I hate people.
In yet another brick in the anti-women wall, last week, the US Supreme Court declined to review a case brought by a teenage girl (known only as “HS”) against her high school, after she was dropped from her high school cheerleading team for refusing to chant the name of a basketball player who raped her. (The player plead guilty to misdemeanor assault of the girl, but the rape charge was dropped.)
School officials told the young girl that she had no right to remain silent when her coaches told her to cheer.
That she was dropped from the cheerleading squad for refusing to cheer for her rapist is sickening in and of itself. But wait – it gets worse.
She has been ordered by the court to pay compensation of $45,000 for bringing the “frivolous lawsuit.”
Good times:
She was 16 when she said she had been raped at a house party attended by dozens of fellow students from Silsbee High School, in south-east Texas. One of her alleged assailants, a student athlete called Rakheem Bolton, was arrested, with two other young men.
In court, Bolton pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour assault of HS. He received two years of probation, community service, a fine and was required to take anger-management classes. The charge of rape was dropped, leaving him free to return to school and take up his place on the basketball team.
Four months later, in January 2009, HS travelled to one of Silsbee High School’s basketball games in Huntsville. She joined in with the business of leading cheers throughout the match. But when Bolton was about to take a free throw, the girl decided to stand silently with her arms folded.
“I didn’t want to have to say his name and I didn’t want to cheer for him,” she later told reporters. “I just didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”
Richard Bain, the school superintendent in the sport-obsessed small town, saw things differently. He told HS to leave the gymnasium. Outside, he told her she was required to cheer for Bolton. When the girl said she was unwilling to endorse a man who had sexually assaulted her, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad.
The subsequent legal challenge against Mr Bain’s decision perhaps highlights the seriousness with which Texans take cheerleading and high school sports, which can attract crowds in the tens of thousands.
HS and her parents instructed lawyers to pursue a compensation claim against the principal and the School District in early 2009. Their lawsuit argued that HS’s right to exercise free expression had been violated when she was instructed to applaud her attacker. But two separate courts ruled against her, deciding that a cheerleader freely agrees to act as a “mouthpiece” for a institution and therefore surrenders her constitutional right to free speech. In September last year, a federal appeals court upheld those decisions and announced that HS must also reimburse the school sistrict $45,000, for filing a “frivolous” lawsuit against it.
“As a cheerleader, HS served as a mouthpiece through which [the school district] could disseminate speech – namely, support for its athletic teams,” the appeals court decision says. “This act constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, HS was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily.”
The family’s lawyer said the ruling meanst that students exercising their right of free speech can end up punished for refusing to follow “insensitive and unreasonable directions”.
So, to recap: a girl was gang-raped by by three assailants at a party attended by dozens of students***, one of whom was a student athlete named Rakheem Bolton. Bolton plead to misdemeanor assault, received two years of probation, community service, a fine, was required to complete anger management classes, after which he was permitted to return to school and continue to play basketball. Rather than quit the team in shame, like all good little rape victims should, the girl decided to maintain her position on the squad. And when it came time to cheer for Bolton as he stood poised to shoot a free-throw, the girl thought “fuck that noise!” and stood silently, arms crossed.
And for her quiet dignified protest, she was thrown off the squad and has been ordered to scrounge up a cool 45 grand.
It’s fucked up, right?
First, in what world does a basketball game constitute “work of the school”? Seems to me the school’s job is to teach its students well, (or at least well enough, such that its student athletes will decide not to join a bunch of testosterone-fueled guys in a little weekend gang rape.)
Second, if I know anything about Texas high school sports (and I don’t, really – except for what I’ve seen on Friday Night Lights) this is one of many cases of a school attempting to protect its road to a national championship game, while abdicating entirely its duty to protect students from predatory meatheads.
And finally, irrespective of the circumstances, who the hell cares if one cheerleader decides not to participate in cheering for one basketball player? She stood there quietly. She didn’t start yelling about Bolton being a rapist. From what I can discern, she didn’t cause a scene or do anything that would have even drawn attention to her silent protest. She just didn’t want to cheer for this asshole while he was attempting his free-throw shots.
I’m at a loss. This story hurts my soul and explodes my brain. When did women cease being people? When did we become merely penis receptacles and baby incubators?
And more importantly, when did the media decide that these stories aren’t worth covering such that the only way I heard about it was through a commenter tip?
Shameful.
On the legal end (based upon about an hour of research), it seems to me that the court’s ruling is utter bullshit. If you want my cockeyed legal analysis, click page 2 (it’s just above the comment box, and right below related posts that you really ought to read.)
Buuut, if you’ve had just about enough out of me, thank me very much, then carry on! And be safe! Don’t get raped out there!
What with the increased Teabillification of these United States with their “Planned Parenthood is Evil/A Baby in Every Womb” philosophy, you’ll be screwed.
(H/T LoneOak!)
[image via Angry Little Girls]
(click “Next Page” for legal mumbo jumbo)
Valdivia
This is awful and rage-inspiring. Ugh. Assholes.
Yutsano
Is there a national organization willing to step forward to fundraise for the parents? It would suck if their only recourse here would be bankruptcy.
Spaghetti Lee
But two separate courts ruled against her, deciding that a cheerleader freely agrees to act as a “mouthpiece” for a institution and therefore surrenders her constitutional right to free speech.
Prepping them for adulthood, I suppose. Because why wouldn’t such a standard be applied to companies as well as schools?
Xantar
Actual response by a libertarian on Facebook in response to this story:
Because, you know, being a victim of rape is exactly the same as having a religious disagreement.
Martin
Oh, Texas again. Yet again, I’m shocked. Really.
arguingwithsignposts
i’m thinking there are a few SCOTUS justices who deserve punches in the neck right about now. Along with a bunch of assholes who pursued this suit.
How many women did GWB appoint again? Oh, yeah, none. Fuck you, GWB.
eta: as the parent of two girls, my soul hurts because they will have to put up with this shit.
Valdivia
@Xantar:
ok, now I want to actually physically strangle someone. rape=not liking someone’s religion? is the victimology in their minds such that they think this? really?
Lancelot Link
Jocks always get away with it.
Spaghetti Lee
Since you are aghast I assume you disagree with the ruling.
Don’t you just love the way they talk? Like the world is a logic problem and they’re just so pleased with themselves for solving it?
Have libertarians always been such soulless suckups to the rich and powerful? It’s like an entire political party of Grima Wormtongues to the Republicans’ Sauron.
arguingwithsignposts
@Spaghetti Lee:
maybe we can get the Fonzi of Freedom here to answer that question. Because the comments would be worth more than his worthless defense.
Catsy
If I were her parents, I would make it my life’s work to see that nobody ever sees a single cent from this indefensible ruling–even if it meant declaring bankruptcy as a “fuck you”–and to destroy the people responsible for making it happen. Personally, financially, and professionally.
asiangrrlMN
My heart and soul hurt when I read this. The rage is there underneath it all, but it’s just so fucking sad. State of Texas, meet my rusty pitchfork.
@Xantar: I would have to physically restrain myself from seeking out that person and punching him (I’m assuming) in the neck.
Matthew Reid Krell
While the denial of cert sucks for H.S., let me try and unpack the Justices’ thinking a little for everybody:
It takes four votes to grant certiorari. But it takes five votes to win. If you don’t think you can win, you might vote to deny cert to keep the law unsettled on the question. That way, other H.S.es have a better chance at getting actual justice.
It sucks, it truly sucks, but because the Court is a policy-making body, the Justices have to be concerned with the result in the NEXT case – hence voting to deny cert so future H.S.es can possibly win. But because we have an adversarial system, they have to decide whether they can win in THIS case – hence the question of whether they think H.S. can win before this Court. It’s the worst possible system.
That said, I would have totally voted to grant cert on the sanctions, regardless of whether I thought I could win. That decision is just nonsense.
ETA: Link to the opinion? I found it, but I know what I’m looking for.
goblue72
Meanwhile, the local chapter of the NAACP in this case had previously held a protest in SUPPORT of the little rapist:
http://www.kfdm.com/articles/naacp-35462-case-indictments.html
Mister Papercut
Did no school official take into account that compelling HS (whose identity was distressingly easy to stumble upon when I was Googling for more info, btw) to cheer individually for Bolton could have been detrimental to her case against him? Or did they just not ca…
Oh, yeah, nevermind.
asiangrrlMN
@goblue72: Gaaaaaaaaaah. Just…arrrrrrghhhhhhhhhh!
fhtagn
If ever a school deserved to be shut down, and a principal deserved to be sacked and forbidden to hold any office of responsibility or care, it is this one. As for the courts, if this is the best Texas can do, maybe it’s time to boot them out of the Union, before they drag the rest of us down into their sordid and despicable ways.
Matthew Reid Krell
Also, having read the opinion, I think there’s two flaws that should have been corrected:
1) H.S. was “contractually obligated” to cheer for the team? I’d really like to see what in the record prompted the court to say that.
2) “Speech is unprotected when it would substantially interfere with the work of the school.” True, but I agree with ABL and some others that the “work of the school” isn’t basketball, last time I checked.
Having looked over the opinion, while I can see why the Court would deny cert, I would have dissented from the denial.
Mister Papercut
@Catsy: I wouldn’t wish bankruptcy on them — I figure they’ve almost certainly already been through hell — but if there’s an “HS Is Not To Pay Silsbee Schools One Thin Fucking Dime” fund or the like, I’d be much obliged if someone pointed me in the direction of it.
BattleCat
Feminists: dropping the “alleged” in “alleged rapist” since 1980.
arguingwithsignposts
@Matthew Reid Krell: personally, i’d have rather seen a 5-4 decision of those assholes acting like, well, the assholes they are.
eta: wait, it was fucking Silsbee? fuck that shit. no better than Vidor. mutherfuckas.
Spiffy McBang
When I first heard about this, I wished the girl luck but didn’t think she was actually going to win her case. Shit like that just doesn’t work out in the survivor’s favor very often. So that part, at least in my mind, wasn’t unexpected.
But a frivolous lawsuit? Are you fucking kidding me? There was enough evidence to convince the kid to cop to at least an assault charge, and even if you stick to the letter of that crime, how would it be frivolous to fight for your right to not cheer for someone who assaulted you in any capacity whatsoever? Then you throw in the part where any functioning human can figure out she was raped, and… urrrrrrrrgh. Must choke assholes.
