Tag Archives: Gottfredson sex assault review panel

12/9/2014 update:

In case you’re confused, there are two reports out now. The first is from the UO Senate Task Force, led by Carol Stabile and Randy Sullivan, and including Jennifer Freyd, Cheyney Ryan, and the US Attorney for Oregon Amanda Marshall. Their recommendations were presented to the Senate in October, here. The Senate is doing its best to implement them.

Today the UO administration posted the report of the  “Presidential Review Panel” that former UO President Mike Gottfredson, his athletic director Rob Mullens, and his VP for Student Life Robin Holmes personally selected to review their handling of the March basketball rape allegations, and give advice on reforms. They refused to do the former, but their report on the later is  now posted here.

I’ll be honest, I bailed at the point where Berdahl and the other panelists couldn’t even bring themselves to say Jennifer Freyd’s name, when talking about their euphemistic “campus climate” surveys. OK, I’m being unfair to the people who put in hard work on this panel, including Michigan’s Ted Spencer, who probably didn’t even get to collect his $10K honorarium, after the UM ethics office found out he’d tried to hide it.

Seriously though, it looks like there’s some good stuff in here about UO’s athletic and fraternity problems, and some sanitized but troubling history on the UO administration’s previous desultory efforts to address sexual assaults. I’ll give a redacted University of Nike coffee cup to anyone who can make it all the way through and provide a succinct annotated analysis, with a comparison to the Senate report’s recommendations.

Josephine Woolington is giving it a first crack in the RG, here:

Some professors questioned whether three current UO administrators could select members who would truly be independent of the university. Some also criticized the UO for paying each member $10,000, plus covering travel and lodging costs. UO spokeswoman Jennifer Winters said Wilcox and Shuman did not accept the money. The UO could not immediately say how much the panel has cost the university.

And she’s got a classic weasel word quote from the Gottfredson panel’s chair:

“I think what we found is that there’s a lot of pieces of good work being done throughout the university on both prevention and response, but (employees) are not always talking to each other, and there’s not a coordinated effort that makes the best use of resources,” said the group’s chairwoman, Mary Deits, a former Oregon Court of Appeals judge.

9/16/2014: KATU interview with the Honorable David Schuman confirms that the Gottfredson/Berdahl rape review panel won’t look into how Gottfredson handled the rape allegations.

Continue reading →

Update: Jennifer Freyd and Carly Smith gave an impressive hour long talk to the City Club. It certainly resonated with the audience, who asked questions about the role of alcohol and sports and perpetrators. Interim President Scott Coltrane was there. I think it would be hard for any reasonable person – and Coltrane seems eminently reasonable – to listen to their calm, rational, thorough presentation of their research and not believe that they should have a a central place at the table as UO tries to figure out strategies to reduce sexual assaults and deal with their consequences. The Senate Task Force that Freyd and Smith sit on will be presenting its initial proposals to the Senate on October 22.

There was a video camera there but I’m not sure where the link will be posted. Meanwhile there is an OPB radio interview, here. But note that the interviewers seem a bit confused about the differences between the Senate Task Force and Gottfredson’s review panel.

10/3/2014: Information here:

Friday, October 3, 2014 from 12:05 to 1:20 p.m.
Downtown Athletic Club, 3rd Floor Ballroom

Addressing Sexual Assault – From Institutional Betrayal to Institutional Courage

Guest Speakers: Dr. Jennifer Freyd and Carly Smith
Program Coordinator: Marshall Wilde

9/30/2014: Freyd releases the rape survey the UO administration tried to stop

Back in May, Jennifer Freyd, Carol Stabile, and the others in the rag-tag UO Coalition to End Sexual Violence were reduced to yelling at the Johnson Hall administration with a megaphone:

Now president Mike Gottfredson is gone. General Counsel Randy Geller is gone. Rumor has it that VPFA Robin Holmes will soon be spending more time with her family too – and I don’t mean on bowl game junkets.

Scott Coltrane is now in charge, and apparently he doesn’t care much for what Gottfredson and his predecessor Bob Berdahl have been telling him about how to just paper this all over. In 2 months UO has gone from having a president who tried to hide rape allegations from our students, to having results from a well designed, credible survey documenting the extent of the campus problem and showing where to focus efforts to fix it.

So now Freyd and Stabile, and the UO Senate Task Force, are UO’s most credible voices on how UO will move forward to address sexual violence. They made this happen through their own sustained hard work, and some very effective networking. What an impressive demonstration of political effectiveness for an important cause.

News reports:

Josephine Woolington in the RG: “What we learned today is simply unacceptable and unconscionable,” said professor Robert Kyr, a task force member and University Senate president.

Steve Duin in the Oregonian: One in 10 female students at University of Oregon tell researchers they have been raped at college.

9/30/2014: Live Blog: Usual disclaimer, my opinions of what people said or meant, nothing is a quote unless in quotes. The website for the UO Senate Task Force that Freyd sits on is here. For contrast, the various misadventures of the UO administration’s own secretive “review panel” are chronicled here, and the basketball rape allegation and coverup posts are here.

