What Thomas Jefferson Could Not Teach at UVA

A view of Thomas Jefferson's "Academical Village."

As a double graduate of the University of Virginia (both as an undergraduate and law school) I have a strong allegiance to what Thomas Jefferson envisioned as his "academical village" - a village that on the 200th anniversary of its founding has grown beyond Jefferson's wildest dreams and gained the stature that he had so hoped for.  Thus, it was with great interest that I read a long article in The Atlantic that looks at Jefferson's efforts to found the University of Virginia ("UVA") and how in the shorter term it failed to achieve his goals of equaling the North's leading universities and educating a future generation that would do what Jefferson's generation had failed to do: end slavery. There are a number of ironies, not the least of which is that it was slave labor that built UVA - and most colleges in the South - and that many of the university's graduates took up the cause of the Confederacy to protect the institution of slavery.  Nonetheless, the article is an interesting read (okay, perhaps not for some Virginia Tech alumni such as one "RL" who knows who he is and seemingly resents UVA with a passion - my reply: an inferiority complex can be such sad thing to witness) and give further insights to the always intriguing and very contradictory Jefferson.  Here are article highlights:

Thomas Jefferson had a severe case of New England envy. Though that region had formed the most consistent bloc of opposition to him and his political party, almost from the beginning of his time on the national stage, he admired many things about the place. First and foremost, he looked with longing toward New England’s system of town meetings, which gathered citizens together to discuss and make decisions about their local communities. Jefferson considered this form of participatory democracy crucial to building and maintaining a healthy republican society.
 And then there was the region’s profusion of educational institutions. Jefferson admired those as well—even if he did not always agree with what was being taught there. The hard work of democracy, including well-ordered community decision making, required an educated populace. That is why he waged a campaign for a system of publicly supported education in Virginia for many years. The Revolution and the creation of the United States of America broadened Jefferson’s vision in many ways, and by his mid-40s, he had taken to insisting that the job of reforming Virginia—above all, ending slavery, a system in which he participated—would fall to “the rising generation.” He and his fellows in the revolutionary generation had done their service by founding a new country. It was now up to the young people who inherited that legacy to carry the torch and continue the advancement of what he considered Enlightenment values. But Jefferson could not totally bow out of the quest to transform the place he was born and had long thought of as his “country.” Improving Virginia’s system of education, Jefferson believed, was the foundation upon which progress would be built, and the foundation had to be laid properly. If publicly supported primary and secondary schooling was not possible, he would shift his focus. He filled his time in retirement writing and answering letters, and playing host to the hordes of visitors who came up the mountain to see him. But his main mission was planning for a university that would rival the great universities in the North. In Thomas Jefferson’s Education, Alan Taylor—the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia—probes that ambitious mission in clear prose and with great insight and erudition. He explains why Jefferson found those educational choices so intolerable, what he planned to do about the situation, and how his concerns and plans mapped onto a growing sectional conflict that would eventually lead to the breakup of the Union that Jefferson had helped create. Taylor demonstrates that Jefferson, who had begged to enroll at “the College” at age 16, nurtured an ambivalence about William & Mary that eventually hardened into distaste. His late-in-life accounts of his time there almost invariably cast the school in a negative light. The campus was full of rowdy and haughty young men who looked down on the townspeople of Williamsburg and were given to drink, debauchery, and violence. Jefferson, elected governor of Virginia in 1779, included improving William & Mary in his plans for reform. At first, he was optimistic that the college could “train a new generation of young men better than their elders, who had grown up under British rule,” Taylor writes. Animated by the new spirit of republicanism and by Enlightenment values, the young men would see the importance of science, question orthodoxies—even religious ones—and work for greater participation by white men of all classes in the governance of Virginia.  . . . When his law teacher and friend, George Wythe, resigned from his post at the college in 1789, Jefferson declared the place dead to him: “It is over with the college.” Only a new university could carry out the plans he had for Virginia. Taylor suggests that Jefferson may have wanted not simply to replace William & Mary, but to destroy it. Jefferson’s sense of urgency about creating a progressive institution of higher education in Virginia—one free from religious orthodoxy and steeped in republican principles—grew stronger as a deep political divide in the country formed along regional lines in the 1790s. The Federalists, who endorsed a strong central government, were largely from the North. Jefferson’s Republicans, defenders of states’ rights and yeoman farmers against what they saw as monarchical centralizers and predatory banking practices, were largely from the South. Northern universities, in Jefferson’s view, were hotbeds of Federalist influence. He wanted Virginia in the vanguard of the new American nation.
 Jefferson’s pursuit of his educational vision was intensified and complicated by the heightening tensions over western expansion in the first two decades of the 19th century. Northerners, in the main, thought that any new states entering the Union should be free states, while Southerners fully expected to move west with their system of plantation-based slavery fully intact. This conflict posed a dilemma for Jefferson, whose self-identity and reputation included being ardently antislavery. . . . Northerners’ charge that Southerners were “hypocrites who preached democracy, while keeping slaves,” hit the author of the Declaration of Independence and the master of Monticello particularly hard. The volatile topic had to be left to some point in the future when the bulk of the white population could muster the will to do away with it. That outsiders would deign to tell Virginians what to do about this “domestic” institution was a bridge too far, even for a well-known critic of slavery. The young men trained at his university would help prepare their fellow Virginians to do what needed to be done.

Fearing that a dynamic North would eventually overtake his home state, which had been the most populous and powerful in the Union but began to slip in the 19th century, Jefferson was convinced that he was the perfect model for the new-age republican citizen needed to preserve its ascendancy.