Xof
@BattleCat:
Her confessed assailant. Glad we had this little chat.
arguingwithsignposts
@BattleCat: since, according to ABL and the record “The player plead guilty to misdemeanor assault of the girl, but the rape charge was dropped” you can have a big cup of STFU.
Yutsano
@BattleCat:
Did that little detail escape your attention? Prosecutors will often drop the bigger (but usually harder to prove) charge for a plea. You’re not defending an innocent lamb here bucko.
@arguingwithsignposts: GMTA dawg. :)
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
so what is stopping the school from compelling every student at the school cheer? and cheer what the school decides?
it seems that if the students are at the game, having bought student admission, they are in the same legal position as HS, there as representative of the school?
what about private or government employers, compelling employees cheer, or say happy shit in social media?
couldn’t the government pay people to be its useful idiots by giving them a cookie, thus compelling them to message on behalf of the government, even and especially overseas.
the personal tragedy is awful.
the activism of the ruling is pretty bad too. abandon all rights ye who enter, or by the grace of god, were born here.
Mnemosyne
@BattleCat:
What part of “he pled guilty” is confusing to you?
Spiffy McBang
@BattleCat: More to the point, when there’s an alleged rape that’s really difficult to prove or actually questionable, there’s hardly a case made most of the time. You almost never see a plea to anything. He’s not legally an official rapist, but the odds that he actually didn’t rape that girl are about .000001%. Outside the court system, that’s good enough to call him a rapist.
Mnemosyne
To be fair, we only started being people about 40 years ago. It’s the only world that women my age (41) and younger have known, but most older people remember the days when a married woman wasn’t allowed to have a credit card in her own name and it was perfectly legal to rape your wife.
It’s more of a reversion to form than something new. Unfortunately.
Mnemosyne
D’oh! I forgot that the word for maleparts throws you into moderation even when front-pagers use it. FYWP.
Anton Sirius
@Mister Papercut:
Me also, too.
Frank W.
You called it, Martin #5… I know that there are good people in Texas (and Arizona, and all of the other red states), but for God’s sake, what’s wrong with these people? It’s just one dreadful thing after another out of these people!
Shadow's Mom
@leftsideannie on Twitter reached out to the cheerleader’s attorney. A trust has been set up for the family. Details here: http://goo.gl/bA46p
Suggest vetting validity before sending money, but it’s the middle of the night here.
John Cole
jesus fucking christ
I need to go drink more.
arguingwithsignposts
@Frank W.: The most fucked up part is that silsbee is full of a lot of poor people. it’s a spot in a road, and not even an interstate. and i can’t even think of a fucking reason for the district to go to these lengths to fight this.
John Cole
Although I am sure EEMOM and Burnes will explain how this was correctly decided, and since I am not a lawyer I shouldn’t be fucking disgusted.
arguingwithsignposts
@John Cole: they have the night off.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: In a place like that, wimmins haz to know their place at all times. Odds are she comes out of this looking like a slut despite the actual facts. And I bet every single resident thinks themselves a good Christian to boot.
Joey Maloney
@arguingwithsignposts: Actually, if anyone is neck-punch-deserving it’s the girl’s lawyer. AIUI the original suit was dismissed for failure to state a claim and as far as I know he didn’t amend and refile, but just kept appealing.
Notwithstanding the awful circumstances of this case, as a matter of law the ruling’s correct. If you allowed people to file (what are adjudged to be) frivolous suits with no penalty – it’s be anarchy. Dogs and cats sleeping with Congressmen on Craigslist. Etc.
arguingwithsignposts
@arguingwithsignposts: well, that didn’t take long.
asiangrrlMN
@Joey Maloney: So, can I be pissed off at the original decision that she’s a “mouthpiece” for the school? At least give me that!
Swishalicious
to start out: it is totally and utterly disgusting that the reaction of the principal and/or cheer coach was to kick a young woman off the cheer squad for failing to cheer for her alleged rapist. (no, i don’t believe that you can call him a rapist – he wasn’t convicted of rape, and there is no indication that the young woman is suing him for civil damages: words have meaning, and without more than a bare allegation i can’t call someone a rapist).
however, ABL’s legal analysis is.. shit. it’s just not thorough at all – this isn’t about the right of a student to engage in free speech. it’s about whether or not a student engaged in an extracurricular activity, which is beyond the standard and compulsory role of the student, can be removed for that activity for his/her speech. and without a question, the answer to that query is: yes. you may be thrown off an extracurricular team for no reason or a bad reason. if a coach orders a pitcher to hit a batter and the pitcher refuses out of some moral objection, the coach can throw the player off the team. if the player then sues the school… that’s a frivolous suit. there is no chance of success based on the merits.
it’s the same for cheerleading – if you are supposed to cheer, and you don’t, you can be thrown off the team. here, our first reaction is skewed because of our horror at the abstract notion of a young woman being forced to cheer for her alleged rapist, and rightly so. it is, in reality, a disgusting act. but what if a young woman just decides she won’t cheer for her ex boyfriend? what if all cheerleaders won’t cheer for their exes? i don’t think anyone would argue that, if you’re a cheerleader who selectively doesn’t cheer, you can be thrown off the team. it’s like a quarterback deciding not to hand off to a running back who he has a grudge against: show him the door. where do we draw the line?
i think this is a discretionary question for the principal/coach, one which is answered entirely incorrectly, but within their purview. it sickens me that these (presumably) men took what is clearly an awful, life-altering situation for this young woman and exacerbated it, depriving her of what i assume is a meaningful outlet for her in cheerleading. i am sure they are the caricatures of misogynist, grotesque good ol’ boys that we assume they are. but that does not change the law.
you don’t have a right to free speech in voluntary extracurricular activities. if you want to wear a shirt that says “jesus smells like poopy,” then by all means, do that. you can’t be kicked out of school or punished. but if you want to be on student council and wear it, then you should anticipate that you’ll be kicked off.
BattleCat
Rape == sexual assault, but sexual assault != rape.
Assault != sexual assault, but sexual assault is sometimes assault (but not always).
Therein lies the problem. He wasn’t investigated for rape, but for sexual assault, which runs the gamut from smacking someone on the ass to making them perform sexual favors that aren’t intercourse but are as equally heinous.
He wasn’t investigated for rape or attempted rape, which narrows the band of activities considerably. The fact that they *let* him plead to assault indicates that they didn’t have any evidence that rape occurred, much less a sexual assault, but that they could successfully argue that it did in court, and that’s all that ultimately matters.
Unless you’re telling me that prosecutors are lazy and are willing to let someone who performs a sexual assault walk for no apparent reason.
In Texas.
“Battlecat!”
BattleCat
Texas is the place that electrocutes retarded people, by the way.
Mnemosyne
@BattleCat:
Oh, sweetie. Your naivete is adorable, but you should probably let the grown-ups who understand what actually happens in the real world talk about this now, okay?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Sigh. I’m going to be unpopular, but . . .
Aim all the anger at the school that you want, but the court is pretty much right. When you join an official school team, they control the rules of participation. The school district was a cesspool of complete flaming jackasses, but *legally* they have the right to mandate that team participants follow the rules they set. If a participant willfully declines to follow those rules, NO MATTER HOW JUSTIFIED WE THINK THEY ARE, the school has the right to kick them off of the team. The only exception is if those rules violate some legal requirement, which is not the case here. Requiring cheerleaders to chant the name of every player does not violate any laws that I am aware of. Should they have made an exception in this case? Damned straight. But legally, they don’t have to.
If you want to blame someone for the family getting hit with court costs, look at their lawyer. He should have told them that they had no case. Restricting her freedom of speech? He honestly thought that would fly? How was she prevented from saying what she thought? She wasn’t. She just wasn’t allowed to be a part of the cheerleading team.
Just because you don’t like the result doesn’t mean that the court ruled incorrectly. Aim your anger where it is deserved: the school district.
There’s been some other stupid shit in this thread, too.
@arguingwithsignposts:
This means that he is a convicted assaulter. He is, legally, only an *alleged* rapist. You may think that he is really a rapist. Me, given that I haven’t seen a damned thing on the actual facts of the case, I have no idea. I’m willing to bet that most of the people here don’t have any idea what those facts are, either, and are simply taking one side without having any clue as to what actually happened.
If someone would like to post a link to something that goes through what actually happened, I’d be happy to read it and it might cause me to have an opinion one way or the other. However, none of the blogs I’ve seen this on have done that. They just take his guilt as a given.
@Spiffy McBang:
Oh, really? I’m sure that every high school student in Texas comes from a family that can afford to pay a defense attorney. Or that, if they can’t, they are comfortable putting their life in the hands of the Texas public defender system. You know, the one that are such paragons that it’s never called convictions in the state into question.
As I said, absent actual facts, I’m not willing to say one way or the other.
And from the front page, we have this whopper:
No, ABL. Thanks for playing, but you just completely misrepresented what facts we do have. Aside from the question of whether there actually was a rape, there was never even the ACCUSATION that she was raped by dozens of students. The events occurred at a party ATTENDED by dozens of people. That’s why the article that YOU cited said this:
Do you see the difference between what you said and what is actually there? We don’t even get information on what the other two were charged with, what they were alleged to have done, or what the outcome of their cases were.
So, throw the shit at me, but you people are acting like a lynch mob.
arguingwithsignposts
@BattleCat: really, is that all you got?
How far do you live from Silsbee? Have you ever been there? because I have. I’ve even shopped at the grocery store there. You, on the other hand, are a moron.
no, dumbass, he plead to sexual assault. he was investigated for rape, and plead down.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@arguingwithsignposts:
i am guessing they were proudly waging war against every parent everywhere who threatens to sue because their kid didn’t get whatever.
i can see how parents who try to sue their kids to a better high school transcript, and extracuricular portfolio are a pain in the ass…
of course its still fuckheaded application of a zero tolerance like policy, to a case that doesn’t fit the rationale for the policy in the first place.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): really, you’re throwing in the lynch mob card?