Preliminary results from Freyd survey. This is the survey that Mike Gottfredson and Robin Holmes tried to stop. Full slides can be downloaded here. Here are the main results:

Do the math: With 10,600 female UO undergraduates, this means 1000 of them have been raped while they were UO students. More if you count oral sex. About 300 incoming freshman will be raped at UO this year. 75% of the time by an acquaintance. 10% of the time at a fraternity.

Meeting: Full room and agenda. Carol Stabile chairs. Jennifer Freyd’s presentation will be at 1:50(?) or so.

David Espinosa (Testing Center) starts off talking about underreporting, effects of mandatory reporting. Lots of talk about the many disincentives for reporting. Bruce McAllister (Ombud) talks about the benefits of confidential reporting as an alternative. Give victim a menu of options on how they want to report.

Stabile reports on her and Kyr’s meeting with Sam Hill and Doug Park from the GC’s office. “We were told that the mandatory reporting comes from an OAR from the 1970s.” Kyr: OAR’s are now in temporary status because of the new BOT, they can be changed. Notes that the BOT has reserved control of student conduct for themselves. (Under the delegation of authority that Susan Gary hid from us).

McCallister: OCR says mandatory reporters must have authority. At UO, they don’t. So we’re out of compliance. (Mandatory reporting for all UO employees was Gottfredson’s first action as UO President. Whoops.)

Espinosa to Kyr: How did Hill and Park explain the requirement to you? Kyr: They didn’t show us documentation. Stabile: OAR’s are selectively enforced.

McCallister: UO is not following best practices on this.

Stabile: Concerned that confidential reporting is “where reports go to be hidden”. (As Gottfredson did.)

McCallister: Important that de-identified and aggregate data be reported (I assume he means to Clery).

Stabile: Timeline for action on changing this? Kyr: Chuck Triplett is in charge.

Bonine: President has authority to change these, should go through Senate first, can be quick.

1:54PM Jennifer Freyd: Preliminary results from her Campus Climate Survey
Can be downloaded here.

Freyd talks about the twisted politics of these surveys. Researchers, consultants, White House, administrators all want a piece of this. AAU is worried: https://president.uoregon.edu/sites/president2.wc-sites.uoregon.edu/files/field/image/aau_presidents_report.pdf

On to the presentation: (Sorry, I didn’t live blog this. See the slides above.)

9/29/2014: No, I don’t mean the well paid, secretive, lying, and remarkably incurious “Presidents Review Panel”, which now apparently can’t even bear to use variants of the word “sex” in their official name. See below.

I mean the all-volunteer UO Senate’s Task Force on Sexual Violence, which meets this Tuesday September 30, 1-3PM, 403 Ford Alumni Center, in public. Should be an interesting one.

And for contrast, here’s the administration’s newly renamed “President’s Review Panel” webpage:

The older, more honest, pre-Orwell page calling it the “Review Panel on Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response”:

9/30/2014: Now with a report from KATU News. UO’s well-paid PR flacks Craig Pintens and Tobin Klinger were apparently not willing to talk about this one on camera:

928/2014: It is, of course, common for repentant criminals to give “scared straight” talks about how their bad choices ruined their lives. But is a $4K payment for a keynote talk on sexual assault prevention really an appropriate consequence for trying to rape your daughters’ babysitter, in your house, while your kids are asleep? (Apparently he pled it down to sexual battery). And is Adam Ritz really the best poster-child for the athletic department to trot out? The AD’s accounting of their Sexual Violence Prevention programs is here. It’s pretty thin, as Coach Altman has admitted. Here’s one example – motivational speaker Adam Ritz:

“Keynote speaker for Football. Contractor to provide Alcohol Awareness/Sexual Assualt (sic) Decision Making. May 8, 2013”

Mr Ritz’s mug-shot:

Adam Ritz’s contract with the Ducks (the pdf includes contracts for other “sexual assault prevention speakers” Elaine Pasqua, Tony Dungy and Lee Gordon):

More links on Mr. Ritz, who appears to be making quite a good living from this:

http://www.homefacts.com/offender-detail/IN649373/Robert-Adam-Ritz.html
http://adamritz.com/Adam_Ritz/Media.html
http://www.wthr.com/story/1843004/disc-jockey-gets-prison-time
http://www.mndaily.com/2011/10/13/letter-greeks-apologizes-brash-speaker
http://www.usishield.com/apb-hires-lifetime-sex-offender/
http://timesupblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/listening-to-perps.html
http://archive.today/b5xmW
https://angelzfury.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/listening-to-the-perps-not-the-domestic-violence-victims-societies-accepted-norm/

From one article:

A good, or perhaps I should say bad example of this common mistake occurred at Minnesota State University, Mankato last month. The school paid Adam Ritz $2500 to speak to the students about the dangers of drinking. The event was sponsored by the Residence Hall Association, a fraternity and Men Against Violence. The Women’s Center expressed its opposition to the presentation but was ignored by these organizations including Men Against Violence which claims to be an ally of the Women’s Center.

