Education

Stunningly, a Fair and Perceptive Essay On The Cornell Gang Rape Ethics Train Wreck…In Slate! [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Knock me over with a feather. I once subscribed to Slate when it was an innovative commentary e-magazine genuinely striving to be independent and non-partisan. Then it went full woke and Trump Deranged, and managed to get on the EA blacklist. Frankly, I didn’t know it was still being published. But Hanna Stotland an independent educational consultant specializing in crisis management authoring her second Slate piece after seven years, delivered a superb analysis.

UPDATE: You can read the whole paywalled article at the archive link provided in the comments below by James Flood. [Thanks, James.] I was tempted to paste the whole thing into this post, but that would be unethical….

Some notable passages from the publicly available version deserve emphasis and should whet your curiosity:

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KABOOM! Cornell Picks Disgraced “Deep State” Ethics Villain Sally Yates To Investigate Cornell Rape Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Well, there goes my head.

Apparently there are no genuinely apolitical, unbiased, independent, trustworthy, competent lawyers who have the ability to investigate the accelerating Ethics Train Wreck launched by a booze, pot and ketamine-fueled orgy at a Cornell fraternity. (Previous EA posts on the thing are here and here) Gee, I’m kinda surprised. I would have thought, with all the millions of lawyers in this country, there would be at least a couple without the flaming ethics deficits of Letitia James, the lawfare New York Attorney General appointed Special Prosecutor for the state investigation, and to handle the Cornell investigation…waaait for it…

Sally Yates!

Yes, it’s Sally Yates, the Obama Justice Department appointee who refused to execute President Trump ‘s policies in his first term when she was Acting Attorney General, then after she was fired (she should have been disbarred) joined the Axis Russian Collusion conspiracy. Ethics Alarms had several posts condemning this proudly unethical lawyer, a true Ethics Villain, like…

Key quote (mine):

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A College Degree Is No Longer Worth the Cost or Time In the Assessment of Normal Americans, But Crucial To Indoctrination By The Totalitarian Left…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The only reason so many polled still think that colleges are essential to education is that their own education was inadequate and their critical thinking faculties are under-developed. Or they are Democrats. Or both.

Substacker Steven Hayward writes,

Nearly every day brings fresh news of another university facing a huge budget deficit and enacting significant cuts to programs and personnel. The latest is the University of Minnesota, which is imposing cuts to fill a $225 million shortfall over the next two years chiefly because of the declining enrollment that everyone knew was coming. The University of Maine is likewise imposing—gasp!—faculty layoffs to close a $19 million budget shortfall.

Yet universities were heedless of the coming financial collapse, and went on building climbing walls, plush dorms, and adding more and more layers of useless and/or mendacious administrators (you gotta put those gender studies majors to work somewhere). (I reported here previously about the travails of Syracuse University, which is cutting whole departments because of falling enrollment and plunging revenue.)

Meanwhile, here is what an Ivy League education produces:

They haven’t even been taught the meaning of “justice.”

Comment of the Day: “The Naked Teacher Principle, Brought To You By “Only Fans” Again and Of Course”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Cees Van Barneveldt argues in this morning’s Comment of the Day that The Naked Teacher Principle (NFP) “is wholly insufficient for today’s educational environment at public schools.” Beginning with a sentence in the final paragraph in my post, “The Naked Teacher Principle, Brought To You By “Only Fans” Again and Of Course,” it moves into new vistas where no previous EA post on the NFT has gone before.

And here it is…

***

...with holding a parent’s trust as a role model and a conveyor of societal values… 

Assume that I were a parent of two teenage sons, and they are both educated at a public school. What reasonable expectations should I have for their education, and their development as young men ready to conquer the next stage of life? I mentioned the word “men” in the previous sentence, as we cannot skip sexual development, and the development of a healthy identity. What good parents want is that their boys grow up to men with character, who are secure in their manhood, who know how to properly interact with others including with the other sex, have healthy friendships, do not grow up to be bullies, are able to form healthy relationships and marriages.