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: That was my immediate response, too. Had to go there. I’m depressed now.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): To clarify, venting frustration and anger is not acting like a lynch mob. It’s venting frustration and anger. Pro tip: People don’t usually throw shit at you for your opinion–it’s because of shit like this.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): No it isn’t. A lynch mob lynches people. This is not a parallel situation.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@arguingwithsignposts: Yes, I am. When a bunch of people are prepared to argue that someone is guilty without knowing any of the facts of the case, and get so intoxicated with that righteousness that they lose the ability to apply any legal analysis when condemning a court decision, that’s exactly how they are acting.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@asiangrrlMN: It’s nice to know that you made such an insightful response to the actual arguments.
Yutsano
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Hate to say this, but URNAL. ABL is. You’ll forgive me if I think she has a better understanding of the applicable law here than you do.
MeDrewNotYou
@ ABL
You said:
but I think you’re mistaken. My reading is that dozens of students attended, but Bolton was the only rapist, presumably out of sight of everyone else. Not that that makes things much better.
ETA- I must have overlooked this:
Whether all 3 were actually assaulting her or the other two were just playing lookout I can’t tell by the article. Regardless of the these (in this instance) relatively minor details, the main point stands.
300baud
So I think the school district is clearly morally in the wrong here, and the superintendent, Bain, is obviously a total asshole. They should have arranged it so she didn’t have to cheer for him. Given that the only thing legally proven was a misdemeanor, I’m not sure they could have legally booted him from the team, but I sure as hell would have tried.
That said, I don’t think courts can go finding for a plaintiff solely on the basis of assholedom vs moral rightness. As far as I can tell, the court’s reasoning is sound: the whole cheerleading thing, wherein one says what one is told in unison, seems fundamentally incompatible with free speech during a performance. If the school superintendent wants to be an asshole and the school board wants to back him, they seem to be within their legal rights to boot her from the cheerleading squad.
The fine, though, seems absurd, and first thing Monday morning I’m going to verify the fund details and send them some dough. I wish they had had a better lawyer, but I’m delighted they stood up for their daughter and against rape culture. That deserves support.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Fact, the girl shouldn’t have to cheer for someone who sexually assaulted her and PLEAD GUILTY. fact: the school district can in NO FUCKING WAY justify this.
And to compare this in ANY FUCKING WAY to a lynch mob is fucking stupid. period. full stop.
eta: there was an adult way to deal with this situation, which was to back the fuck off and let things roll. but apparently, Silsbee ISD doesn’t think with their heads.
Yutsano
@MeDrewNotYou: You’re actually erring in the other direction from ABL. There were three alleged assailants. There seems to be no details about what happened to the other two since the story only focuses on one.
asiangrrlMN
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): OK. He is guilty of sexual assault. The kid. That means he is guilty of something. I am pissed at the school mostly. However, I don’t see how the court can say she’s a ‘mouthpiece’ of the school. I don’t see the applicable law. And, in reading ABL’s second page, I agree with her that the student has the right not to speak.
To be clear: I am mostly pissed off at the school. I don’t agree with the initial ruling. As for the lynch mob thing, you are acting like a dick and making a false equivalence.
@Yutsano: I agree with this. Three alleged assailants.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@arguingwithsignposts: I never claimed that the school district can justify it. In fact, you may have noted (if you bothered to actually read my post) that I argued exactly the opposite. Thank you for misrepresenting what I said, which was: the school district behaved abominably, but just because they did so doesn’t mean that there is a court case.
MeDrewNotYou
@Yutsano: @asiangrrlMN: Caught myself on the edit, but thanks.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Yutsano: I don’t see the slightest bit of evidence that ABL has even bothered to look at the legal issues involved. Given that she can’t even accurately describe what the story she linked to says, and gets at least one basic fact flat out wrong, I wouldn’t rely on her analysis. What we have indicates that her view is flawed.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): read the facts of the case again, dumbass. he plead guilty to sexual assault. she chose not to cheer for him. where did I misconstrue you.
eta: i’m going to sit the rest of this out because a) I realize you have a condition, and b) this is too personal to me. so have a nice night, all
Spaghetti Lee
I made a joke about it upthread, but maybe the law experts in here can tell me: Seriously, how does that “mouthpiece of the school” argument not extend to any employer or governing body, to the point where criticism becomes quasi-illegal because the person in question isn’t speaking in the interests of the relevant institution? What do free speech rights mean if they can legally be subsumed to a given business interest or government interest?
asiangrrlMN
@300baud: OK. I can see what you’re saying. I still don’t completely agree, but you make the most compelling argument for the case that the court was correct.
This all still fucking sucks, and I still hate the school and the principal with the fire of a thousand suns.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): If you go to her site and click page two of the link, it contains her legal analysis.
Yutsano
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Okay…
@300baud: They sued under the wrong premise. Cheering for her rapist would obviously cause her great psychological harm that the school would be complicit in by forcing her to cheer for him. You know, if she had just suddenly needed to use the bathroom at that precise moment, she would have been easily excused. The district is just choosing to be total jerkwads about this.
300baud
@asiangrrlMN:
Could you say more about how you think a cheerleader isn’t a mouthpiece of the school? The court’s point there seemed obvious to me. Cheerleading is a strictly voluntary activity, and the gig is to do exactly what the coach tells you. You’re also representing the school.
If she’d turned up in civilian clothes with a sign, I think she’d have a great case. Or if she, say, had written a paper about the topic. But basically they said that if she wasn’t going to cheer, she couldn’t be a cheerleader. That seems legally within their rights.
Note that I agree that asking her to cheer her rapist is total bullshit. I just don’t think a court can intervene on free speech grounds when the position was voluntary and didn’t have a free speech component to begin with.
Update: Just saw your reply to my earlier comment. Sounds like we’re on the same page. Including 1000 suns. It fucking kills me that they just renewed the superintendent’s contract.
Matthew Reid Krell
Okay, so let’s look at what the court actually says:
So, the court assumes that H.S. has the right not to speak (which assumption is not necessarily warranted, although ABL isn’t wrong; she just may be arguing a different question). The court, unfortunately, skips a couple of steps in its reasoning that would illuminate why they think H.S. loses. First, as a cheerleader, H.S. was arguably (although I’m not convinced) an agent of the school. As an agent, she has no First Amendment protection if her agency duties require her to speak. What do cheerleaders do? They speak on behalf of the school.
That said, if the court wants to frame this as a Tinker case, then I think they’re dead wrong. Like I said above, basketball is not the work of the school. And Monday when my paycheck comes in, I too will be tossing a few dollars in the pot.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Legally, Al Capone was only an alleged murderer and head of a crime syndicate. His family should get busy and start suing anyone who says otherwise since he was only convicted of tax evasion.
ammonid
As much as I wanted to take the cheerleaders side, I don’t think she has much of a case. What the school should have done is kick the guy off the basketball team, but that didn’t happen so she should have left the cheerleading squad. Then she could have protested him all she wanted.
The girls lawyer sounds like an idiot.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@asiangrrlMN:
Much like ABL, you can’t even get the facts we are presented correctly. He is not, legally, guilty of sexual assault. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, with no indication of a sexual nature. If that is incorrect, please post a link, because it isn’t in any of the information presented so far.
I’d say that that’s a lousy way to phrase it, but that’s essentially correct. When a student is a part of an official school organization such as the cheerleading squad, they are an official representative of the school. That pretty much makes her a mouthpiece for the school.
Of course she has a right not to speak. No one has claimed otherwise. All we have said is that she does not have a right not to speak while she is acting as a representative of the school. The question isn’t whether she has a right not to speak. The question is whether or not she has a right to be on the cheerleading squad. That is not a right. In the same way, the government can tell Yutsano what he is and is not allowed to say while he is their employee, even though they can’t tell him what he can say if he is a private citizen.
I’d act like less of a dick if you started thinking. As I said, start by at least getting the story presented right.
Matthew Reid Krell
@Spaghetti Lee: The short version is that you’re right. You don’t have the right to criticize your employer.
For the long version, see my forthcoming article.
licensed to kill time
The moral of this story is that a sin against the Church of Small Town Sports will not be forgiven.
Rah rah.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
.
No, you wouldn’t.
sorry, i couldn’t resist.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yes, your employer can tell you what you may and may not say. This is particularly true when you are on the job.
You don’t seem to understand what free speech rights are. They mean that the government cannot tell a private citizen what they may and may not say. They don’t protect you from a non-governmental agent at all. Any such entity may put whatever restrictions on what you may say while you are under contract with them, or on its property. (There are some exceptions to this, but not many.)
Lysana
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Right. So we’re gathering rope and torches and hunting Rakeem down because he’s black. That’s a lynch mob, bunky. This is venting rage. The distance between the two is pretty damn vast from where I sit.
arguingwithsignposts
did i mention that i’m looking for somewhere to move to? somewhere preferably soc1alist? any suggestions appreciated.
Spaghetti Lee
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I’m not so ignorant that I didn’t know that governments and private bodies have different standards when it comes to speech supression, I guess I just didn’t think it out far enough. But yeah, fuck that.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Stop being an idiot, because I know that you’re not one. Yes, that’s all that Capone was legally guilty of. If someone in his family objects to someone saying that he was guilty of murder and they think they’ve been damaged by such a statement, they are perfectly free to sue for slander (or libel). Of course, as a part of that, they’re going to have to show that the statement was false. Good luck with that.
This, of course, also has nothing whatsoever to do with the case at hand.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: Honestly? If you’re looking for a serious adventure, there’s always Finland.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So — just checking — if someone pleads to a lesser charge, that automatically makes them factually innocent of the other charges? I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.
Perhaps some of the facts in this article might help you understand why we all think you’re being a gigantic fucking asshole right now for playing pedantic games about how he’s not “really” guilty of sexual assault because that’s not what he pleaded.
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano: honestly. i’m fucking tired of this shit. if it’s not arizona, it’s texas. or south carolina, or new hampshire, or any state around me (wi, ohio, indiana, kentucky, etc.) or pennsylvania, etc. we don’t have a functioning democracy any more. and i could dig finland if not for the cold. suomi. :)
ABL
I corrected the post. It was three assailants.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): jerk-off commenter is a jerk-off.
Now that that’s out of the way, here are more thoughts:
I think the school was wrong to force her to cheer.
I think she likely didn’t have a strong case on the merits, but certainly a strong enough case to meet the “frivolous suit” standard.
