homemakers, engineers, the founder of the Alt Right (think “kinder, gentler” white supremacy), presidential candidate Vermin Supreme, small business owners, large business owners, students, #BlackLivesMatter activists, #BlueLivesMatter supporters, a virulantly anti-Trump dog, and many others who flocked to The Cleve for the festivities.

Here are some voices from across the political spectrum of the most divided electorate in a century.

The party conventions are behind us, and we have 99 days of one of the ugliest presidential election in history to go. This post is a recap of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia in terms of viewership, production quality, speakers, themes, truthiness, protests, post-convention bounce, and significance.

Setting aside President George Washington’s admonition of the parties as dangerous in his farewell address, they serve many vital purposes, one of which is to simplify the choice between candidates. The party conventions did just that by highlighting the stark differences between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton. (I understand how Harambe is polling at 5%, but how is any American still undecided about this race?)

Viewership

First, some context. Party conventions have been media infomercials rather than forums to actually select a nominee for the past four decades as a result of primary election rules that ensure nominees are selected prior to the conventions. (The last contested convention was in 1976 when Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan duked it out for the Republican nomination on the floor.) It is no surprise, then, that convention viewership and hours of broadcast time have declined since 1960. Conventions just aren’t very exciting anymore.

The 2016 conventions posted moderate viewership numbers compared to recent elections. On average, more Americans tuned in to watch the DNC (29.2 million over four nights) than the RNC (25.2 million). However, more people tuned in to hear Trump’s speech than Clinton’s speech (34.9 million viewers compared to 33.3 million viewers). Both candidates fell short of the record for the highest ratings set by John McCain (38.9 million) and Barack Obama (38.3 million) in 2008.

Production Quality

The Democrats put on a much better show than the Republicans. Both had fancy sets and polished speakers, but the DNC had celebrity power. The convention featured Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, Meryl Streep, Lenny Kravitz, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Sarah Silverman, and others. Hollywood stars, including Jane Fonda and Eva Longoria, came together in a video to sing “Fight Song,” which now is in regular rotation on Los Angeles pop stations (see video below).

The RNC featured Scott Baio from Happy Days, soap actor and underwear model Antonio Sabato, Jr., and Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty. The celebrity gap no doubt accounted for at least part of the ratings advantage for Democrats.

The RNC was also unpredictable and sometimes bizarre, full of unforced errors: Melania’s plagiarism and (awesome but awkward) rickrolling in her speech; questions about plagiarism in Donald Trump, Jr’s speech (which turned out to be his speechwriter cribbing his own previous work); honey badger Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump in his speech (see video below); and Trump’s gross grab of his daughter Ivanka’s hips on stage.

The Democrats also had their fair share of problems with the damning #DNCLeaks that show a clear DNC preference for Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primary; the subsequent resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz just days before the convention; and a disruptive #BernieorBust contingent inside and outside the convention hall in Philly.

Speakers

Beyond the celebrity gap, the Democrats offered more varied content for viewers. The DNC had twice as many speakers as the RNC (257 compared to 131), mostly because few sitting Republican lawmakers attended their convention. Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush skipped the Republican convention, and only 24 members of Congress spoke at the RNC compared to 73 who spoke at the DNC.

There were also notable differences in the quality of the convention speeches. For me, political speeches are mostly mind-numbingly boring because they employ platitudes, hokey colloquialisms, and fake emotions. I can barely make it through a political speech without a drinking game (I’m referring to coffee, of course). Looking past the serviceable speeches from Trump and Clinton, most of the Republican speeches were pat and predicatable, but many of the Democratic speeches were well above par.

In terms of my top five, Michelle Obama’s speech was simply the best in terms of delivery and emotional impact, while President Obama’s speech later in the week came in a close second for its soaring rhetoric and effective evisceration of the Republican nominee. Donald Trump, Jr.’s speech comes in third for his superb delivery and impressive Clinton takedowns. The speech from Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, comes in fourth on my list for his memorable offer to loan Trump his Constitution (a.k.a. Pocket Connie). Joe Biden’s gritty swan song rounds out my top five list. Uncle Joe was in rare form, vacillating between folksy humor and angry passion in a way that kept viewer’s rapt.

Another sharp difference between the RNC and the DNC was the humanization of the candidates. Clinton has been painted as a caricature by the Right and some members of the Left, and Trump has painted himself as a caricature with his bombastic performance of masculinity. The DNC humanized Clinton, but the RNC failed to humanize Trump. Bill Clinton’s rambling address and Chelsea Clinton’s heartfelt but dull speech were full of personal details that gave viewers a sense of life with Hillary. The same cannot be said for the five speeches from Trump family members (Melania, Tiffany, Donald, Jr., Eric, and Ivanka). It felt more like the Trump kids were describing their general manager rather than their father, and each speech felt like a missed opportunity to challenge the critique that Trump has an empathy deficit.