The main responsibility for a healthy sexual and moral development of children lies with the parents. Sending a child to school means that some of activities of raising a child is delegated to a third party; however delegation of that task should leave the ultimate responsibility for moral development with the parents. Delegation requires trust. Trust that the values taught at school do not undermine the values taught by the parents and that are commonly held in the parent’s community. Trust that the schools are transparent to the parents about critical issues pertaining to their children. Trust that the teachers of the school act as proper role models, living out those values. This has implication for which teachers you hire and fire; which the NTP relates to.

The current day public school environment betrays the trust of parents in multiple ways. Schools deliberately undermine existing societal values by aggressively pushing radical social and sexual agenda’s favored by radical minorities by shoving these issues into the faces of very young children. I have mentioned transgenderism in a previous comment. Before the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage (Obergefell) the issue pushed at schools was everything related to homosexuality. This has resulted in a lot of sexual confusion, and a pandemic of children who at a way too young age are put on path of irreversible steps to gender transition. Even worse is that the public schools go to great lengths to hide all this from the parents of the children involved. This type of environments does not generate teenagers who are secure in their sexual identity, who know they are accepted; instead it creates teenagers who are physically and mentally damaged. It creates freaks like Tyler Robinson who was up to his ears in alternative sexualities like furry and transgender, and who proceeded to murder Charlie Kirk.

The current day public school environment betrays the trust of parents by pushing all the DEI and CRT crap on children. “Toxic Masculinity”, “Smash the Patriarchy”, “Men are trash”, “Women are the Future.”A couple of days ago we saw that this junk is aggressively promoted by the teacher unions. The result of this are dispirited and cynical young men who “fail to launch,” and will not leave their parents house until in their thirties, do not date and become INCELs, who resent women, and are open for the racist and antisemitic ideas of Mick Fuentes as a raised middle finger to the indoctrination they got at school.

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The Naked Teacher Principle, Brought To You By “Only Fans” Again and Of Course [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

[Added: The comments to this post indicate that many don’t know what the exact Naked Teacher Principle is. My fault: I usually re-state it in the posts, and did not this time. The Principle states that a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result. It does not hold, and has never held, that such teachers must be dismissed or should be dismissed in all cases.]

That’s St. Louis substitute teacher Sheena Sittner above—trust me on this. Like some other teachers—and bet there are a lot more potential firees out there—she lost her job over having an OnlyFans account. It wasn’t the school that fired her but the agency that delivers substitute teachers that suspended her pending termination and that she must “refrain from contacting any school or districts.”

The enterprising educator follows July’s Naked Teacher Principle (NTP) star, Maris Nichols, 25, the married Georgia high school teacher who in addition to having sex with students is a provocative OnlyFans performer. Maris was being blackmailed by some of her students who discovered the OnlyFans channel she owns, operates, and uses to display her excellent Linda Lovelace impression, among, uh, other things.

It’s a theoretical argument that Nichols’ example, which provides one reason OnlyFans teachers have no defense to offer school boards once they are outed, doesn’t apply to a substitute teacher. Who would extort a substitute teacher for grades, when they don’t usually give out grades? Never mind, though: there are plenty of other reasons a school (and parents) might not want to have an amateur porn star guiding young impressionable minds. Do I have to go through them again? Here’s an idea: why don’t you review the EA archives on the subject? It will be entertaining, and I don’t have to write the same things I have posted dozens of times over many years.

Sheena does have a distinction that puts her in a sub-category: she’s a dim-witted rationalizing Naked Teacher. She’s been broadcasting X-rated content on OnlyFans along with her substitute teaching for the past two years, and says she knew it would probably be discovered eventually. “If teachers were paid better, women wouldn’t have to resort to online content creation,” Sittner said. “Sex sells.” Yeah, so do kidneys, crack and child trafficking. And, you know, women don’t have to resort to selling their body and dignity for the enjoyment of pervs: there are many other options. Moreover,the reasons one chooses to engage in a side-gig that is incompatible with holding a parent’s trust as a role model and a conveyor of societal values still don’t justify the conduct if it affects others and is inappropriate.