I think that the 45K was a middle finger to the girl and her family. Judges generally have wide discretion when it comes to sanctions. Seems to me he could have ordered the parties to bear their own costs, especially considering that people have said upthread that the town is poor.
SCOTUS should have reversed that portion of the order if that issue was before it. I mean, come the fuck on. It’s offensive.
Now, what some of you fucking nutjobs seem to be arguing is that because in the school’s view, he was only an alleged rapist *as a matter of law*, that the school — *AS A MATTER OF POLICY* — could ignore the weight of the evidence (she filed a report and he plead to a lesser charge) and act as insensitively toward the girl as it did.
SERIOUSLY?
The school isn’t a fucking court. The school is a SCHOOL. This 16 year old said she was gang raped, filed charges, did whatever she needed to do to assist the prosecutor, decided to remain on the squad, and when she told the principal the basis for her refusal to cheer, the principal was within his right to say, “Well, he wasn’t convicted of rape, he only plead to misdemeanor assault, and you’re ‘contractually obligated’ to cheer for these pimply high schoolers in this sweaty gym, your dignity be damned.”
You people are fucking DISGUSTING.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@asiangrrlMN:
Silly me for making my argument based upon what was actually posted here. I must confess, I have never seen that “Next page” thing here when you are already on the full page for the thread. I’ll take a look.
That said, ABL’s analysis doesn’t even try to address the issue at hand. No one at the school tried to prevent her from saying or not saying anything. They said that, if she was on the squad, she had to follow the rules of that squad. All of the cases she cites have to do with a school preventing speech among the general student population, not requiring certain behavior for extracurricular participation. Given that omission, I stand by my opinion that she doesn’t seem to have thought much about this.
John Cole
What the fuck is wrong with you people arguing the legal merits of this case? Who the fuck cares about the law?
The question is what kind of degenerate scumbag kicks someone off their team for refusing to cheer their rapist and then takes them to court to make sure they either cheer their rapist or stay off the team. This isn’t about the law.
This is about the fact that these people obviously view these women as so insignificant that they couldn’t even manage to look the other way when she refused to cheer for the scumbag who violatd her. Personally, if I was the cheering squad coach, I’d be out there yelling “Gimme and R! R! Gimme an A! A! Gimme a P! P!”
That is what is most fucked up about this- not the legalistic bullshit. What is most fucked up that as a society, people are more willing to look at and follow the “rules” than do what is right, which is to clearly support the rape victim.
Jesus fucking christ, the end times have to be near. Everyone has lost all sense of everything.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So you think that Rakheem Bolton should be suing HS because she’s slandering him by claiming in court that he raped her?
Your claim is that you have to say a crime someone committed is “alleged” if they’re not convicted of it in court. In fact, you’re going so far as to claim that pleading to a lesser charge is proof that they didn’t commit the crime they were accused of. Which is, you know, pretty much like claiming that Capone was falsely accused of being a murderer and a crime boss since he was never convicted of either one.
And good luck convincing people that a guy who pled guilty to assault is innocent, which is what you’re claiming right now.
Spaghetti Lee
@John Cole:
What John said. I understand that to have a functioning society you need to have a legal system based on objective rules, but when the rules lead you to defend something this reprehensible, maybe it’s time to think about changing the rules instead of clinging to them. Laws should be tools of the people, not the other way around.
arguingwithsignposts
@Spaghetti Lee: you know, i could understand the legal discussion if not for the lynch mob card being played. seriously. WTF?
eta: although I do agree with JC on this one. what a world.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@ABL:
Actually, that’s not what I’ve argued at all. I’ve argued that, even if he had been convicted of raping her, the school district has the authority to require that its cheerleaders participate in all of the squad’s cheers. It may be disgusting for them to require it of her, but that doesn’t change the fact that they get to set the rules for participation.
I have also argued that a lot of people in this thread have assumed the guilt of the player without knowing a single damned thing about the case. They have no idea what evidence there was. Based upon the facts presented (large party and accusation of being forced into a room and raped), this is utterly indistinguishable from the Duke lacrosse case, other than that the Duke lacrosse players could afford good attorneys Based upon that similarity, it seems obvious to me that it’s certainly possible that he isn’t guilty. Is it likely? I don’t even have enough information to assess that. And I’m willing to bet that very few people on this thread have any idea either. So, I’m sticking with “alleged” rapist, because that’s all I know. He may very well be guilty. He may not. I don’t think that it’s at all unreasonable to think that. On the other hand, I think that’s it’s extremely unreasonable to be convinced that you know the truth of that based upon so little information.
Matthew Reid Krell
@ABL: Now, wait, you are hardly playing fair.
I haven’t seen anyone say that the school did the RIGHT thing. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough, but even Jerk-Off Commenter is limiting themselves to saying that the school didn’t do anything illegal. They’re being an asshole about it, but still.
And your complaint, as near as I can tell, in the original piece is about the court’s decision, not the school’s. So now you’re going to change tacks and tell us that we’re being insensitive fucksticks because we don’t necessarily think the court was wrong on the law? Which, by the way, is how a court is SUPPOSED to analyze a case?
I happen to think the court misanalyzed this case. In that respect, it was wrong. But if you assume that the court’s assumption on “the work of the school” is correct, their conclusion follows as doth the night follow day. So if you’re going to say that we’re “fucking disgusting” because we have the audacity to note that maybe you’re not capturing the whole story with your analysis? Yeah, whatever.
Look, there’s plenty of times when people get away with shit. I lost a case THIS WEEK where that happened. And the losers NEVER feel like the system worked for them – you know that as well as I do. And I’ve said it before and will say it again, the sanctions are a great big pile of nonsense. But honestly, really? I expect better from you.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
No, dumbass. Again, most of us have been arguing that a) she shouldn’t have had to cheer for him, and b) she shouldn’t have had to pay court costs.
but thanks for playing.
300baud
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
News flash: you are responsible for your own behavior. If cannot control yourself, you should step away from the keyboard. If you can, then please stop being a dick.
What happened to this girl is horrible. People are reasonably outraged. That makes a cool legal analysis difficult. But from whatever angle I consider this, you have no excuse for being a dick here:
Your ability to see parts of it more clearly could be because you are smarter, or have spent more time on topics like this. In which case, you can afford to be patient and polite while helping others to what you believe is a better analysis. You could just be privileged enough or lucky enough never to have been in a situation that gives you a strong emotional response to sexual assault. Which again would give you room for sympathy and generosity. Or you might just have a low ability to empathize, or even lean towards sociopathy, in which case you aren’t really qualified to discuss the topic.
So would you mind putting a lid on the dickishness?
Matthew Reid Krell
@John Cole: Because ABL decided to make this about the law, not about the morals.
You’re right, she’s right, everyone who is horrified about the situation is right; but that’s not what this piece is about.
ABL
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Holy crap. Did you even read what I wrote? Surely, you can’t be this thick.
Spaghetti Lee
@arguingwithsignposts:
I also wish you well in your quest to find another place to call home. My options are limited by the fact that I can only speak English and have a very limited palate (fussy eater).
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Ah, yes, the privileged white guy’s panic button: the Duke lacrosse case. If a corrupt prosecutor could get those guys indicted (but never even got to trial before it fell apart), then clearly every man accused of rape from that moment forward must be innocent, even if he pleads guilty to it.
Seriously. Quit now. All you’re doing is pissing people off and making many of us think much, much less of you as a person.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Wow, you’re on a roll tonight. You haven’t represented me correctly yet, on anything. I never said a damned thing about a lesser plea having any bearing on the defendant’s *factual* innocence at all. In fact, had you paid any attention, you could have inferred my position on that from my insinuation that Al Capone’s heirs would have a damned hard time proving slander if you called him a murderer.
Maybe you could pay more attention to what I’m saying, then. The basis of my argument isn’t that he only pleaded to a lesser charge. That’s a secondary point. My basis is that you don’t know any of the evidence in the case. It’s the fact that you don’t know that means that you don’t know whether he’s guilty. That he pleaded to a lesser crime simply means that you can’t infer that he admitted guilt to the greater charge.
If I knew more about the case, and that knowledge led me to believe that the player was guilty, I wouldn’t let his plea stop me. However, I would have to have knowledge beyond that plea. In and of itself, it contains little to no value in assessing his guilt of rape.
ABL
@Matthew Reid Krell: I guess references to dignity and silence and shame and protest are too feminine and touchy-feely for some of you dolts to pick up on.
So much for subtlety.
(grammar edit)
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Are you a lawyer? If I recall, you have a master’s in accounting? If so, then I would suggest toning down your lawyerly opinions. If not, carry on with your dickishness.
eta: why are you picking this hill to die on? really? i just don’t get it. Are there no Koch brothers to skewer? do you just want an argument?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Fuck you. You could at least try not to lie about what I’ve said. I’m going to keep this succession of false posts in mind in the future.
I’ll try one more time. If you insist on falsely representing what I’ve said, that’s on you. No, it doesn’t mean that every man must be innocent. What it means is that we have evidence that there can be a case in which we have exactly the information available here and it turns out that they are innocent. If you are at all honest, that should make you careful about assuming someone’s guilt based upon so little.
I’m not the one arguing that I know whether or not he is guilty. That would be the rest of you. You have an accusation, and based upon that and nothing more, you are sure that he is guilty. The skepticism that is demanded by the empirical approach that you usually claim to believe in went right out the window.
Yeah, that’s a lynch mob. If you want that accusation not to stick, then admit that there is a possibility that your assumptions are wrong. In the meantime, stop lying about what I’ve said.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
In other words, the basis of your argument is that HS is a liar who falsely accused someone of rape and then brought a frivolous case to court when she was kicked off the cheerleading squad for not cheering for him.
You really need to stop digging while I still have an iota of respect for you.
ETA:
No, based on the fact that he pled guilty. If he had merely been accused and this was still waiting to go to court, you might have a point. But he pled guilty and accepted his punishment by the court.
If you want to insist that Bolton was innocent of the crime he pled guilty to, then present your proof. Otherwise, I will have to accept his admission in court that he committed a crime as proof that he committed a crime.
arguingwithsignposts
Mnemosyne reminded me: I do have to give major props to this girl and her family for sticking with this through the various court battles. that cannot have been easy. I hope she doesn’t have to pay a nickle.
arguingwithsignposts
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
eta: considering the history of that phrase, I get more and more angry over its use here.