Themes

The themes of the RNC and the DNC could not have been clearer or more divergent. While many issues were covered at both conventions, the prevailing themes were fear (RNC) and love (DNC). I’m pretty sure the Democrats scrambled to amplify their positive content after watching a week of doom and gloom at the RNC, but I had reached my saccharine limit well before Lenny Kravitz belted out “Let Love Rule.” (Side note: I now blast “Let Love Rule” during the hour each day my Rush Limbaugh-loving neighbor, “Mr. Wilson,” waters his tree during the worst drought in a century.) Even Trump barbs felt like toothpicks from goody two shoes Tim Kaine with his boyish grin with his four harmonicas.

 Truthiness

Fact-checking websites would be a powerful tool for holding candidates accountable if more voters actually cared to. According to Politifact, Clinton’s acceptance speech was far more truthful than Trump’s. Only two out of six major claims in Trump’s speech were found to be “mostly true,” while five out of six major claims in Clinton’s speech were “mostly true.”  This is not surprising. During the primary, Clinton was found to be the most honest candidate on the campaign trail and Trump was the least honest. (I witnessed the heads of two diehard Berners actually explode when this finding was published back in May, or maybe I dreamed that part.)

Protests

The protests in Philly were much larger than the protests in Cleveland, mostly due to Sanders’ supporters, some of whom clung to a snowball’s chance hope of nominating their man. The minor disruption caused by the #DumpTrump camp on the first day of the RNC paled in comparison to four days of raucous protests both inside and outside the Democratic convention.

Inside the DNC hall, Bernie supporters regularly disrupted the proceedings with chants, and organizers responded by turning off the overhead lights in certain sections to prevent them from being seen by television viewers. Enterprising Bernie supporters responded in turn by donning glow-in-the-dark shirts. And if you were wondering why pro-Clinton chants cropped up in the last two days of the convention, Clinton supporters were instructed to yell chants to drown out chants from Bernie supporters, for example “U.S.A.” in response to “No More War.”

Outside the Democratic convention in Philly, protesters burned flags and breached security fences (see video below).

The only major clash at the RNC took place on day three of the convention when members of the Communist Party set two flags on fire just feet from where I was standing with my colleague, Beck Cooper (a.k.a. Wreck-It-Beck). This incident resulted in 17 arrests (see video below).

The RNC spent $49 million on security and brought over 4,000 police officers from across the country to Cleveland (see video below). Philadelphia spent $43 million on security with staffing from 6,600 local police officers. Overall, 24 protesters were arrested at the RNC. Over 50 protesters were detained and cited at the DNC, but only 11 people were actually arrested because Mayor Jim Kenney decriminalized disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, failure to disperse, and other offences just for the convention.

Bounce

Candidates typically enjoy about a 5% bounce in the polls after their party’s convention. Trump got a 4-point bounce in the polls after the RNC, and Clinton got a 5-point bounce, but many voters continue to be disenchanted with both candidates. Only 43% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans are satisfied with their party’s nominee.

So What?

Party conventions almost never affect the outcome of elections. Parties with the highest convention viewership win the White House only 50% of the time, and post-convention candidate poll bounces are referred to as “sugar highs” because they quickly evaporate. Also, the conventions were held early this year to avoid protracted divisions, to extend the fundraising calendar, and to avoid competing with the Olympics. They will be a distant memory by the time November 8th rolls around.

The Mars-Venus nature of the convention themes mirror deep chasms in an electorate divided by generation, race, gender, and education. One silver lining is that Americans have high interest in this election, which is great for democracy. We captured some of this intensity and passion through interviews with activists across the political spectrum at the RNC (see video below).

Many of my progressive friends are panicking about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the White House. This post lays out why Hillary Clinton is heavily favored to win in November. I begin with an overview of the data and then respond to three questions that were recently posed by my skeptical Grandma Lois.

The Odds are Not in Trump’s Favor

Clinton is favored to win because Trump has disaffected many key voting groups with his racist,  xenophobic, sexist, and abelist comments and actions (see video below).

Trump criticized a Gold Star family in a way that is sure to hurt his standing with some veterans and service members. He even kicked a crying baby out of a rally (see video below), so I’m pretty sure he lost the baby vote.

Trump’s brazen bullying may be red meat to many of his supporters, and this strategy effectively cut through the clutter of a crowded Republican primary field, but it will not serve him well in the general election.

General election voters are 53% female, and Trump has a 70% unfavorable rating with women. The gender gap has been a deciding factor in five of the last six presidential contests, with women selecting the winner every time. Clinton has opened a 24-point gender gap with Trump, the largest in history, and he can’t win the election without more support from the ladies.

The vast majority of people of color in the U.S. are expected to vote for Clinton over Trump in November. Three-quarters of voters of color “strongly dislike” The Donald, and he has a 94% unfavorable rating with Blacks and a 77% unfavorable rating with Latinx. People of color constitute one-in-three voters, a portion of the electorate that could determine the outcome even if the gender gap were not so massive.

Together, the gender gap and the race gap make a Trump presidency very unlikely.