Maybe this is why she’s just a substitute teacher.

The Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I paused Part I when I hit item #6 and the post began reaching Alizia Tyler-level length. Since then, about 24 hours ago, there have been new revelations, commentary and developments. Picking up where I left off…

7. The New York Times tracked down the detailed filings in the private Title IX proceedings Cornell undertook, including hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with “Jane Doe,” her friends and the alleged rapists. This section from the Times report is, I think, definitive (the Times is playing it straight for a change):

At 3:05 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, one of Jane Doe’s roommates sent her a text.

“Are you coming home tonight?” she asked.

Four minutes later, Jane Doe texted back that she didn’t know.

The roommate went to sleep, she would tell investigators. When she woke up at 11 a.m., she uploaded a photo of her empty room to Snapchat. “Only I made it back home,” she wrote on the post.

Around 11:15 a.m., she said, Jane Doe arrived home, still in her “big boots and small dress” from the night before, according to the roommate. She had consumed ketamine and had sex with multiple men, she told her two roommates. One roommate told investigators that Jane Doe did not use the word “rape” or “assault” yet.

It seemed like she was “in shock,” her other roommate later told investigators, “not really understanding the gravity of what she was saying.”

The next day, on Oct. 21, Jane Doe went to her “big sister” — a woman designated as a mentor — at Cornell’s Tri Delta sorority and told her there were rumors circulating that she was a “slut.” The big sister, a junior at Cornell, told investigators that Jane Doe added with a laugh that “unfortunately they are true.”

To me, this means that the accuser was not raped and didn’t regard herself as being raped. The editorial comments of her friends indicate biased allies doing their best to frame the event in the manner most favorable to someone they care about. I know, I know: victims of sexual assault blame themselves, are awash in shame, and often take time to “process” what occurred. Or they are persuaded by others to reexamine what happened in a way that avoids accountability, provides a path to financial damages, and that victimizes others. Whichever went on here, I don’t see how a criminal prosecution and conviction is possible unless politics tramples the law—which, as we all know, it often does.

8. The student received a text message from Jonathan Newell, one of the men she would go on to accuse of sexual assault. Note that his name is out there but hers is being withheld by the news media, despite the fact that both, or neither, may be victims. “I just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night,” Newell wrote. He said that he and Matthew Ingalls, another student she accused of sexual assault, both “felt terrible” that they were too stoned and drunk to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

“Jane Doe” replied to him, “At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly I really liked being with you and Matt.” Not illegal means, “I wasn’t raped, but you know that.”

9. Here, thanks to reader James Flood, who flagged it in the comments to Part I, is feminist Camille Paglia on the basic principles of feminist hypocrisy the incident and one like it highlight…

10. Among the messages in the infamous SnapChat exchange among members of the fraternity during the orgy or what ever you want to call it was an alert that there was “free pussy” upstairs. Victory Girls opines in part,

“The female student’s original claims were that sex and drug use at the Chi Phi fraternity house just off of Cornell’s campus was consensual, but now, the story, perceived to be pushed under the table for two years, has risen back to the surface. And now, Jane Doe is telling a different story…his kind of stuff happens every weekend on any given university campus-this is one time that it is actually hitting the news…This case is not just a case of them versus her. This case, and the behavior that surrounds it, are a cry for help…

“Some young people go to college with a specific career goal in mind. Some young people come to a university to explore their identities, to embark upon new horizons and, yes, to belong. …Fraternities and sororities sell the price tag of lifelong friends, leadership opportunities and exclusive networks and experiences on their websites and social media of carefully-curated videos and photos. The guys want the hot girls at the parties and the girls want to go to the parties at the “husband house.”