Matthew Reid Krell
@ABL: Out of 2207 words in your post, 194 are arguably about the school’s moral position and “dignity and silence and shame and protest.”
So, I was wrong. You did talk about the school’s moral position. It was roughly 8.8% of the original piece. That, of course, renders those of us who want to talk about the other 91.2% completely wrong.
So, let me reiterate: The school is full of crap. The court was probably wrong (although not, I think, for the reasons you stated). The fine is a great big pile of boneheaded bullshit. And the Court should have stepped in, although I understand the impulse of potential sympathizers among the Justices not to do so.
But by all means, continue to lump me in with those “dolts” who are too masculine and emotionally alienated to see the subtlety of your efforts. Since I, too, am a lawyer, I will readily agree that I am emotionally alienated – it comes with the professional territory.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@arguingwithsignposts: Do you have anything to go on? Given that the lawyer who started the thread wrote a lawyerly analysis that ignored the point of the case, I’m sensing a lot of weakness.
I have spent a good deal of time looking into the legalities of college sports. One of the thing that has become absolutely clear is that the schools can kick players off of the squads for whatever reason they want. They control the rules, and the players need to follow them. It doesn’t matter how abhorrent I find some of those rules.
As to the people above who have argued that the basketball team is not a core part of the school’s mission, I suggest that they look up the legal question of whether scholarship athletes are employees. They are not, precisely because sports have been deemed to have a primarily educational purpose. It may be ridiculous that this is the case. It may be morally abhorrent that they don’t have to treat football players as employees, and thus have no legal obligation to pay for their care if they are paralyzed while playing. (See the Marc Buoniconti case.) Nevertheless, that it is a part of the school’s educational mission is settled law.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Forget it. You are too busy lying to be worth arguing with. Had you managed to put in words indicating that I think that there is at least some possibility that this is what happened, rather than simply asserting that I believe that it is what happened, you would have been correct. However, understanding what I said would have required backing off some.
You are so desperate to be certain that you have no problem lying. I have lost my respect for you, so if you want to reciprocate, be my guest.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Dumbass, Silsbee HS is a public school, part of Silsbee ISD. They don’t have fucking scholarship athletes.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@arguingwithsignposts:
So? That only *strengthens* the argument that it is a core part of their mission. There aren’t any of the questions of commercialism that surround NCAA athletics.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
makes three of us, i guess.
Allan
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): If you’d really like to play omniscient adjudicator of other people’s lives without any actually first-hand knowledge of the specifics, you might want to devote some time to the school’s decision to allow a student who pleaded guilty of a violent assault against another student to retain his place on a sports team. You see, all the subsequent bad decisions of the school are fruit of that poisoned tree. If they had revoked his privilege, not right, to play on the team, no student, whether or not s/he was personally his victim, would be put in a position of being compelled to cheer for a convicted violent criminal.
Otherwise, I suggest that you are being a dick because you are a dick. Occam’s Razor.
arguingwithsignposts
@Matthew Reid Krell: I, for one, appreciate your level-headed responses.
Xof
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So, to summarize your position:
(a) You are horrified — HORRIFIED — at the behavior of the school district, but with tears in your eyes and a heavy heart, you conclude that the law in its majestic equality demands…
(b) That the school district had every right to do what they did, and HS should have either cheered her little heart for the assailant or quit the team, and
(c) Her lawsuit to stay on the team and not be required to cheer for her assailant was sufficient frivolous that assigning costs to her was entirely fair and reasonable.
You are making rather a big deal out of the fact that the player plead to assault and not to sexual assault or rape, but from your analysis, it doesn’t seem to make a whit of difference. He could have, speaking purely figuratively, have been convicted of raping and murdering HS’ sister and mother, and the school would still have had every right to pitch her off the cheerleading squad for failure to encourage him in his athletic endeavors, in the admittedly unlikely event he was back on the court afterwards.
if this is really your position, I would suggest that the reaction that you are getting is pretty modest compared to the enormity of your views, and you might just want to not have such a glass jaw.
Matthew Reid Krell
@Allan:
This.
ETA: Of course, Bolton also has rights that the school was bound to protect. But if it really is true that you have no property interest in extracurriculars, as the court says, then they could have and should have run his assaulting ass off.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yes, which serves to strengthen the position that it is a core part of the mission, not weaken it. It eliminates any argument that there is a contractual relationship between the school and the participant that involves them being on the squad.
Granted, it doesn’t strengthen it much, given the way that the courts have ruled on this.
Yeah. Words are never used metaphorically.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): lynch mob is a pretty strong one, though. and you threw it out on your first comment. douchebag.
Xof
@Allan: As they say on the geek mailing lists, +1.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Allan: On the other hand, I’ll suggest that you’re being a dick since you’ve skipped right over my stated opinions of the behavior of the school district. Could they have solved this by kicking him off of the team? Sure. (They may have opened up other legal problems for themselves given that he wasn’t convicted; I’m really not sure about that, and it probably depends upon whether or not they have a policy about dealing with athletes convicted of a misdemeanor.)
As I said, the school behaved abominably. No question about it. That doesn’t mean that a court should tell them they behaved illegally.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@arguingwithsignposts: Fuck off. Given the leap to conviction that so many were making, I stand by it, in a metaphorical sense. That no one here had any power to put their impulsiveness into action doesn’t mean that the mentality wasn’t there.
SectarianSofa
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Ugh. Go away.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): really? fuck off too man. Let’s be clear. We’re arguing that a court decided wrongly in allowing a bunch of redneck assholes to kick a girl off a cheerleading squad because she wouldn’t cheer for someone who PLEAD FUCKING GUILTY to assault ON HER, and you’re equating it with people going and stringing people up in trees until they are DEAD. Right.
Fuck you, again, you self-righteous prick.
Yutsano
@Matthew Reid Krell: I think you two are just talking past each other now. You’ve more or less come to the same conclusion, now we just gotta let the emotions cool a touch.
Allan
@Matthew Reid Krell: Thanks. IANAL, but I have my moments of clarity.
This is at the core of what those of us who are being all emotional and non-rational and shit are reacting to in this situation. The double standard for males, and male jocks in particular, standing in such stark contrast to the the standard for females, and cheerleaders, in this scenario is really most appalling.
You’re accused of raping a cheerleader, and plead it down to assault? No problem, hey, we can’t let a little thing like that interfere with his prospects for a college scholarship and/or a career in professional sports. You’re unwilling to cheer for the person who assaulted you? We will grind you down into dust and bankrupt your family.
But mad props to the commenter above who actually came up with a word count, and percentages, to quantify the relative balance of ABL’s post, and how that undermines what she’s saying in the comments. Well done.
Xof
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So: (a) Pleading guilty to assaulting another athletic program participant, might be touchy to throw him off the team, hard to say, not sure, very complex, leave it to the lawyers. (b) Failing to cheer for the admitted assailant? No question, pitching her off the squad is unequivocally OK legally.
Hm. That is an interesting pair of analyses.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Xof:
The enormity of my views is encompassed by what I know about the subject in question. I have never even said whether or not I think that it is right that this is the position that the law holds.
Regardless of what I think is correct, though, the law is pretty clear on this. The school district had the legal authority to say that she had to conform to the rules it set or not be on the team.
I’ll go a bit farther and say that I do think that, even if she has a case, it is not based upon free speech. If that’s the argument that her lawyer presented in court, then it was extremely frivolous. It’s just not a First Amendment matter. And the courts are not supposed to say that they think your client should win even though the arguments you made were completely irrelevant. They go by those arguments. That’s another thing being overlooked here, and is a part of the reason I said in my first post that I suspect that the girl’s lawyer is the one most to blame for being assigned court costs.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
IOW, you’re pissed off because I put into words what you were trying to slyly imply; namely, that you think HS brought a frivolous lawsuit against the school for an assault that never happened.
Sorry, but if you’re going to bring in conspiracy theories about how the whole thing was faked, Bolton was railroaded, and HS and her family brought a frivolous lawsuit against the school based on a crime that never happened, you’re going to have to present a little more backup than “there is at least some possibility” that you’re right. By that standard, there is at least some possibility that the moon landing was fake.
Allan
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Nope. Pretty sure you’re the dick, and one who can’t even keep his story straight within the confines of a single sentence.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Allan:
I don’t disagree with this at all. I think the double standard involved is appalling. It just doesn’t have anything to do with whether the court ruled correctly.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): but we all wish the basketball player was dead, hanging from a tree, right?
dick.
300baud
@John Cole:
That’s unfair, John. The linked story is about the legal decision. The title is about the legal decision. ABL brings up the court’s reasoning in her post, and then gives 750 words of legal analysis on a separate page. You guys don’t want to talk about the legal side of this, don’t bring it up.
Yes, the outcome is terrible. But if we want better outcomes, then we have to look at how we got what we did. The people involved thought freedom of speech was the best approach. Looking at how that played out seems like it’s worth some time.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Allan: Sorry. I should have written “convicted of rape,” or “convicted of a felony.” The point being that there’s a pretty good chance that players have been convicted of misdemeanors in the past and not been kicked off of their team. If that’s an established policy, explicit or not, then it could tie their hands. They are less likely to allow those convicted of felonies to keep playing. But who knows.
Spaghetti Lee
@TissueThinPseudonym
That no one here had any power to put their impulsiveness into action doesn’t mean that the mentality wasn’t there.
Wow-ee. You know what this reminds me of? When wingnuts get caught lying about Obama badmouthing the Constitution or whatever and their spluttering defense is “Well, it’s something he could have done given what kind of person he is, so I’m justified in saying it.” When you can accuse your opponents of something based on what you think they think, the possibilities are endless! I’m going to join the “Stop digging yourself deeper” chorus.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
The only problem with this is that I don’t think this. This is your imagination talking to you. Oddly enough, when I say that there is a possibility, the likelihood of which I can’t estimate, that this is what happened, I’m saying exactly what I think. I’m not slyly implying anything. Given that we have a case of that happening, I’m not sure how you can dismiss it so blithely.