What he believed, one day every enlightened person would believe: that republicanism was inherently good, that organized religion should be viewed with skepticism, that Jesus was not divine, that slavery was wrong. Given access to education, people could learn to embrace all these views, thanks to their powers of rationality and openness to new discoveries. As he explained to a correspondent, his university would “be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, for here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” It was a Jeffersonian project all the way. He designed the buildings of what he called the “Academical Village” and determined the curriculum. The idea was audacious—that a great university could be built in a rural location, drawing professors from across the United States and Europe. “Mine, after all, may be an Utopian dream,” he wrote, but it was one that he would “indulge in till I go to the land of dreams, and sleep there with the dreamers of all past and future times.” The University of Virginia, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, was controversial from the start. Was it really needed? Should the state pay money for what was, at base, an elitist enterprise? Many were also upset that the university embodied what they saw as Jefferson’s hostility to religion. It employed no professor of religion or divinity. Where a chapel would normally stand was a rotunda, a showcase of classical architecture, leading some to refer to the school as Jefferson’s “infidel” university.
 There was a problem. A revolution had taken place since he had attended college, but the students who came to Jefferson’s new university were just as violent, lazy, and contemptuous of their supposed inferiors as his college peers had been. Jefferson said that the institution would be based on the “illimitable freedom of the human mind,” but his everyone-should-be-like-me approach did not take into account the upbringings of the young men who would attend the university. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he had written of slavery as a school for “despotism” for white people, and he later blamed slavery for the social and intellectual backwardness of Virginia. But the Revolution had left slavery in place. It remained a training ground for despots. Jefferson apparently believed that taking these young men out of their homes and placing them away from a town or city, with professors as mentors, would turn them into open-minded citizens—just what he thought had happened to him in his college days. In reality, gathering a group of young despots in one place brought a predictable outcome: They became obstreperous and used their power to hurt the most vulnerable people in their midst. Taylor is superb on the mistreatment of the enslaved who worked at the university. Enslaved people had helped build the school. Once it opened, they maintained the physical structures—repairing and cleaning them—and served the professors, some of whom bought or hired their own slaves from local slave owners. Jefferson forbade the students to do so. But the young men had internalized the idea that they were “masters” and should be able to hit or punish black people at will, whether or not those people “belonged” to them. In the end, the elite among the generation on which Jefferson pinned so much hope were as impervious to their professors’ teachings as many of Jefferson’s classmates had been. The lack of a chapel did not make them religious skeptics. . . . . nstead of viewing slavery as a necessary evil that would die out, they came to openly espouse the belief that slavery was a positive good, as the prices of slaves rose with the nascent increase in cotton production in the South. In these and other ways, the young men deviated far from the direction in which Jefferson was certain “progress” inevitably would take them. Only after many years, and much struggle, did the institution Jefferson created take its place among the great universities of the nation and of the world. Much had to be broken to get there: the slaveholders’ Union that existed before 1865; the institution of slavery; the regime of Jim Crow, which kept black students out of the school; and the principle of sex-segregated education. Ironically, given Jefferson’s hopes for a regional resurgence, the transformation of the nation at large was what helped his state-based dream of educational excellence come true.

200 years after the University's founding, Virginia is again ascendant; it is once again among the wealthier states; and as of last week, it went "blue" and embraced progressive government and leadership and rejected the racism and religious extremism (in the form of the Virginia GOP) Jefferson so disliked.  As for the University itself, it has made much progress in facing its past history entwined with slavery and then Jim Crow and is making sure this less than flattering legacy is not swept under the rug.  Jefferson would likely be pleased. As for myself, I count myself lucky to have experienced UVA.  Thus I quote - to the horror of Hokie friends such as RL the last part of the 1903 poem, The Honor Men:

If you live a long time and, keeping the faith in all these things hours by hour, still see that the sun gilds your path with real gold and that the moon floats in dream silver; Then…Remembering the purple shadows of the lawn, the majesty of the colonnades, and the dream of your youth, you may say in your reverence and thankfulness:  “I have worn the honors of Honors. I graduated from Virginia.” 

2019 University of Virginia Reunions - Beginning the Third Century

At the risk of dating myself, yesterday I attended committee meetings at the University of Virginia Alumni Association to begin planning for my 45th undergraduate reunion.  It's my first effort in such an endeavor and I was persuaded to get involved by my classmate, Ann Brown, who also graduated with me from the University's law school three years later.  As a reunion committee member, I and other committee members will be working to encourage classmates to give back to the University financially and just as importantly to come back to the Reunions Weekend next May 30-June 2, 2019.  Our reunion will be noteworthy for at least 2 reasons: our class (1974) was the first co-ed class to graduate, and 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the University's founding by Thomas Jefferson.  

During my years at UVA, I was deep in the closet.  Interestingly, yesterday I discovered a former classmate who is serving on the committees is gay as well.  Our hope is that other classmates who are LGBT - and who may not have had the best of experiences - will consider coming back for the reunion.  Who knows, we might even be able to have an informal LGBT gathering at some point over the weekend. 

Information on the reunions can be found at this link.  And, yes, some classmates will be hearing from me. 

UVA Joins Colleges Agreeing to Disregard Suspensions for Participating in Anti-Gun Protests

In the wake of the horrific mass shooting on February 14, 2018, many high school students are planning to participate in anti-gun protests, especially on March 24, 2018 when nationwide protests are scheduled.  A number of school superintendents - typically in backward, GOP dominated/knuckle dragging areas of of America (the two generally go together) - have threatened to suspend students who miss school in order to participate in such protests.  In an effort to counter such efforts to stifle free speech and freedom of assembly, a number of prominent colleges and universities have announced that suspension arising from participation in anti-gun protests will not be counted against student applicants.  Among such universities I am proud to say is my alma mater, the University of Virginia which found itself invaded by non-Virginian Neo-Nazis last August.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed:

In the Needville Independent School District just outside Houston, Texas, the superintendent reportedly sent out letters threatening three-day suspensions for any student who joins in on walkouts.