… Fraternities use slogans like, “building better men”, “friendship, justice and learning”, “transforming lives”, “courage to be more”, to name a few of their catchy and contrived mottos. Sororities talk of philanthropy, “bravery”, “togetherness”, “family”, “values” and “inspiring positive change”…Nothing says “bonding” and “gentlemen” like putting “free pussy” in a group chat. On the flip side of this coin, the young woman who was allegedly raped spent some time drinking at a sorority house on campus before going to the Chi Phi house to meet a guy she was chatting with for an alleged hook-up. How she ended up upstairs with no girlfriends who value “togetherness” is also a big, glaring question. So much for the “values” of the sisterhood.

…Special prosecution or not, this case, and all of the young people involved, is a tragic depiction of a toxic campus community….they all need to take a good, hard look. Universities’ blanket statements that “they take sexual violence seriously” and their willful ignorance of what happens on off-campus houses that still bring money into the University is not enough. Organizations that claim to raise “gentlemen and leaders” and “brave women” do not lend themselves to this type of behavior. A “gentleman” in a formal suit one evening who later participates in a chat (or who is an “innocent” bystander in said chat) advertising “free pussy upstairs” is not a “productive member of society.”…A girl that offers to sniff ketamine off a guy’s junk and have a threesome is a woman with severe insecurities who needs REAL friends who will stop her from the self-destructive behavior that she may later regret and encourage her to have dignity and respect herself. This is not a Cornell problem. Or a college problem. Or a left versus right problem. Or even a legal problem. This is a bigger MORAL problem. This is a right from wrong problem…

I have stated many times here that I believe fraternities are disasters-in-waiting, despite anecdotal evidence that they and sororities have social and socializing value. My college killed its fraternities in the 19th Century. “Morality” is not the issue here, and citing it just fogs the conversation. People are being hurt by this kind of conduct. Ethical people don’t engage in conduct that hurts people. For “Jane Doe” to seek to harm (or benefit from while harming) those who were willing participants in an activity she consented to and encouraged or appeared to consent to and encourage is unethical.

11. The New York Times reports that two of the fraternity members accused by “Jane” were expelled. Another who had already graduated is barred from campus. Two more were suspended. The remaining two men, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered not to contact Jane Doe, to study sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention, and to write “reflection papers.” Their crime was being part of a group of men who entered the room after reading the Snapchat “free pussy” message. A lawsuit filed by Kretzschmar against Cornell shows that he was not found responsible for sexual assault. Cornell ruled that he had committed a lesser offense of “attempted sexual exploitation.”

Come on.

Watch “Animal House,” for heaven’s sake.

A lawyer for Kretzschmar said in a statement that the discipline his client received showed that he was “never accused of, nor found responsible for, rape. He was not even present during any sexual activity.”

“Jane Doe” has received no academic discipline at all. Ever since the Obama era’s despicable (but typical for that administration) “Dear Colleague” letter, universities have operated from a position of presumed guilt for male students accused of sexual assault and presumed victim status for their accusers. You know. Justice. “Equity.”

There is a lot more, but that’s enough for now.

The Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck, Part I

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I was first made aware of the sudden re-emergence of a 2024 gang rape allegation as a media and social media obsession when a friend who was raped began posting furiously about the story on Facebook. A knee-jerk progressive, she is certain that there was a cover-up at Cornell and that the alleged victim is telling the truth, because all women must be believed.

I don’t know what really happened at the Chi Phi fraternity on a fateful October night in 2024, and neither do you, and neither does my friend. Anyone who presumes they do know based on a partisan or ideological bias has elected to board the newly launched Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck in the dining car. Shame on them.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is having a bad year—look at the sudden resurgence of anti-Semitism here—and fraternity rape hysteria should be viewed with particular skepticism. The infamous Duke Lacrosse case occurred in 2006 and my commentary was lost when the old Ethics Scoreboard left the building, but it is still a tag on Ethics Alarms, with this the most directly relevant post. The imaginary gang rape that disgraced Rolling Stone was extensively covered here, however, as you can see. In 2014, “Rolling Stone” reporter Sabrina Erdly wrote a feature about an imaginary co-ed named “Jackie” being gang raped at a University of Virginia fraternity party. UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan, a good little feminist, suspended all fraternities with no actual evidence of wrongdoing. But you know, men are pigs, women are always the victims, and one must always believe all women, even imaginary ones (there was no “Jackie”) when they cry “Rape!”