What conspiracy? So far as I know, it would only have to be one person. If HS says it was rape, I would expect her family to believe her, and back her up all the way. Frankly, I’d be disappointed in them if they didn’t. That’s what family is supposed to do in those kinds of situations.
I’m not even saying anything was faked. I’d accept a stipulation that there was sexual conduct pretty readily. Beyond that, I don’t have a clue as to what happened. This is one of the fundamental problems with rape as a crime: there are so many instances of it in which there isn’t any evidence of a *crime*, since legal behavior can produce the same results. In this case, we have no idea whether or not there was anything more than her word. Maybe there was, but I haven’t seen it.
And that’s the problem. Yes, you are correct that rape is a very serious issue, and that there are a lot of times that women aren’t believed when they should be. But, how do you deal with a situation in which there is one person’s word against another? Sometimes, you can get a clue by watching the behavior of the people, but from here, we don’t have that option.
We know that there are instances of false rape allegations. I don’t think that we have any good idea of how many of them are false. I suspect that it’s pretty low, but, even at 10%, I’m leery of just assuming that any individual in particular is guilty.
Another complicating factor is that, based upon something I read elsewhere, there was a lot of alcohol at the party in question. Among other things, that can mean that HS’s memories of the events might be kind of hazy. (I’m just throwing out a hypothetical here, since none of us have shown that we have any idea whether or not she had been drinking.) She may think she said things that she didn’t. Alcohol doesn’t justify rape, but it can make reconstructing what happened difficult. Again, this is particularly true if there isn’t any physical evidence of a crime.
Yes, rape is a serious problem. That doesn’t mean that all of the rest of our thought processes should go out the window. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that you get to assume that I mean things that I plainly didn’t say.
Allan
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Thanks for ignoring everyone’s advice to stop digging. I’m hearing Chinese music wafting up from the hole.
Comrade Kevin
JMN, are you, by any chance, related to Paul L, one of the participants in this case, or the Duke La Crosse team?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Comrade Kevin: No. I’m not even sure how saying that the Duke lacrosse case is an example of what might happen in other instances, and therefore we should not make judgments based solely upon an accusation has to do with Paul L’s idiotic positions.
Apparently, preserving one’s skepticism in instances where one knows nothing about the facts is frowned upon.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Allan: Yeah. Objecting to someone lying about what you’ve said is such a bad thing to do. I don’t plan to stop doing that. My advice for Mnemosyne is to stop lying. Some might think that that’s the ongoing hole here.
MNP
@300baud: +100
Comrade Kevin
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): You’re not being “Skeptical”, you’re being contrarian.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I’m done talking about whether or not one should assume that the player is guilty. Apparently, no one is interested in responding to what I actually say rather than what they have imagined I said.
curious
@Spiffy McBang: exactly. i would hope the case of one student having been convicted of assaulting another would be rare enough to warrant making an exception. this isn’t exactly some petty fight between classmates.
Allan
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Actually, I was speaking not so much of your ongoing race to the bottom with another commenter so much as your earnest recitation of the myriad ways in which even when a woman says she was raped, it remains possible that no rape actually occurred.
Because, you know, the biggest problem that rape poses for society is the risk that some man somewhere might be incorrectly found guilty of committing it.
300baud
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Seems to me like they’re responding much more to you being a dick. If you don’t like getting treated like that, it is within your power to change things. Speaking as somebody who was hoping to have an actual discussion, I’d like it if you gave it a go.
300baud
@Allan:
100x this.
For those guys struggling to understand why the “but he might be totally innocent” shtick does not get the reception they were hoping for, I’d recommend the blog “Yes Means Yes”. E.g., the post on The Pro-Rape Lobby, or Meet the Predators.
Joey Maloney
@Allan: If I had a dog in this fight, I would ask you to point, specifically, to where TTP(JNM) presented even one way “… in which even when a woman says she was raped, it remains possible that no rape actually occurred.” Because what I read him saying is that even when a woman was in fact raped, there are many cases where it’s impossible to establish that in a criminal court to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, in order to get a conviction.
That seems to be a pretty unremarkable statement, and self-evidently true.
He also pointed out that sometimes there are false accusations. Again, that seems an unproblematic statement. One could even unpack that further to distinguish between knowingly false accusations, i.e. trying to frame someone, as opposed to those made in good faith but for whatever reason mistaken.
All of that seems to point out problems with the legal system, perhaps, but not with TTP’s reasoning or moral sensibilities. I see a lot of misdirected anger in this thread.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Spaghetti Lee:
and, in theory, the school and the student, the parents, and the cheerleading coach, could have sat in a room, and hashed this all out.
the problem is that it went to court.
ABL
@Matthew Reid Krell: You sound like Jake Tapper.
ABL
@Joey Maloney:
Unreal.
Allan
@Joey Maloney: I see ABL has already rubbed your nose in the specific passage in which the Rape Denialist did exactly what you insist he didn’t.
But I’ll note that neither you nor I have the biggest dog of all in this fight, because we’re both men and don’t go through this world evaluating every setting for the likelihood we might be raped, and every stranger and acquaintance we encounter as a potential rapist.
Misdirected anger, indeed.
Ron
@Spaghetti Lee: Freedom of speech does not imply that there can be no consequence to your speech. I am NOT trying to compare the situations here, but if I go and write a letter to the editor bashing my employer, they can fire me over it. That being said, this case seems to be more complex. I think at a moral level, the behavior of the school is simply horrific. Yes, he wasn’t convicted of rape, but he DID plea to assaulting her. If someone assaults me, I’m not going to be inclined to cheer for them. Also, I think the whole discussion about whether he is a rapist has both extremes of silliness. One side says “She says he raped him, he pleaded guilty to a lesser offense, so he must have raped her!”. This makes no real sense to me. Did he rape her? Probably. But from a legal standpoint, no, it was never proven, and I think it’s a bad idea to start taking accusations of rape as proof of it. Then the reverse I see is “He wasn’t convicted of rape, so we can’t even think he raped her”. For what should be obvious reasons, rape can be a very difficult charge to prove. If the state is worried that they might not be able to prove it ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ it makes sense to offer a deal with a plea to a lesser charge. And presumably, if the kid took the deal, he had to be somewhat concerned he’d be found guilty of a more serious charge if it went to trial.
People were mocking the libertarian with the ‘comparison’ of an atheist to an alleged rapist, but to do so is to miss the point. From a legal standpoint, the justification for her not cheering someone came as a freedom of speech issue. If freedom of speech means she can refuse to cheer for someone who she says raped her, than it says anyone can refuse to cheer for anyone for any reasons. Again on a moral level, the comparison is horrible, but when the grounds are “freedom of speech” then the reason for her refusal to cheer becomes irrelevant.
Ron
@Allan: Are you seriously suggesting that an accusation of rape constitutes proof? seriously?
Tom
Personally if I was the father of that cheerleader, I would kick the shit out of both Superintendent Richard Bain and Rakheem Bolton. This Bolton punk will sexually assault someone again in the future.That what will that weasel Bain have to say about protecting a sexual predator? The district attorney should also be held to account for giving this predator a free pass. And this family should do everything they can to make sure that the Silsbee ISD never see one penny of that 45K
Matthew Reid Krell
@ABL:
You probably think that’s an insult. Okay, it’s at best damning with faint praise.
But if you’ve got nothing more than name-calling….
And a couple of corrections to my earlier posts:
First, I said earlier that “if there’s no property interest in extra-curriculars…,” which implied that there might be. Let me clarify: either H.S. shouldn’t have been thrown off the cheerleading squad, or Bolton should have been thrown off the basketball team. There’s no other legally coherent result that’s consistent with the requirements of justice.
Second, I minimized ABL’s discussion of the feminist aspect of this case by pointing out that it was only “8.8%” of her original post. While accurate, that was wildly unfair, as the double-standard and slut-shaming aspects of this case are woven throughout this piece, even in the legal discussion (as in, the only way for the school to have screwed this up so badly was through the double standard, and the court’s response has a strong flavor of slut-shaming). ABL is right; those who focused ONLY on the legal questions here were to some extent missing the point. I’ll only stand by that comment to the extent that it explains how easy it was to miss that point.
jinxtigr
Okay, so she sued to stay ON the cheerleading squad even after she ‘allegedly’ learned what these high school athletes were actually like?
1) there’s your problem
2) surely she must be from a hell of a rich family?
Humans’ status games just confuse the hell out of me. Props for the whole “I’m not gonna let sleazeballs get me down” attitude and all, but the underlying realities of the thing sort of wreck my head. It’s like squabbles among royalty or something, God forbid either the victim or assailant lose status, unthinkable…
My high school sucked and I wasn’t either on a team or a cheerleader, so I guess I just don’t get it- but I’m _glad_ that high school didn’t actually matter. Both of these people appear to have a huge amount at stake towards making sure high school matters forever. oopsy.
Anton Sirius
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Brilliant. You troll the thread, then whine about people focusing on the trolling and not the substance of your argument.
Do you prefer your bag of dicks BBQ flavor, or salt and vinegar?
Emma
Ugh. Wake up to news like this and then there’s a new troll. A stupid new troll. Going back to bed now.
Anton Sirius
@arguingwithsignposts:
Agreed. Matthew, the contrast between your posts and those of Chef Bag-a-dicks has most likely been noted by everyone reading this thread, except of course for Chef Bag-a-dicks.
Chris
@Xantar:
The eternal rightie’s response to everything: “yes, yes, but what if WE had been the victims! Then everybody would be unfair to us! We’re just going to sit in the corner and cry our eyes out about the hypothetical offense that wasn’t committed against us, and ignore the real one.”
And like you said, I love the idea that atheist/Christian pissing matches are somehow equivalent to rape.
Douglas
What was the link to the pie-filter again?
Captain Howdy
ABL cites cases that discuss variations on whether students’ (and in some cases teachers’) freedoms of expressions are protected. She then makes a curious leap: silence — in the case of a cheerleader who chooses not to cheer — is likewise a form of protected “speech.”
While we are all horrified by the details of this case, our horror has obscured an essential point: this was never about protecting HS’s right to express herself, it was about whether the school has the right to control its “mouthpieces”, the cheerleaders. Cheer-leading is not, practically by definition, a platform for individual expression. The legal challenge to that premise was quixotic and ill-advised. Who should pay for the parents’ misguided zeal? The taxpayers?