"Life is all about choices and every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative," Superintendent Curtis Rhodes said. "We will discipline no matter if it is 1, 50, or 500 students involved. All will be suspended for three days and parent notes will not alleviate the discipline."

The Spring Independent School District, also in the Houston area, and the Waukesha County School District in Wisconsin issued similar warnings. (The Waukesha superintendent later made another statement saying students could participate if they were excused from class by their parents.)

Now colleges are standing up for the teenage activists, saying it won't affect their admissions decisions if they get suspended for protesting. 

Here are just a few of the schools that have vowed not to penalize student protesters:

Yale UniversityMIT
Boston University
University of Virginia
Tulane University
Dartmouth College
George Washington University
UMass Amherst
Brown University
Northeastern University
University of Connecticut
Clark University
Smith College
UCLA
Brandeis University

For more schools that have made this pledge, growing lists are available here and here.

Noticeably missing from the lists of such universities are Christofascist institutions such as Regent University and the even more insane Liberty University whose degrees and graduates are frequently viewed with suspicion by those who graduated from legitimate colleges and universities. 

The University of Virginia Statement reads as follows:

Kudos to my alma mater!

The Right's Continued Hypocrisy-Filled Anti-Gay Bigotry

It is 2017, yet in the minds of many on the political right, if they had their way, it would still be the 1950's.   Institutionally, the Republican Party continues to officially oppose LGBT rights and, in fact, the party's 2016 national platform is the most homophobic in history. Making good on this declared agenda, the Trump/Pence regime is rolling back LGBT protections instituted by the Obama administration and we have witnessed in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court where the U.S. Department of Justice has filed briefs that support anti-LGBT discrimination, one which argues that employers should be free to fire LGBT employees due to their sexual orientation and the other that Christofascists have the right to ignore non-discrimination and public  accommodation laws. All of which encourages the modern day Pharisees among the godly folk to discard their children like useless trash and/or withdraw all financial support at age 18.  The result?  40% of homeless youths are LGBT  and far too many would be college students lack finances to allow them to attend college.  

In recognition of this reality and in honor of my parents who accepted me when I came out unlike so many parents, I established and provided the original endowment for a scholarship for graduating LGBT high school students from the Hampton Roads area.  Likewise recognizing this sad reality, The Serpentine Society, an alumni organization at the University of Virginia (my alma mater) has established a scholarship for gay male students.  A similar scholarship exists for lesbian students.  This is all too much for the right wingers who strive to perpetuate a climate of discrimination and then whine when victims organize to help others in the targeted class.  To the falsely sanctimonious "conservatives" - bigots is a more apt description - the scholarship amounts to horrific "identity politics" which are seemingly only acceptable when put forward by white supremacists.  A column at "The College Fix" which holds itself out as "right minded news from across the nation"  whines in part as follows:

In one instance we are asked to accept everyone as moral equals; in another instance we are expected to accept very specialized and preferential treatment for certain demographics. The former is good; the latter suggest that there is something markedly different about the target group, something worth treating them differently than the rest of the population.

My response? What assholes, pardon "my French."  You support discrimination and the ostracizing of gays  based typically on Bronze Age era derived religious belief and then get your panties in a knot when something is done to address the consequences of the bigotry to strive to cultivate.   I suspect that the author of the piece finds scholarships for blacks and other minorities demonized by the right as offensive as well. The hypocrisy is off the charts.  Kudos to the Serpentine Society.  And, yes, I have joined it.

UVA Rape Story: More Details of Rolling Stone's Journalistic Malpractice

I've spoken out repeatedly on the now thoroughly debunked University of Virginia rape story.  As a double UVA alumni, I am very familiar with the University and its social atmosphere.  Moreover, three of my siblings attended UVA as did one of my daughters and other family members.  To me, the story never seemed believable.  Now, as more documents are revealed in the defamation lawsuit pending against Rolling Stone, it becomes more and more shocking that the publication ever ran the story.  The Washington Post looks at the growing evidence that Rolling Stone simply cared nothing about the truth.  Here are article excerpts:

Rolling Stone journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely spent five months investigating a shocking claim of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, and the 9,000-word account of the brutal attack published online on Nov. 19, 2014, sent a tremor through the Charlottesville campus and beyond.

Then, on Dec. 5, at 1:54 a.m., Erdely sent an e-mail to the magazine’s top-tier editors, Will Dana and Sean Woods, with a simple subject line: “Our worst nightmare.”

The body of the message detailed how Erdely no longer trusted the primary source for the most striking anecdote in her article: a U-Va. junior named “Jackie,” who told Rolling Stone that she had been raped by seven men, while two others watched, during a date function at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in 2012. She wrote that as questions arose about the tale, she tried to have Jackie help her verify the identity of her assailant, and “it spiraled into confusion.”

“By the time we ended our conversation, I felt nearly certain that she was not being truthful,” she wrote, noting that she had come to believe that “Jackie isn’t credible.” She ended her message by saying that the fraternity was planning to issue a statement denying that there was a party at their house the night of the purported assault. “We have to issue a retraction,” she wrote.

Erdely’s e-mail was a signal flare warning of turbulent months to come for the magazine, but, according to hundreds of pages of Erdely’s notes and other materials related to the case filed in court Friday, there were many other warnings — before the story published — that Jackie’s account was inconsistent.

The court documents, submitted as evidence in U-Va. Associate Dean Nicole Eramo’s $10 million defamation lawsuit against the magazine, reveal new details about the reporting that went into the story and show how Erdely deferred to Jackie’s wishes and account instead of digging deeper to verify the student’s claims.

The documents also show that aspects of Jackie’s account of her gang rape closely mirror details from prominent books about sexual assault survivors — including one that explores several gang rapes at fraternities — and the plotline of a “Law & Order: SVU” episode that ran about a year before Jackie first spoke to the reporter. According to Erdely’s notes, Jackie mentioned those books and the television show in her first interviews, and Erdely was warned that the nature of Jackie’s claims had changed over time.