“But Polls Show Them Neck and Neck!”

National polls are not very useful when it comes to presidential elections because this race is not a national contest. It is a state-by-state contest in the Electoral College (see video below). News media organizations use national polls because they are easier to explain than Electoral College maps, and they make elections seem closer than they really are. News organizations make more money when elections seem tight because the coverage is more exciting, so it fits their profit interest to mislead with national polls.

Presidential elections are decided in swing states, a list that typically includes Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Virginia. Trump loses big in the Electoral College according to multiple expert analyses. Nate Silver puts the odds of Hillary Clinton winning at 66%, a number that will fluctuate somewhat between now and November 8th. Also, Trump’s candidacy has put four solidly red states into play this election — Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri.

If you’re scratching your head about why so many Republican leaders have defied party bonds and not supported Trump, it’s because they know they don’t have to.

“But Trump Won the Primary!”

Trump’s “method” of winning the primary is precisely what will cost him the general.

Trump elbowed his way to the front of a packed field with a parody performance of masculinity that played upon the fears of Americans who feel they are being culturally left behind. Trump took up the longtime work of Fox News by giving these voters targets to vent their frustrations — “Mexicans,” refugees, women who don’t know their place (a sentiment invoked by a 10-year-old shouting “take the bitch down” at a recent campaign rally.) Some pundits argue that voters are attracted to Trump because they fear being left behind in the new economy, but analysis shows that racial fears are the actual driver of his support.

Trump supporters have significantly higher levels of racial resentment and concern about people from other countries threatening “American values” (a.k.a., xenophobia) than other Republicans and voters of other parties. Trump is the answer to eight years of a Black president with Fox News stoking racial resentment, but he is not the answer for a majority of voters.

It is true that Trump won the primary with a historically high number of votes (13 million) in the most crowded major party field in history. But primary and general election voters are not the same. About 120 million people are expected to vote in this high interest general election, and primary voters are more ideologically extreme than general election voters. For example, Republicans primary voters are more conservative than Republicans who vote in the general election, which means they are not as supportive of Trump’s extreme positions. Also, Trump may lose independent White voters who reject his overt racism.

Trump’s bombastic divide-and-conquer strategy worked to get him the nomination, but it won’t work in a general election because there simply aren’t enough whites with high levels of racial resentment to elect him.

What About Voter Suppression?

People who care about democracy have been rightfully concerned that voter ID laws would suppress enough votes to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. Republican-controlled state legislatures started passing voter ID laws in 2010, and 17 states now have them. Clinton has spoken about voter ID laws: “They’re doing everything they can to stop black people, Latinos, poor people, young people, people with disabilities from voting.” Trump has also spoken about these laws, saying the election will be “rigged” against him if these laws are not in place.

As I have previously written, on its face, an ID requirement to vote may seem reasonable, especially for the vast majority of Americans with IDs who use them to fly, purchase cigarettes, etc. But when considered within the broader political context, the anti-democratic intent of such legislation becomes clear.

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect Black Americans, Latino/a voters, U.S. citizens who were born in other countries, elderly people, people with disabilities, transgendered people, and students — all of whom are less likely to have the required ID for different reasons. A 2006 Brennan Center study finds that 25% of Black , 16% percent of Latino/s, and 18% percent of elderly Americans lack the necessary ID. Some on the left have accurately likened these new laws to Jim Crow Era poll taxes because the expense involved in obtaining an ID place a disproportionate burden on many groups that have been historically disenfranchised.

What do all of these groups have in common? With the exception of elderly Americans who have shifted Republican in recent years (although they still comprise the most active voting group for Democrats), the Americans who will be disproportionately affected by voter ID laws all vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

The voter ID movement is based on a bald-faced lie that voter impersonation is an issue. It’s not. As the DNC humorously notes, a person is 39 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to engage in voter impersonation, and 3,600 times more likely to report a UFO.

This voting fraud figure is based on a Bush Administration investigation into the matter that involved only 70 prosecutions nationwide, some of which were honest mistakes.

Voter suppression through voter ID laws will be minimal in the 2016 election because five courts in five states have struck down these laws in recent weeks. In North Dakota, a federal judge wrote that “The undisputed evidence before the Court reveals that voter fraud in North Dakota has been virtually non-existent.” Judges in Texas concluded that their voter ID law was intentionally designed to disenfranchise voters of color.

The jig is up with discriminatory voter ID laws, and while a dozen states still have these restrictions in place, the overall effect on the election is expected to be minor.

—

As a pundit, I have tried to interrupt the dog whistle politics at Fox News and other outlets for nearly a decade. Most progressive don’t watch Fox or other Right Wing content enough to know about the steady drip of racism, xenophobia, sexism, and misogyny delivered to viewers on a daily basis. Trump’s ascension has exposed the extent of bigotry in the electorate, which makes it easier to address. He has also helped to elect our first female president. (Any other leading Republican candidate likely would probably have beaten her, cause sexism.) Thanks, Trump, for making Grandma Lois so happy come November.