We are (most of us) disgusted that the boys weren’t thrown in jail, or at the very least banned from school sports — unfortunately such righteous disgust has blinded the legal eagle in the room to the fact that the school was correct.
The parents of HS got some terrible legal advice — no doubt they had righteous representation — and it has cost them 45K.
aimai
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
He was convicted. He pled guilty to assault. Of this girl.
aimai
Allan
@Ron: Is your question serious? Seriously?
If this young man had rejected the plea deal offered to him and criminal charges of rape had gone to trial, and I were selected to be on his jury, I would be applying the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in his specific case. Because that’s the only situation in which my judgment would actually matter.
But yes, I’m saying that in the court of public opinion, I will default to believing that a victim who has nothing else to gain for her charges is telling the truth unless there is a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
Can you explain to me why my default should not fall to believing that victims of any crime begin with credibility until proven incredible? If you stated in the comments that you were robbed at gunpoint and the experience left you feeling violated, should I disbelieve you unless you can produce enough documentation of your experience to satisfy the legal standard? For all I know, you may have voluntarily given that person your wallet, and you may have brought this on yourself by going into a high-crime area, and did you actually see the weapon or did you assume he had one because his hand was in his pocket, and did you resist his assault enough to persuade me that you didn’t actually enjoy the experience?
vtr
For God’s sake – what was the coach thinking? Under the circumstances, couldn’t the student’s action have just been ignored? These are young kid’s in high school, not a military operation. But I obviously don’t understand the vital role high school basketball plays in the moral fabric of Texas.
Allan
@jinxtigr:
Fixed it for you.
Those of us who are members of the species homo sapiens have the capacity for empathy. It’s one of the things that makes us human. I’d be interested to learn more about your species, but at first contact, yours seems to be very focused on victim-doubting and victim-blaming.
Lori
In a normal school, the cheerleader wouldn’t have been forced to cheer on her assaulter. Then, if some dick of a coach told her she was kicked off, the principal would apologize profusely and the coach would be damned lucky if he got to continue coaching there after he begged for his job back, cried, apologized to her and her family publicly. And in a normal community, if it turned out there were a principal and a coach who were BOTH assholes, there would be a huge turnout of support from the parents, teachers, other cheerleaders, community leaders, etc. What the hell is wrong with that school and that city? There is still time to fix this… whoever is in charge of that school district, and if not them whoever is in charge of those people, needs to frigging fire those adults in charge and tell that girl HS and her family that even though the courts say they owe money they don’t have to pay it. Hell, embarrass the fuck out of the governor at the next press conference if need be, he could make sure this gets fixed.
Omnes Omnibus
Just tossing this out there… If the original lawyer filed a case that was dismissed for failure to state a claim and then simply appealed that decision up the chain (as someone up thread stated), I would suggest that the family pick up their file and take it to another lawyer to see if there was any legal malpractice involved. Note: I am not saying that there was, but rather that it is an issue that is worth a look.
I don’t know enough about the facts of the case or the law in Texas to offer a legal opinion, but I can say that the school district behaved as poorly as one could possibly imagine throughout the entire process, beginning to end.
Matthew Reid Krell
@Omnes Omnibus: I can’t speak with authority regarding the Fifth Circuit, but in the Eighth, where I practice, a motion for leave to amend has to be accompanied by a proposed amendment. If the lawyer thought that the correct result was a reversal, no malpractice.
It’s still terrible lawyering.
Stefan
Unless you’re telling me that prosecutors are lazy and are willing to let someone who performs a sexual assault walk for no apparent reason. In Texas.
Unless you’re telling me that prosecutors are biased and are willing to let a star athlete who performs a sexual assault on a cheerleader walk in order not to rock the boat and disrupt the high school athletic season. In Texas.
Yeah, something like that would never happen…..
Triassic Sands
This was a really unpleasant tale.
Still, I did think it might have been better if the girl had quit the formal cheerleader squad and formed a new squad in the stands. Then, when her assailant came to the free throw line she and her pals could have given him their own personalized cheer. Something including…
Miss, You Fucking Rapist
shouted out loud and clear for all to hear.
Reading about the indictment of the students who assaulted her, I found it depressing that the greatest fine the assailants faced was $10,000, while the girl’s family has to pay $45,000. (Of course, jail time is the more serious penalty, if it is applied.)
The assailant got a one-year prison sentence — suspended, 2-1/2 years probation, and a $2,500 fine. So, in the end, the family of the victim ends up with a penalty almost 20 times as great as that of the criminal. Sweet justice!
rikyrah
I’m still reading this and can’t believe it. it’s surreal.
outrageous.
Mary
@300baud:
If they can legally boot her from the cheerleading squad for the simple act of standing still with her arms crossed, I’m sure they could legally give him off the basketball team for having a criminal record.
Quarks
I find myself stunned that I had to get to comment number 109 before someone pointed out the starting problem:
What the hell was someone who had pled guilty to assault, of any kind, still doing on the high school basketball team in the first place? That is such a fundamental misjudgement on the part of the school that I’m not just rolling my eyes here: I’m really stunned.
Yes, yes, time served, the guy wants to earn an athletic scholarship and move on with his life, and so on, but the thing is, once you plead guilty to assault, you should be off the public high school team, period.
And to Tissue Thin: Ok, so the guy pled down in court. This happens. But he did plead guilty, which means that his attorneys thought that the prosecution had enough evidence on their side to convict on at least that charge.
I’m all for innocent until proven guilty, but you seem to be trying to claim innocent after pleading guilty, which is not at all the same thing.
the dude
Person A: If X applies, then it logically follows that unrelated concept Y also applies.
Person B: OMG … you’ve just compared X to Y! Or that X is a Y! Or that X is not as bad as Y! Or something!
Gawd I hate arguments like the above.
Person A: X is bad. Y is bad. Z is bad.
Person B: X is bad. And Y is morally bad because of X, but legally defensible, independent of X. Z is completely independent of X and but is decided correctly based on Y.
Person A: OMG! Don’t you know about X? You’re a troll!
And this, too.
celticdragonchick
@John Cole:
Righteous. Nothing else to say.
Tim Cooper
I just keep thinking there has to be something more to this case that what I am reading. It’s just too horrifying otherwise. I work at a high school that does its best to keep the sports psychosis to a minimum, so maybe I’m just underestimating the evil that is Texas sports. But it seems like there must be some other factor at work here. Has HS’s family filed a bazillion lawsuits before? Is there some piece of hard evidence that shows the rape charge was bogus? I’m not saying there is, I’m just trying to make sense of what seems to be happening.
Anyone who is informed more than I am, please set me straight.
Jazz Superluminar
Well this is totally fucked up, and having read the thread, clearly on the school’s side moreso than the courts. So why are front pagers here willing to link to this place, when they’re such dickheads?
Kyle
@Lori:
From my experience of east Texas, I’m guessing that the “good Christians” of the town see HS as a “fallen” woman, therefore she needs to shut up and not make trouble after besmirching the honor of a high school athlete, a group that is just short of religiously-worshipped in that parochial, screwed-up culture.
Mark S.
@ABL:
That’s certainly my two minute analysis. It doesn’t sound like a frivolous lawsuit at all.
300baud
@Mary:
Maybe. But assuming we still think rule of law is a good idea, then in doing so we need to have a consistent principle in each case. In the article they imply that if he had been convicted of rape, which I presume is a felony even in Texas, he would have been off the team and out of school. So it sounds like they have at least one principle we agree with.
Instead, he was convicted of misdemeanor assault. We could declare a zero-tolerance policy with all convictions. But a lot of people commit misdemeanors in high school, and zero-tolerance policies lead to plenty of other perverse outcomes. Even zero-tolerance on just assault would be problematic. A There’s a reason we provide organized outlets for young male urges to competition and violence.
Personally, I think the legal angle to this is a red herring. I don’t think things will be better if cheerleaders are suddenly given a legal right to free speech during performances, or if we have a slightly different set of rules about what school officials are allowed to do.
I think the problem is cultural support for patriarchy and rape. There is no set of laws in the world that will keep people from being assholes. We should call them out for being assholes, and we should support the people they’re harming. And we should do it again and again and again, until that shit is correctly seen as an outrageous misuse of power.
Loneoak
I am far from a legal expert, but I do have a PhD in moral philosophy. So, I’ll probably get at least half of this thought correct. Excuse the other half.
It seems plain to every single person that the school has acted horribly in every case here, but we haven’t been very specific about how they acted horribly beyond calling them fuckfaces. In the first instance, they allowed a male athlete convicted of assault (any kind is bad enough) against a female athlete to continue participating in an extracurricular sport. If we grant the defense’s claim that the school has a right to ban a student from participating in an extracurricular activity for any reason, then they could legally, and should morally, have kicked him off for that reason. Clearly, committing any form of assault, but especially sexual assault, is contrary to the condition of participating on a sports team (it if isn’t formally part of Silsbee’s policy, fuck them). Yet they did not kick him off. When faced with the female student making a speech decision regarding that male student during said extracurricular sport, they decided to kick her off of the team.
Thus, when faced with a formally identical situation—two students engaged in activities for which they could be kicked off of a team—they chose to kick off the student involved in morally-motivated speech and keep the student guilty of assaulting another student. Now we’re down to the root problem: what is the purpose of a school and what is the moral and legal duty that the school administrators hold toward students? First and foremost, it is maintaining a safe environment conducive toward education of students in a broad sense, ‘broad’ meaning to be inclusive of extracurricular activities that further education in some way. If the school administrators chose to protect the participation of the assaulter and not the speaker—whom we have established on the defense’s own arguments are formally identical—can we say they failed to fulfill that duty?
I don’t see how you can possibly say no to the claim that they failed that duty to create a safe environment conducive to learning. In every instance they supported the person who committed violence against another student and not the student whom was assaulted. That cannot possibly create an environment that is safe and conducive to learning, especially to the 50% of their population that will be that much more likely to be raped by their fellow students. Considering the very wide latitude the courts have given schools in ‘zero-tolerance’ toward violence and threats of violence, like suspending first-graders who bring Boy Scout pocket knifes to school, if becomes clear that they failed to support the safety of their students. The misogynistic insanity behind the assumption that a school can still fulfill their duty to students and yet allow an assaulter to remain in a position of privilege is laid bare: violence against vagina-havers is acceptable, morally-motivated speech is not.