Since that December 5 e-mail, the Columbia University journalism school and the Charlottesville Police Department issued extensive reports determining that the account Jackie gave to Rolling Stone was false. The magazine later retracted the story and apologized to readers. Last July, Dana resigned.

The magazine now faces lawsuits filed by undergraduate members of Phi Kappa Psi, as well as Eramo, who alleged in court documents that the story, titled “A Rape on Campus,” portrayed her as callous and indifferent to survivors of sexual assault.

Libby Locke, an attorney for Eramo, said the documents clearly show that the story was flawed and aimed to portray Eramo and U-Va. in a negative light, despite interviews that indicated sexual assault survivors had great praise for Eramo.

“Erdely’s reporting file demonstrates that there were numerous red flags that put Rolling Stone on notice that Jackie was not a credible source and that the gang rape story she told Rolling Stone was false,” . . . . “But none of those facts stood in the way of Rolling Stone publishing a false and defamatory article, relying on a source who was not credible and painting Ms. Eramo as a callous and indifferent administrator.” . . . . A review of Erdely’s notes show that even mundane facts obtained from Jackie appeared to be false. 

Lawyers in Rolling Stone Lawsuit - "Jackie" Tied to Fake Person

The Lawn at UVA

As a double alumni of the University of Virginia myself with many family members who are also alumni, I continue to be livid over Rolling Stone's utterly false campus rape story from 2014.   The story always seemed far fetched to those of us who attended UVA and frequented the fraternity row party scene (one family member had friends in wrongly slandered Phi Kappa Psi).  Thankfully, Rolling Stone is being sued for its fabricated story and as more and more information comes out, "Jackie's" entire story was a lie.   When this lying woman will be expelled from the University for an Honor Code violation remains to be scene.  The Washington Post has the latest details on the sick lies made up by this truth and veracity challenged woman which Rolling Stone ran with even though nothing was ever properly substantiated.  Here are excerpts:

Lawyers representing a University of Virginia student at the center of a debunked gang-rape allegation have acknowledged in court papers that the student has ties to a fake persona she once named as the ringleader of the alleged attack.

Filed in federal court Tuesday, the papers are part of an ongoing lawsuit a U-Va. associate dean filed against Rolling Stone magazine, arguing that the magazine published a defamatory account of how the Charlottesville school handles sexual assaults. The legal team representing “Jackie” acknowledged that they had recently accessed a Yahoo e-mail account for “Haven Monahan,” who the U-Va. student alleged had taken her on a date before leading her into a brutal gang rape in September 2012.

Lawyers representing U-Va. associate dean Nicole Eramo have described Monahan as a fictitious U-Va. junior created by Jackie to lure the romantic interest of another student, a practice known as “catfishing.”

Eramo’s lawyer, Libby Locke, told The Washington Post that the filing shows that “they admit accessing it, which means Jackie is Haven, a point they’ve refused to answer all along.”

Eramo’s legal team filed the $10 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone in response to a sensational account of Jackie’s alleged sexual assault detailed in a lengthy expose published by the magazine in November 2014. An investigation by The Post eventually showed significant inconsistencies in the Rolling Stone account, and the Charlottesville Police Department and a Columbia University inquiry could not substantiate the allegations; the magazine subsequently retracted the story.

Eramo then sued Rolling Stone claiming that the account protrayed Eramo as callous and indifferent to Jackie’s gang rape allegations.

Eramo’s lawyers assert that the new evidence finally proves that Jackie created Monahan and his e-mail account as part of an elaborate ruse to lure another U-Va. student into a romantic relationship. In a series of text messages, Jackie wrote to friends at U-Va. that Monahan was a junior in her chemistry class who had invited her on a date. Then one night in September of her freshman year she alleged that Monahan and a group of men sexually assaulted her after the date.

Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story Totally Fabricated

Things continue to get worse for Rolling Stone Magazine which published a sensational story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.  Now, new evidence shows that the entire story was fabricated apparently as part of the machinations of a woman scorned, that woman being "Jackie" the Rolling Stone source.  The Washington Post has details on the latest facts to emerge and one can only wonder why the Rolling Stone reporter never bothered to check the facts behind the allegations.  Here are highlights from the Post:

Ryan Duffin was a freshman at the University of Virginia when he met a student named Jackie.

Both teenagers were new to campus in September 2012, and the pair quickly became friends through a shared appreciation of alternative rock bands such as Coheed and Cambria and the Silversun Pickups. Early on, Duffin sensed that Jackie was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with him. Duffin valued her friendship but politely rebuffed Jackie’s advances for more.

Just days after he met her, Duffin said, he was goaded into a text message conversation with a U-Va. junior named “Haven Monahan,” whom Jackie said she knew from a chemistry class.

What followed was what lawyers representing U-Va. associate dean Nicole Eramo described in new court documents as an elaborate scheme to win him over — a practice known as “catfishing” — that morphed into a sensational claim of gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity and a Rolling Stone story that rocked the U-Va. campus and shocked the nation.

A Charlottesville Police investigation later determined that no one named Haven Monahan had ever attended U-Va., and extensive efforts to find the person were not successful. Photographs that were texted to Duffin that were purported to be of Monahan were actually pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a student at a university in another state, confirmed to The Post that the photographs were of him.

“All available evidence demonstrates that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a fake suitor created by Jackie in a strange bid to earn the affections of a student named Ryan Duffin that Jackie was romantically interested in,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court papers filed this week.

Jackie had told Duffin that a date with Haven Monahan on Sept. 28, 2012, had gone terribly wrong, claiming that the upperclassman had forced her to perform oral sex on five other men. That fall night, Duffin was among a group of friends who rushed to be by Jackie’s side as she cried; Duffin described her as being hysterical and appearing traumatized. Duffin said Jackie appeared not to be injured — a red dress that she had worn on the date was not disheveled or torn — and she declined to go to police or the hospital that night to report the assault.