Ethics Alarms has analyzed several instances of false rape claims as well as the cynical #MeToo fad, which, like the Cornell episode was weaponized by the Left for political gain. The hysteria got many sexual predators their just desserts, and also amassed many unjustly maligned male victims. I don’t know what happened at Cornell, but I do know that the case has already been co-opted by Democrats to inflame a core constituency, angry white progressive women convinced that the U.S. is an oppressive patriarchy that would have the culture emulating “A Handmaiden’s Tale” if it had its way. There’s an election approaching, after all. Hence the emergence of a mother who murdered her three children as the object of sympathy.

Here are what I consider salient facts based on what we do know:

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The Trump Administration Asks For Universities To Be Fair, Open and Responsible, and The Teachers Union Goes Nuts

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What does this tell you?

Is there a second way to interpret this exchange?

I’m not going to comment much on this post, because the raw reality shouldn’t require it. First I was going to frame this as one of the game show posts, with the title, “Who’s Nuts?” But I did one of those just a few days ago. The unions are Ethics Villains to be sure, but even that doesn’t do them justice based on their letter. I was going to use the “Apocalypse Now” clip “The Horror!” to mock the way the two radical Axis unions reacted to the most reasonable DOE requests imaginable, but this is too frightening to mock. The unions’ letter is an Unethical Quote to be sure, but a 6 page unethical quote is a bit…unwieldy.

According to polls, a large proportion of Americans are willing to put these totalitarian far-left extremists in power because gasoline prices have spiked while the United States confronts a deadly international enemy that it should have crushed 40 years ago. The frightening part isn’t Congress temporarily flipping. The frightening part is that so many Americans are so short-sighted, easily manipulated, ignorant.

Here is the first letter, as Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon calls for colleges and universities to actually educate students, stop being far-left indoctrination factories, ensure intellectual and ideological diversity on campus and not violate the civil rights laws. Let me know if you see anything radical, extreme or alarming there unless one is a committed ideological warrior determined to prevail “by any means necessary”…

Now here is the response of the recently combined American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), both organizations victims of total ideological capture. (Just to follow the theme of recent days, both unions have called for boycotts against Israel.)

Professor Turley, whom I credit with first alerting me to this nauseating open correspondence, writes in part,

“…The alliance with AFT and Weingarten [Me: that’s her, ranting above] is crushingly predictable. Weingarten personifies what I have called the “education cartel,” where teacher unions receive massive contracts and pension agreements from Democratic allies and then turn around and send massive political contributions to those same allies. The losers in this symbiotic relationship are of course the students and their families. Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teachers’ union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds…As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down. The last thing that they want to see is the restoration of neutrality or balance. That is why a policy calling for such reforms is so anathema to them. These organizations are now political organizations that use their dues to pursue radical agendas.”

All true, but the professor’s main concern is the radicalization of a union that purports to represent his profession. My main concern is the crystal clear dishonesty in the second letter and its extreme “it isn’t what it is” arguments. Calling out and preventing institutional discrimination against men, whites, Asians and conservatives isn’t “a partisan concept of national interest.” It’s called “enforcing the law.” The most laughable is the teachers’ union call to make higher education “affordable.” The schools can make tuition more affordable by cutting administrative staff, salaries and construction. Their solution is more taxpayer funding for useless and misleading degrees, but also more reliable woke activists.