So they’re all fuckfaces. QED.
snarkout
171 – I should keep my pie-hole shut, because I’m not a regular commenter here and people are clearly worked up, but the timelime seems to be:
* the accusation of rape was made in October 2008; the students were transferred to a different school.
* in January of 2009, a grand jury refused to indict the student in question, and he was transferred back to the school and allowed to play on the basketball team.
* in February of 2009, the game that led to the lawsuit occurred.
* in November of 2009, a second grand jury indicts the accused.
* sometime in 2010, the accused pleads to misdemeanor sexual assault.
So at the time of the game, he wasn’t guilty of anything, nor had he been indicted for anything. (That doesn’t mean the school administrators weren’t being world-historical douchebags.)
Herr Doktor
@Quarks:
Alas, all the moral outrage around here has blinded a few commentators to the simple duty of collecting the relevant facts.
The answer is that he was, temporarily. There was an injunction while the DA assembled the rape case against him, and he was suspended from the team. Unfortunately, the prosecution took longer than expected, and his injunction ran out. Since there was no longer a legal reason that he could not play, he was allowed back on the team. As the girl in question insisted on remaining on the cheerleading squad, even though her alleged rapist was playing, a conflict was inevitable.
After he plead guilty, he was removed from the team, and she was reinstated as a cheerleader. She continued with her ill-advised suit anyway. ABL’s article fails to mention this.
Mattt
Thanks for the timeline snarkout. That’s how I understand it, too: at the moment HS refused to cheer for Bolton, he not only had not yet pled guilty to the misdemeanor, but the only grand jury to hear the case to that point had refused to indict him on any charge.
ABL
@Matthew Reid Krell: it was a flippant reference to tapper’s response to obama’s birth certificate release.
i directed anger your way unnecessarily mostly because i wanted to stab that tissue jerk for providing the typical bullshit arguments.
i wasn’t trying to write a legal brief here. i was trying to point out that this school doesn’t seem to give a shit about this particular female student.
nor was i making a leap that not cheering is a form of protected speech. my point was, simply “who the fuck cares” and also that the school seems to have had it in for this particular student, and that the sanctions award seems particularly middle-fingery.
i added the second page of legal mumbo jumbo because i started reading about free speech in education and i thought that some folks would find it interesting.
i honestly (and stupidly) thought that people’s reaction would be “that’s fucked up.” not you misread the article and it wasn’t dozens of students, it was three, and maybe she was drunk, and she has no constitutional right to cheer, and blah blah fucking blah.
generally, it is frustrating as fuck for me over here. i write about black people issues, i get shit. i write about lady issues, i get shit.
at least maybe i’ve demonstrated that i don’t elevate “my issues” over feminist issues.
/snark.
Yutsano
@ABL:
I still lurves ya.
Mattt
This article presents what I understand to be the actual timeline pretty clearly:
– Bolton was transferred to another school immediately after the initial accusations.
– When the first grand jury refused to indict, he was allowed to return and play basketball.
– The cheerleader refused to cheer for him.
– Bolton was indicted by a second grand jury and later pled guilty to assault.
While school administrators’ later actions are disappointing at best, I’m hard pressed to see how they could have prevented Bolton from rejoining the team after a grand jury had refused to indict.
ABL
@Loneoak: THIS.
ABL
@Yutsano: i know yutsy. you’re the only one. ~dramatic sniff~
ABL
i just woke up and i already hate everything. i’m done with this thread.
VincentN
1) I really don’t want to get bogged down in legal analysis of the case. Regardless of whether the court is right in that cheerleaders are “mouthpieces” for the school, I don’t see the case itself as being frivolous and the judge had the discretion to not impose such onerous sanctions. The sanctions are ridiculous.
2) Regardless of whether the coach had the right to kick the cheerleader off the team for not cheering, he was a jerk. He brought more attention to her not cheering than if he had simply ignored the matter or, God forbid, shown some empathy and let her sit out. If she had wanted to sit out simply because she was not feeling well, would the coach have reacted the same way?
3) @John Cole, while I agree that the focus should be more on the lack of human decency among the school actors, there’s nothing wrong with engaging in legal analysis and trying to understand how things turned out this way. ABL brought up the issue first and many people are engaging in legal analysis preciously because of how appalled they are about what happened to the girl.
4) @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: you are correct about the basketball player only being an “alleged” rapist but I don’t understand why you keep harping the point. You’ve made your point so move on.
None of the commentators here are submitting court documents or writing newspaper editorials. They’re just regular people having an informal discussion and are probably not in the mood to be hypertechnical on phrasing.
In addition, focusing on whether or not this player is really a rapist is almost pointless because he’s incidental to the outrage of the story here. It’s a side issue that has no bearing on this particular discussion and will be settled in the courts one way or another without our involvement.
The point is that the coach had no reason to believe that HS was lying or making stuff up and should have displayed some compassion and sensitivity and let her not cheer.
Also, your attitude makes people less likely to listen to you. Is that fair? Probably not but that’s human nature. You can either deal with that or continue raging that nobody is looking at the substantive content of your comments because they’re too busy focusing on what a jerk you are.
Is it fair if others misconstrue what you have written? No, but calling them liars is probably not the best way to persuade them that you have been misread. Try calmly explaining why you think they’re wrong about what you’ve said and see if you can think of another way to make your point more clear.
Matthew Reid Krell
@ABL: Fair enough. My apologies. And I love what you say almost all the time; I’m sorry that we all got so worked up over what turned out to be sound and fury signifying nothing.
Quarks
@Snarkout and @Herr Doktor — Ah, ok. That timeline certainly makes more sense.
Uriel
@jinxtigr: it was a recommendation of her rape therapist, not a social pissing match of some sort.
Uriel
@jinxtigr:
it was a recommendation of her rape therapist, not a social pissing match of some sort.
Uriel
Sorry ’bout the double post there…. but what I have to say is just that damn important.
Ron
@Allan: Yes, I’m serious. Even in the ‘court of public opinion’ an accusation is not proof, or at least shouldn’t be.
Ron
I hadn’t seen the timeline before. If the conviction for misdemeanor assault came AFTER the game in question, then the school is not being as dickish as it would seem. People here may be willing to take an accusation as proof, but a school should not do so. I will say that whether or not one agrees with that her lawsuit, I think the idea of making her pay for it being frivolous is absurd.
currants
@arguingwithsignposts:
Scandinavia. Or the Netherlands, but I’d go with Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Iceland first. For lots of reasons, especially the equality one. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I could get my kid and her husband to go too. What’s going on here is looking pretty long-term grim, especially for women.
currants
@arguingwithsignposts: Some specifics: on new immigration policy
and equality particularly gender equality
I lived there for a year once, an experience that changed my life.
beergoggles
I heard about this when Pam’s House Blend and pretty much every single other LGBT blog covered it. U might wanna add some of em to your blogroll.
And it involves Texas and our Supreme Court. I can’t say I’m surprised.
Mary
@Mattt:
When I was in high school you could get kicked off an athletic team if you were caught smokign a cigarette or drinking a beer on the weekend. Point being that clearly coaches have a great deal of discretion over who gets to play and who doesn’t, which is reinforced by the fact that HS got kicked off the cheerleading squad despite having no indictments against her. There’s no reason to believe that Bolton has any more right to play basketball than HS has to cheer (or not cheer, as the case may be). The school made a decision to privilege Bolton’s athletic experience over HS’s.
Sophia
@Uriel:
Well, everybody appears to have moved on but I’ll still post this for my fellow stragglers. As a cold hearted lawyer, this particular detail strikes me as a good organizing point for noticing the ways in which the well-meaning people failed H.S. in this case. Never take litigation advice from a therapist. Never take litigation advice from anyone who suggests that you will feel better about something if you file a lawsuit. Lawsuits are not about feelings and our legal system is not designed to satisfy anyone’s emotional needs. That’s why it’s full of heartless assholes like me.
So, yeah… bad advice from the therapist. But really, the prize goes to her lawyer. If H.S. and her parents show up in my office with this story, I’d hold hands, offer kleenex, express the appropriate amount of outrage and then calmly explain that this is not a problem that can be addressed by the courts. Because it’s not. Prisoners have more rights than students. This was a frivolous claim. Not because her injury is not very real, but because it is the sort of injury for which the law offers no remedy. So I would give a basic explanation to H.S. and her parents that there is no way to present this successfully to a court. I would validate their anger. And I would try to redirect it to channels where it could actually accomplish something.
This lawyer should be ashamed of himself. I find it difficult to believe he wasn’t more motivated by $$$ than a noble crusade to stand up for rape victims. The sanctioning judge was obviously an asshole, but in a more just world I could see the lawyer getting (deservedly) hit with a fine for pursuing this.
Paul in KY
@Tim Cooper: I would say that Mr. Bolton must be a really good player, cornerstone of the team or something.
Otherwise, why keep him around?!
Amina Husain
@Triassic Sands:
It is a shame that this young girl is penalized for just refusing to cheer for her own rapist. She has the right not to participate, and the school board had many other options instead of throwing her out of the cheer leading squad. This seems like overkill for her refusal to participate. And the fact that the accused plead guilty to the crime makes it even worse. Obviously the lawyer she hired did not do justice to her case, she should’ve hired a better lawyer to plead her case. She can use her freedom of speech right, and not express herself.
cg
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Having 2 daughters, one who is young and loves cheer, I would want the facts clear. I also read that Rakheem was the only assailant. My concern was something I read, that the D.A. didn’t process the rape kit in time. And, the D.A., there was a conflict of interest which may have been why they didn’t get the rape kit out in timely manner? Hearsay, you’d have to read. In this small town this school had football stadium seating for 7 thousand. Where did that money come from Mr. Superintendent? Football and Basketball were pretty important to him. My kid’s h.s. doesn’t have a stadium like that. There are plenty of sites with the super’s name. And people are helping the family with the 45K. Sadly, I wonder if this case got as much publicity as it did because she was a cheerleader.
cg
This link speaks to the epidemic within districts. Our state had a case last week (public school) which only received small and fast moving print across the bottom of the page
cg