Court documents indicate that a crush Jackie had on Duffin freshman year was the spark for all that has happened since, that the attention-seeking events on Sept. 28, 2012 spiraled into a sensational tale that evolved, made its way into a national magazine’s pages, and then took on a life of its own.

There's much more in the article, but the take away is that Jackie is psycho and, in my view, needs to be expelled from the University under the Honor Code.

Study: Bias Against LGBT Individuals Decreasing Across All Demographic Groups

A new study out of the University of Virginia provides more bad news for Christofascists and their puppets within the GOP: anti-LGBT bias is falling across all demographic groups. Huge problems of anti-gay discrimination continue to exist but despite their efforts to fan anti-gay animus, the Christofascists are losing the larger was for equality and becoming more and more of marginalized demographic. In my view, the changes stem not only from the vastly increased visibility of gays, but also the larger decline in religion.  A decline I believe is driven by the reality that science is making it increasingly difficult to prop up the myths on which Christianity is based.  With educated people understanding that among other things (i) Adam and Eve never existed and (ii) the Bible is a much manipulated and revised work of fallible men, bias based on Bronze Age myths become increasingly unsustainable.  Here are highlights of the study findings:

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling legalizing marriage between same-sex couples in all 50 states follows on the heels of national polls showing rapid cultural changes in attitudes toward lesbian and gay people. A new University of Virginia study confirms this, showing that not only are Americans' conscious and unconscious biases against lesbian women and gay men decreasing across all demographic groups, but the trend also appears to be accelerating. 

Westgate and co-authors Rachel Riskind of Guilford College and U.Va. psychology professor Brian Nosek analyzed data collected from more than half a million people between 2006 through 2013 by Project Implicit.

Westgate's team found that implicit or "unconscious" bias against lesbian and gay people was 13 percent lower in 2013 than in 2006, suggesting that implicit bias has decreased substantially in recent years. They also found that explicit, or self-reported, bias decreased twice as much (26 percent) as implicit bias over the same seven-year period. This suggests that while many peoples' attitudes are changing at the deeper, unconscious level, some people may be less willing or able to acknowledge anti-gay bias than they were in years past. 

"Implicit biases can occur outside of conscious awareness or conscious control," Nosek said. "People may know that they have them and not be able to control them. This is the first evidence for long-term change in people's implicit attitudes on a cultural level." 

The authors also found that some people's attitudes were changing more quickly than others. Age, race and political orientation were the biggest predictors of attitude change. Unconscious bias decreased the most among women, as well as among white, Hispanic, liberal and younger people. Men - as well as black, Asian, conservative and older people - showed the smallest changes in bias. 

Most importantly, nearly all demographic groups showed decreases in unconscious and self-reported bias over the seven-year period, suggesting that across the board, people seem to be developing more positive attitudes toward lesbian and gay people in general.

"People today are genuinely more positive toward gay and lesbian people than they were just a decade ago," Westgate said. "The research shows that attitudes across the board are truly changing - it's not just a function of people feeling less comfortable admitting their bias in a culture that has become more open." 

UVA Dean Sues Rolling Stone Over Bogus Rape Article

Admittedly, I have a special interest in the University of Virginia given that (i) I am a graduate of both  the The College of Liberal Arts as an undergraduate the School of Law, and (ii) some ten relatives and past in-laws hold UVA degrees, including three of my siblings and one of my daughters.  I also belonged to a fraternity during my UVA days.  Hence, I always double check those who would malign "The University" as we call it without justification (like some Virginia Tech alumni I know).  But the heinous Rolling Stone article that has now been condemned by the Columbia School of journalism and even retracted by Rolling Stone indeed set new lows in unfounded attacks. Now, Rolling Stone is reaping the fruits of its irresponsible journalism - if that term can even be applied - as what is the first of possibly several lawsuits has been filed.  Huffington Post looks at the first multimillion dollar lawsuit.  Here are highlights:

A University of Virginia dean who played a major role in Rolling Stone's now-retracted rape piece is suing the magazine for defamation. 

Nicole Eramo, an associate dean of students at UVA who handles sexual assault cases on campus, is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages from Wenner Media, Rolling Stone's parent company. Eramo alleges that the November 2014 piece unfairly portrayed her as "indifferent" to the alleged victim's tale. Eramo is also suing the magazine and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote the controversial piece.

"The portrayal of Dean Eramo in 'A Rape on Campus' and in Erdely and Rolling Stone's subsequent public statements, are categorically false," the suit reads. "Indeed, publicly available information demonstrates that the highly disparaging claims about Dean Eramo are all untrue."

"A Rape on Campus" detailed the alleged sexual assault of a UVA student referred to in the article as only "Jackie." In the piece, Jackie claims she was raped and humiliated by several members of the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. The story alleges that Eramo encouraged Jackie not to report the crime because "nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school."

The piece sent shockwaves through the campus. The university asked for a criminal investigation into the matter and suspended all fraternities on campus.

However, reports from The Washington Post and other news outlets called into question some of the story's most shocking elements. Friends of Jackie claimed that her account of the assault changed repeatedly over time. The Post also found that Jackie's description of one of the main fraternity members involved in the incident didn't match anyone in Phi Kappa Psi.

Rolling Stone backed away from the piece after the doubts emerged. After a lengthy investigation by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, the article was retracted.

  Rolling Stone declined a request for comment to HuffPost.

 Sadly, in my view, Rolling Stone wanted a sensational article and really did not care if it was true or not.