Adam Ritz is a former local media personality. He is also a convicted sex offender. He reveals this as part of his presentation, but only towards the end. Mr. Ritz came home and attempted to rape the young woman who was baby-sitting his children. He was convicted, but served only six months and is on the sex offender list for his crime. His presentation sparked a controversy on campus that has spread throughout the country. A Facebook page was created to protest the decision to invite him to the school. Rather than treating the student body with a modicum of respect and addressing these concerns Mr. Ritz and the organizers of the program made many mistakes and I would like to look at them in hopes they can be avoided in the future.

Accordingly when the Women’s Center objected to the program with Adam Ritz, the male organizations should have recognized the Women’s Center as the experts on campus and stopped the program. Even better they should have consulted with the Women’s Center before scheduling Adam Ritz. It is unsurprising that they didn’t because they were exercising their privilege. Maya Angelou, the poet, says when people show you who they really are, believe them.

The many egregious, inappropriate and downright hurtful statements made by Adam Ritz illustrates why it is a bad idea to have perpetrators of sexist or other crimes based upon oppression speak to these issues.

A very bad idea. But worse than Tom Hart’s Russian motorcycle prostitutes powerpoint? Hard to say.

The RG has the story on Coltrane’s agreement to some but not all of the initial Senate Task Force proposals, here. From what I’ve read most campus sexual assaults are linked to athletics, fraternities, and alcohol. None of these initial recommendations target these problems.

Notably, Dana Altman and Rob Mullens have admitted that the athletic department does not provide any serious sexual assault prevention training for their athletes (unless you call Tom Hart’s presentation on Russian motorcycle gang prostitutes serious) and nothing in these initial recommendations will address that gap. But the RG quotes Coltrane:

“We feel like we’re doing enough to keep students safe this year.”

Ouch. Obviously the people on the Senate Task Force don’t believe this, and they will be proposing more action. Meanwhile not a peep from Coltrane’s secret $10Ka-head SARP, except that they’re not getting paid enough to investigate the JH coverup of the basketball allegations.

President Coltrane is never going to be able to leave this behind until he releases the documents. The $10K a head President’s Review Panel meets again next week with a brief public session, and no evidence whatsoever that they are willing to ask hard questions.

Latest story here.

10-11 AM, 8/27/2014, Ford Alumni Center. As usual, nothing is a quote unless in quotes. About 35 in the audience, 7 panelists.

Short version: Very strange session, basically a bunch of UO staff pitching the effectiveness of their various programs, no comments or questions from panel.

Chair Diets starts with intros. Asks for comments on prevention efforts.

Coltrane: Starts by calling panel extremely well qualified. Says it’s important to have public sessions, but much of the work must be confidential. Report will be public. Talks about “respectful college environment.”

Bonnie Mann (Philosophy chair): Hope you’ll have an event like this when students are here. Experience on crisis hotline, personal experience, importance of prevention and “culture work” for prevention. Can’t be done in a three hour workshop, given cultural problems. Wants required course in sexual ethics, to reflect on how you want to treat other people. Many qualified UO faculty to do this.

Rita Radowitz (sp? Admin working for Robin Holmes on sexual assault prevention): Wants to improve efforts to communicate what UO is already doing. Coordinate different programs.

Keith ? (UO Health Center): “Don’t rape” on a poster is not enough. If the only time students hear us talk about rape is after a publicized incident, they don’t take it seriously. Talks about cell phone app, now licensed by other universities. Need to incorporate our expectations to students on a daily basis.

Sam (HS teacher and grad student, director of women’s self defense project Warrior Sister Society, student of Jocelyn Hollander): Self defense works to prevent sexual assault, helps them set boundaries and it works because women *can* defend themselves. But there is only on UO self-defense course, in PE.

Rachel (Honors student): UO has an effect beyond campus. Also supports self-defense, gives evidence of effectiveness from a police led program in Orlando.

Carol Stabile (co-chair of Senate Task Force): Wants a “good samaritan policy” implemented on campus as short term goal. Long term goal may be a mandatory course. Also urges rethink of UO’s unusual mandatory reporting requirement and how to implement it.

?, Director of Residence Life: Shows poster they put on back of every dorm room. Runs sessions in residence halls, has increased number of RA’s in dorms to provide more 1-1 interactions with students.

?,: Talks about teaching students simple strategies to avoid date rape situations. UO does not have a staff person to deal with perpetrators who often stay on campus after disciplinary actions.

Susanne Hamlin, director of outdoor programs: Talks about need for telling students about rape reports as they occur, so they are aware. [Gottfredson apparently intended to keep the basketball allegations secret forever – but apparently the panel is not going to look into that.]

?: Also supports women’s self-defense programs. Research has shown more lights, call boxes, more cops have no effect on sexual assaults, while programs to train women on how to avoid attacks and defend themselves have been shown to be effective. Also important to tell women to tell men “what you are doing is rape”.

Schumacher, OSA: Wants to know what UO is doing about revenge porn. AG is looking into legal prohibitions, easier to implement on campus.

10:43 AM: Deits: No more speakers? Thanks, we’ll have more sessions when students are on campus. Adjourned.

Reporters doing their post-session interviews, panelists mingling, Tobin Klinger wandering around keeping an eye on things.