Higher Education leads to.....Rape Factory??

Now some stories you just have to read to believe it happened. Here is just such a story for a slow Tuesday evening. What do you get when you combine the best and brightest among a University and mix in a lack of 'Adult' supervision in place of maturity which usually doesn't exist at that age? Well, normally, you wouldn't expect to get this...but this is what one University seems to have discovered they have to deal with.

Student Sues Wesleyan Over 'Rape Factory' Frat House

HARTFORD (CN) - A Wesleyan University student was sexually assaulted at a Beta Theta Pi Fraternity house known as the "Rape Factory," the former student claims in court.

Wesleyan, of Middletown, Conn., has about 2,900 undergraduates and 200 graduate students.

"Beta House has a long-documented history of dangerous misconduct, student injuries and numerous sexual assaults of women, resulting in Beta and Mu Epsilon losing recognition from Wesleyan as a student organization and gaining the reputation in the Wesleyan community as the 'Rape Factory'," the complaint states.

"On March 5, 2010, Wesleyan officials sent a warning to all Wesleyan students, instructing them to stay away from Beta House because it was dangerous and Wesleyan could not ensure students' safety on the premises. This followed numerous incidents of student injury and hospitalizations."

Whoa... They have a Rape problem and source of a variety of other issues...and a letter of warning is the best they can manage? I wonder..if, outside of the strange world of education, if a neighborhood house sat where the whole neighborhood knew women were RAPED and other bad things happened on a regular basis..wouldn't something be DONE about it fairly quickly? I mean, we're talking the real world and not the fantasy land values of Education Administration these days..but this still strikes me as just over the top?

Doe, who began classes at Wesleyan in the fall of 2010, claims that neither the college nor the fraternity provided her or her parents "with any warning, other safety information, or precautions regarding Beta House and events at this location. Jane Doe was entirely unaware of the risks to women attending student events at the 'Rape Factory.' She attended the Halloween party and was raped; another female student also reported being raped at the Beta House that weekend."

Source

It's never just the people who commit the crime I wonder about and seriously question in these cases. It's the whole environment of people who knew, should have known or actually didn't participate themselves out of circumstance and no lack of desire to be a part of a crime.

It takes all of that to cooperate for this level of criminal activity to happen, in my view. If just a couple members of this animal house had stood and said HELL NO...how likely would it be for others to gleefully molest and terrorize students who came?

So... is this what education is coming to?

Sometimes I wonder about people that go to places then whine about the outcome. Her edcaution wasn't totally wasted I guess

From another angle:

Doe has already sued a man named John O'Neill, whom she says raped her. O'Neill was visiting a fraternity member friend but was not a Wesleyan student himself at the time of Doe's attack. He plead guilty to lesser charges by Doe of third-degree assault and first-degree unlawful restraint — not rape — for which he is currently serving out his jail sentence.

Current Wesleyan students didn't think the term was ever commonly used on campus. "I've never heard the term 'rape factory' used on campus prior to this case, and a number of other students have expressed surprise in the comments section that the media seems to have latched onto this term," said Zach Schonfeld, a Wesleyan senior and managing editor of the Wesleying blog wrote in an email. "It's definitely not commonly used." The other Wesleyan student agreed: "I've never heard the term 'rape factory' used here. There's no serious identification of those guys as rapists," he said.

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The person who was at the party was not even a member of the fraternity, and as far as the campus police and university "warning people they couldn't ensure safety" that simply had to do with the fraternity refusing to give over their residence to be managed by the university housing board and be under jurisdiction of the campus police.

reply to post by boncho

I appreciate you bringing that additional side of the story to look at. Indeed, there are always two sides to a story and sometimes more than that. That's absolutely true when a case is off to the wilds of a courtroom as this one is.

It strikes me as patently absurd and outrageous though that, as the court filing indicates, they did have a history of problems at this location Now in the case of the victim in this case, to say she was treated poorly and with about as much compassion as a roach on a clean floor might be accurate.

Doe says the resident assistant at her dorm, a Wesleyan employee, was notified about her rape on Oct. 31, 2011, but the RA "did not notify the police, campus safety, or the administration."

Because the student health services office was closed on Sunday, Oct. 31, Doe says, she did not receive medical attention until Monday. "When she was finally able to seek treatment and report the rape, Wesleyan advised that she could go to the hospital but offered neither transportation nor accompaniment," the complaint states. "Wesleyan did not offer any services or other academic help to Jane Doe, not advising or even allowing her to lessen her course load or withdraw from classes without penalty."

It goes on and it got worse here...

The complaint continues: "After these rapes, Wesleyan again warned the campus community about the risks of attending events at Beta house, and prohibited students from living at Beta House or using it for social and academic events. This spurred campus-wide 'Free Beta' protests and rallies organized by members of Beta, including Beta House residents. Through no fault of her own, Jane Doe's identity had become known to certain Beta and Mu Epsilon members.

Source

As much as I really try and see both sides of the story, the court side of this makes clear the administration of the school saw such a problem existing at this place to not just warn the Student Body once...but officially send out warnings on TWO different occasions.

It seems to me....if Universities and Schools in general stopped trying so hard to manage everything "in-house" and cover their precious stats by avoiding Law Enforcement on almost ANYTHING they can avoid it for....problems like this would have a police solution far sooner than this civil case is coming to do something about it.

As a side note, I saw evil crap like this happen at Clearfield Job Corps center too. The victims were damn sure real and among my friends. The federally run center was not "open" to the Jurisdiction of local law enforcement unless invited..and only as LONG as invited to remain. They didn't GET invited for a petty little thing like forcible rape of a teenager..as I saw. So, it touches a pretty raw nerve to hear about this being done in other settings with even less rationale for it.