UVA Fraternity Announces Lawsuit Against Rolling Stone

I am often critical of the mainstream media because of its laziness and cowardice which in turn allows horrible things to happen - the Iraq War being perhaps one of the more recent examples of an avoidable disaster.  But the media can also ruin the lives of people through the same laziness and at times the bias of reporters who want the facts to be a certain way even if they do not support the reporter's agenda.  A case in point, the vicious and false Rolling Stone article from last fall that maligned both a fraternity at the University of Virginia and on a lesser scale the University itself.  Now that the story has been shown to be false, the targeted fraternity is announcing that it is filing a lawsuit against Rolling Stone for its libelous story.  Here are details from the Washington Post:

The University of Virginia chapter of Phi Kappa Psi announced Monday that the fraternity house will file a lawsuit against Rolling Stone, calling the magazine’s reporting that described an alleged gang-rape by some of its members “reckless.”

The lawsuit comes a day after Rolling Stone editors retracted a Nov. 19 story “A Rape on Campus,” that portrayed the chilling account of brutal sexual assault allegedly occurring in the Phi Kappa Psi house at U-Va. in 2012. A Columbia University report issued Sunday described significant lapses by the magazine’s staff while reporting the gang-rape allegations and the story’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and the publication’s managing editor, Will Dana, apologized for the deeply flawed account. But the fraternity noted that Erdely did not apologize directly to the Phi Psi chapter at U-Va.

“The report by Columbia University’s School of Journalism demonstrates the reckless nature in which Rolling Stone researched and failed to verify facts in its article that erroneously accused Phi Kappa Psi of crimes its members did not commit,” said Stephen Scipione, U-Va. chapter president of Phi Kappa Psi. “This type of reporting serves as a sad example of a serious decline of journalistic standards.”

The chapter spent “130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone Magazine,” according to Phi Psi. A fraternity spokesman said that the chapter is considering expanding its lawsuit to include Erdely, the story’s author.

In March the Charlottesville police department detailed a months-long investigation that exonerated the fraternity and found there was no evidence to substantiate the sexual assault allegations described in Rolling Stone. Fraternity members told The Post in the fall that they knew within hours of the article’s publication that there were significant discrepancies in the account.

“Clearly our fraternity and its members have been defamed, but more importantly we fear this entire episode may prompt some victims to remain in the shadows, fearful to confront their attackers,” said Scipione. “If Rolling Stone wants to play a real role in addressing this problem, it’s time to get serious.”

In the interests of disclosure, I was a member of a fraternity at UVA and one of my children has friends who were members of the defamed Phi Kappa Psi chapter. 

Rolling Stone Retracts UVA Rape Story

Exonerated

Following a Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism investigation and its scathing findings, Rolling Stone has retracted its seemingly fabricated story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house.  One can only hope that the fraternity and its members take legal action against the publication, the hack who wrote it and put sensation over the truth, and, of course, the lying student who set the entire train wreck in motion.  The Washington Post looks at the investigation findings and the shoddy and careless work of Rolling Stone.  Here are excerpts:

In a 12,000-word report that reads like a reportorial autopsy, a three-person team at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism called the November article “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. . . . The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting” that would likely have exposed the story as dubious.

Rolling Stone, which requested and cooperated with the probe, is publishing the Columbia exposé. The report serves as the magazine’s full explanation of how the story — “A Rape on Campus” — came about. Rolling Stone apologized for the story in early December, two weeks after its publication. In an e-mail to The Washington Post on Sunday, Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana said, “We will be officially retracting the story. And both the magazine and [the author] will be issuing apologies when the report is published this evening.”

The Columbia investigation essentially confirms the earlier reporting and adds new details to the story’s gestation and development, offered by the magazine’s journalists, who have generally remained silent since the story’s flaws were exposed.

The report cites several major reporting failures. The principal one was Erdely’s, and ultimately her editor’s: almost total reliance on Jackie’s account of what occurred on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, when Jackie said she was lured by a date to an upstairs bedroom at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house and repeatedly assaulted.

The magazine essentially failed to find corroboration for Jackie’s account from others — students, university administrators, law enforcement officials — but published her story regardless. 

Erdely wrote in her article that she had contacted Duffin and that he declined to be interviewed. That statement is apparently false; Duffin told The Post he was never contacted by Rolling Stone at all.

“In hindsight,” the report said, the most crucial decision that Rolling Stone made was not contacting the three friends. “That was the reporting path, if taken, that would almost certainly have led the magazine’s editors to change plans.”

In public statements and in its apology, Rolling Stone and Erdely also apparently misrepresented the notion that they declined to contact “Drew” — Jackie’s supposed date on the night of the alleged rape . . . . Neither Erdely nor the magazine’s editors were able to contact or identify Drew, a fact that wasn’t disclosed in the original story.

Dana, the managing editor, told the Columbia investigators that he was unaware that Erdely and her editor, Sean Woods, didn’t know “Drew’s” real name and hadn’t tried to confirm his existence before publication.

Last month, Charlottesville police chief announced that his department was unable to confirm the gang-rape allegations published in the magazine. The police review, which included interviews with 70 individuals connected to the case, also showed that university administrators acted quickly to offer assistance to Jackie and investigate the allegations.  

The Phi Psi house was vandalized, and frat members went into hiding after they were portrayed in the magazine as callous predators.

Ultimately, Phi Psi members were able to quickly establish through financial and digital records that fraternity had not hosted a party on the night of Sept. 28, 2012. In addition, no Phi Psi member’s name resembles the one Jackie gave as her attacker’s. . . . the fraternity said that it was exploring legal options after the Rolling Stone article was discredited.​

Rolling Stone was unbelievably reckless and needs to be held accountable for the damage done to reputations.  As for Jackie, she is obviously mentally disturbed and ought to be forced to seek a mental health care intervention and/or expelled from the University for  an horrific lie and honor code violation.