Stay Classy, College Football!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

As I will argue here until the metaphorical cows come home, football is a cultural embarrassment and a societal pathogen. In addition to that “giving players brain damage” thingy, both colleges and the pros allow their players to be felons and thugs if they are good enough. The King’s Pass reigns. Colleges now pay their football players, so they are truly fake students. The game (aka. business) advances the corruption of higher education. We once were told that a benefit of sports was that it conveyed the value of sportsmanship ( as in “ethics”) to rising generations. Riiiight, about that:

  • A star on the #1 team in the nation, Texas’s Colin Simmons was flagged for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after he simulated urinating after a record-setting sack of Tennessee’s quarterback.
  • Another player, Raleek Brown celebrated a touchdown by rubbing his genitals, sniffing his hand, and pretending to pass out. The Texas running back was not flagged for that disgusting celebration, after all, that was funny!

Steve Sarkisian, the Texas coach, said about the penalty,“We took [Simmons] out. We addressed it, and put him back in. I’m not gonna give the guy the death penalty over an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We’ve got to fix it, though. That can’t continue as we move forward.”

Why does “that” exist at all, Coach? It’s your job to manage the culture on the team. I guarantee that a Major League Baseball player who mimed urinating on the field would be suspended immediately, and for a very long time, if not released. Why did one of your players think such public vulgarity was appropriate? Yeah, yeah, upbringing, growing up with a bad crowd, Hip-Hop, yada yada. College once was where young idiots were supposed to learn how responsible adults get through life. Notice that the coach was concerned about the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, not the unsportsmanlike conduct.

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Again: Progressive Hysterics Over A Responsible Trump Policy Change

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I thought the clip from “Poltergeist” fit here: Welcome back, Dana!

The New Republic, biased and dishonest as usual, bleats, “Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees: Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.” It terms this as “President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans.”

Oooh, banning students! Sounds like a mad dictator to me!

The President isn’t “banning students” or degrees. This is a financially and educationally responsible move that should have been done decades ago. If a student wants to waste a college education on majoring in “Queer History,” or “Slavik Literature” (Plymouth State University allows students to major in “Adventure Education” by taking “Rock Climbing Fundamentals,” “Canoe Paddling Fundamentals,” “Wilderness Expedition,” and “Whitewater Kayaking”) that’s swell: they just can’t use taxpayer funds they will never be able to pay back to do it.

The Department of Education, or what is left of it, tweeted in response to that unethical New Republic analysis,

“This is fake news at its finest. First off, we’re not ‘banning’ any program. The federal government doesn’t set curriculum or programs. Here’s the truth: we are holding colleges accountable for leaving students worse off than if they never enrolled. Too many graduates report delaying major life milestones like buying a home or starting a family. Why? Because low return-on-investment programs saddled them with unmanageable debt that was never going to translate into a real-world job. Federal student loans are not a welfare program for failing college programs. American students deserve education and training pathways that prepare them for the workforce – and transparency about programs that will never pay off.”

There is a strong case to be made that college itself is now a high-cost scam that doesn’t prepare students for the work force, just anti-Israel rallies and pro-illegal immigration riots, but okay, let’s go with the hoary myth that college is essential to life success. The student debt crisis in this country has reached levels that never should have been permitted, and higher education is as expensive as it is because the schools realized that could charge absurd tuitions and the US government would enable it by backing bigger and bigger loans. Taxpayers and the government subsidizing degrees only makes sense if it incentivizes the development of skills from which the the nation and society will derive tangible, quantifiable, practical benefits. Those are also skills that have a fighting chance of translating into jobs with sufficient compensation to allow reasonable loans to be paid back.

Declaring that the government will only back a student’s loan when 1) that loan is likely to be repaid and 2) when the loan is paying for a benefit to society rather than a self-indulgent frolic is responsible leadership. Unique among U.S. Presidents, Donald Trump sees his most responsible acts reflexively condemned through a combination of misrepresentation, bias and animus. I’m surprised there isn’t a college major in that.