Police Find No Evidence To Support Alleged UVA Gang Rape

As numerous Virginia news outlets are reporting, the City of Charlottesville Police Department has found no evidence to support the alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity that a now debunked Rolling Stone article sensationalized last year.  Tellingly, the alleged victim did not provide a statement or testimony during the police investigation.  Even more tellingly, the police could not confirm that "Jackie's" supposed date that night even exists.  As I have said before, if the entire story is false - as seems to be the case - I hope the fraternity and its members take legal action against the false victim and Rolling Stone and the "journalist" who wrote the defamatory piece.  Here are excerpts from the Huffington Post:

Charlottesville Police announced Monday that its investigation into an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity did not find enough evidence to support the account described in a Rolling Stone magazine article published last year. 

Charlottesville Chief of Police Tim Longo said during a press conference the case would not be closed, however, because he cannot say conclusively that no assault took place. The alleged victim, a female undergraduate identified only as Jackie, did not provide a statement or any testimony to Charlottesville police during its investigation, Longo said. 

The Rolling Stone article published in November detailed the alleged gang rape of Jackie on Sept. 28, 2012, at Phi Psi. Upon the article's publication, UVA President Teresa Sullivan asked Charlottesville, Virginia, police to investigate the incident described in the magazine, while she temporarily suspended social activities for Greek life. 

In December, reporting in the Washington Post and other outlets discredited the Rolling Stone's account of the alleged rape. The magazine admitted later that its article had significant errors, and commissioned the Columbia University School of Journalism to conduct an independent review of its reporting and editing of the piece.

"Unfortunately, we're not able to conclude to any substantive degree that an incident that is described in [the article] occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi or any other fraternity, for that matter," Longo said.

Charlottesville police spoke with nine of 11 men who lived in the Phi Psi house in fall 2012, all of whom said they did not know anything about a sexual assault or about Jackie, according to Longo. Police also spoke with Jackie's friends and roommates, reviewed photographic evidence, phone records and interviewed members of other fraternities.

Longo said police also could not determine whether Haven Monahan, the man with whom Jackie said she went on a date on Sept. 28, 2012, even existed.

Stephen Scipione, president of the UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, took a more combative stance in a statement Monday, blaming Rolling Stone for leveling untrue allegations against the fraternity. 

"These false accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault,” Scipione said. “We hope that Rolling Stone’s actions do not discourage any survivors from coming forward to seek the justice they deserve."

Longo said Jackie also declined to waive federal privacy rights to allow police to review educational records they believed would be useful in their investigation. Police did speak with Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the Rolling Stone story, who provided additional information that was not included in the article. 

UVA Reinstates Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity

Without admitting that it may have over reacted and been duped by the now widely pilloried Rolling Stone article that claimed UVA harbored a "culture of rape," officials at the University of Virginia has reinstated Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.  As noted in several posts, the Rolling Stone article never rang true based on my years at UVA or those of one of my daughters who had friend who were members of Phi Kappa Psi.  Huffington Post looks at the reinstatement and the University's efforts to undo damage that it wrought.  Here are excerpts:

The University of Virginia reinstated the fraternity at the center of a disputed gang rape allegation following the conclusion of a police investigation into the matter, the school announced Monday.

The UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, a fraternity whose party was said to be the setting for a gang rape in a bedroom of a female student named Jackie, suspended itself following a Rolling Stone article in November reporting the claim. Inaccuracies centering around Jackie's story later surfaced, and the fraternity came forward saying it had not even held a formal social event on the night the gang rape allegedly happened.

UVA requested the Charlottesville Police Department investigate the claim in Rolling Stone's story. The police said they would continue their investigation regardless of the dispute over the article's accuracy.

Charlottesville police spokesman Gary Pleasants told The Huffington Post their investigation has not yet been completed, just that so far they have "found no substantive basis that the alleged incident occurred at that fraternity."

In a statement, Stephen Scipione, president of the UVA Alpha Chapter Phi Kappa Psi, said, "In today's 24-hour news cycle, we must guard against a rush to judgment as we often don’t have all of the facts in front of us."

Last week, the university announced new rules for parties under an addendum to an annual agreement all fraternities must sign. One of the included rules says a sober fraternity member must monitor all the bedrooms in the fraternity house during parties.

The university heaped praise on Phi Kappa Psi, noting the fraternity was the first to sign on to the new, stricter party rules, and pointed out its members helped draft the addendum.

Columbia Journalism School to Scrutinize Rolling Stone Rape Article

The November Rolling Stone article painting the University of Virginia as a campus plagued by a rape culture has become synonymous with bad and biased journalism.  After issuing apologies and damage control statements, Rolling Stone now finds itself subject to further scrutiny as the Columia School of Journalism is, at Rolling Stone's request, going to scrutinize the story and how such an irresponsible article ever was published.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on this development:

Rolling Stone magazine said Monday that it had asked the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to conduct a review of a widely disputed article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.

In an editor’s note that will appear in the magazine’s next issue, Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s editor and publisher, said that the review would be led by Steve Coll, the journalism school’s dean, and Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs, and that it would evaluate “the editorial process that led to the publication of the story.” The report will be published unedited and in its entirety on Rolling Stone’s website, and excerpts will appear in the magazine.

The review may do little to quell the debate that has erupted over the story. The 9,000-word article, published last month, detailed the experience of a student identified only as Jackie, who described being raped by seven men at a fraternity party. The explosive account led the university to suspend the fraternity’s operations and helped drive a discussion about the failure to address sexual violence on college campuses.

But two weeks after the story was published, the narrative started to crumble. The magazine acknowledged that the reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, had relied almost entirely on Jackie’s account and never contacted the accused rapists. Other key details have been debunked or questioned by The Washington Post and other news media organizations.

In the wake of those revelations, the magazine has acknowledged that its editorial process was flawed and that it, too, had doubts about the veracity of the account. Critics have written that Rolling Stone’s editors acted irresponsibly, and women’s rights advocates have said the controversy will discourage rape victims from coming forward.

Besides UVA, the losers in this sad affair are true rape victims who may be afraid to come forward or not be taken seriously.  

Friends of "Jackie" Continue to Dish Rolling Stone's UVA Rape Story

University of Virginia student Alex Stock talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Charlottsville

As more information continues to come out of the mouths of the friends of "Jackie," the purported gang rape victim at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia, it looks increasingly that both "Jackie" and Rolling Stone's reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, were engaging in fantasy and sought to create a cataclysmic story regardless of the true facts.  If they sought to further women's rights and fight campus sexual assault, all that they have done is make future victims of actual assault less likely to be believed.  It is also noteworthy that, unlike "Jackie," the three friends dished in the Rolling Stone article are not afraid to use their real names as they try to set the record straight.  Here are highlights from Yahoo News:

Almost a month after the scathing Rolling Stone article was published, Kathryn Hendley, Alex Stock, and Ryan Duffin are still trying to set the record straight.

The friends told The Associated Press that the article about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia frat house was wrong on a number of key points, especially its assertion that they urged the victim to not report the attack.

Duffin, a 20-year-old, third-year student referred to as "Randall" in the Rolling Stone article, told the AP that not only did he encourage the alleged victim to go to police, but he started to dial 9-1-1 on his cellphone until she begged off saying she just wanted to go back to her dorm and go to sleep.

The AP also spoke with the other two friends portrayed in the article: third-year, 20-year-old U.Va. students Hendley and Stock, known as "Cindy" and "Andy" in the article. None of the three friends was contacted by Rolling Stone's reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, before the article was published; each of them rejected multiple assertions made in the article, for which Rolling Stone has since apologized for and noted discrepancies.

Jackie eventually told Duffin and Stock her version of what happened that night: that she was forced to perform oral sex on five men at the frat house.

"My first reaction was, 'We need to go to police,'" he said. "I wanted to go to police immediately. I was really forceful on that, actually. And I almost took it to calling (the police) right there." He said he had his phone out, prepared to call 9-1-1, "but she didn't want to and," he remembers thinking, "'I can't do that if she doesn't want to do it.'"

I'm not saying that force oral sex is anything to be ignored, but it is something far, far different than being gang raped after being thrown through a glass top table as reported by Rolling Stone.  Obviously, someone is lying and it would appear to be "Jackie."   

More Questions Raised About Seemingly Fabricated UVA Rape Story

It looks like Rolling Stone may have something much more foul smelling than mud on its face as the pilloried UVA fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, rebuts many of the key details of the story of gang rape told by "Jackie" to Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely who apparently never bothered to fact check her story - perhaps out of eagerness to "break a big story."  Andrew Sullivan correctly notes:

How an editor ran this piece without even speaking to its author is beyond me; how fact-checkers did not discover some of these obvious discrepancies immediately is also astounding. I guess when you’re on a crusade, “fake but true” will do.

Whatever their motivation, "Jackie" and Erdely have harmed the cause of the right of women to safety on campus by making officials more likely to question rape allegations than before "the big story."  Something about the story never rang true with me after attending UVA as both an undergraduate and as a law student not to mention having numerous family members who are graduates.  If there is to be justice, I hope that Phi Kappa Psi aggressively goes after "Jackie" who seems to have played many into making jack asses of themselves.  Oh, and perhaps Jackie needs to be charged with an Honor Code violation and brought before the UVA Honor Council for bald face lying (if found guilty, expulsion from the University is the sanction).  Here are details from the Washington Post on the rapidly collapsing Rolling Stone story:

Several key aspects of the account of a gang rape offered by a University of Virginia student in Rolling Stone magazine have been cast into doubt, including the date of the alleged attack and details about an alleged attacker, according to interviews and a statement from the magazine backing away from the article.

The U-Va. fraternity chapter where the alleged attack on a student named Jackie was said to have occurred in September 2012 released a statement Friday afternoon denying that such an assault took place in its house. Phi Kappa Psi said it has been working with police to determine whether the account of a brutal rape at a party there was true. The fraternity members say that several important elements of the allegations were false.

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he did work at the Aquatic and Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie’s name. He said, however, that he had never met Jackie in person and had never taken her on a date. He also said that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Phi Kappa Psi said it did not host “a date function or social event” during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012, the night that Jackie alleges she was invited to a date party, lured into an upstairs room and was then ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.

The fraternity also said that it has reviewed the roster of employees at the university’s Aquatic and Fitness Center for 2012 and found that it does not list a member of the fraternity — a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post — and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account. The statement also said that the house does not have pledges during the fall semester.

Alex Pinkleton, a close friend of Jackie’s who survived a rape and an attempted rape during her first two years on campus, said in an interview that she has had numerous conversations with Jackie in recent days and now feels misled. . . . . Pinkleton said she is concerned that sexual assault awareness advocacy groups will suffer as a result of the conflicting details of the Rolling Stone allegations.

Earlier this week, Jackie revealed to friends for the first time the full name of her alleged attacker, a name she had never disclosed to anyone. But after looking into that person’s background, the group that had been among her closest supporters quickly began to raise suspicions about her account. The friends determined that the student that Jackie had named was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi and that other details about his background did not match up with information Jackie had disclosed earlier about her perpetrator.

“An advocate is not supposed to be an investigator, a judge or an adjudicator,” said Renda, a 2014 graduate who works for the university as a sexual violence awareness specialist. But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”

Soltis said Jackie did not tell her about the alleged sexual assault until January 2013. Soltis said she did not notice any apparent wounds on Jackie’s body at the time that might have indicated a brutal attack.

Sexual violence on campuses needs to be eradicated. Period.  By telling lies and believing a self-announced "victim" without ever bothering to corroborate the facts is no better than lynch mob behavior in the Old South.  Jackie and Erdely have harmed the cause they claim to support and one has to wonder how many real victims will now be disbelieved because of this apparently fabricated story.