Sunday, November 18, 2018



Dartmouth students sue over alleged sexual assault by professors

This appears to be just money-grubbing.  The academics concerned have all been fired or retired but that is not enough, apparently.  Dartmouth should have acted more promptly, apparently. It is that tardiness which is now alleged to be worth $70 million.  I wrote about an earlier stage of these proceedings on 17 June

To the scientific community, Dartmouth College’s psychology and brain sciences department was a powerhouse, equipped with the latest technology and celebrated professors producing headline-grabbing research.

But it was also a “21st-century Animal House” where three former neuroscience professors groped female students in plain sight, hosted drinking and hot-tub parties with students, openly debated who had the “hottest lab,” and sexually assaulted graduate students, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against Dartmouth on Thursday.

For years Dartmouth did little to rein in the professors — two of whom resigned and one who retired earlier this year — and failed to protect students, according to the suit, filed by seven current and former students in New Hampshire federal District Court.

The suit for the first time details the specific sexual misconduct allegations that thrust Dartmouth into the spotlight last fall, triggered a criminal investigation by the New Hampshire attorney general’s office, and led to the removal of the professors, Todd Heatherton, Paul Whalen, and Bill Kelley.

The complaint describes a party culture where influential professors exercised tremendous control over their students’ academic careers, delaying exams, withholding advisory meetings, and threatening the research and funding of women who shunned their advances. The professors conducted lab meetings at bars, and Kelley “invited undergraduate students to use real cocaine during classes related to addiction as part of a ‘demonstration,’ ” the lawsuit and students allege.

“I don’t think that anybody in a position of authority should be using their power to demand sexual favors, or any sort of favors,” said Ashwini Narayanan, 18.

Dartmouth, an Ivy League college in Hanover, N.H., had received at least three previous sexual harassment complaints against Heatherton starting in 2002 and at least one against Kelley in 2005, and should have taken action long before the recent group of students complained, according to the lawsuit. The students are seeking $70 million in damages.

“Dartmouth’s conduct was wanton, malicious, outrageous, and conducted with full knowledge of the law,” according to the suit. “Dartmouth exhibited reckless indifference to the foreseeable risks of harm.”

Justin Anderson, a spokesman for Dartmouth, said the college took unprecedented steps in dealing with the professors after an outside investigator found evidence of misconduct. The university was prepared to revoke their tenure before they decided to leave.

“We respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the characterizations of Dartmouth’s actions in the complaint and will respond through our own court filings,” Anderson said in a statement. “We applaud the courage displayed by members of our community within the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) who brought the misconduct allegations to Dartmouth’s attention last year. And we remain open to a fair resolution of the students’ claims through an alternative to the court process.”

On Thursday, Dartmouth president Phil Hanlon sent an e-mail to the college community defending the review of sexual harassment allegations against the professors as “rigorous, thorough, and fair.”

Kelley’s attorney declined to comment, and Whalen’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

Heatherton has said that he acted “unprofessionally while intoxicated” at several public events and has apologized for his behavior.

Julie Moore, a Wellesley attorney representing Heatherton, denied her client had any role in creating a toxic culture at Dartmouth and distanced him from the other two professors. Heatherton had no knowledge of any students being sexually assaulted and did not engage in the patterns of conduct that Whalen and Kelley are accused of, she said.

“He repeats that he did not regularly socialize with graduate students and has never had any sexual relationship whatsoever with any student,” Moore said.

In an interview this week, the six named students in the lawsuit said that the alleged behavior by the professors and Dartmouth’s yearlong investigation and subsequent response left them reeling and betrayed.

Several graduate students said that even after they made their complaints in April 2017, they were encouraged by Dartmouth administrators to keep the professors as advisers into the summer to avoid retaliation and the loss of their academic support. But that meant the women had to continue to endure the same sexual harassment they had complained about, according to the lawsuit.

“None of this should have happened to any of us,” said Kristina Rapuano, 30, who completed her PhD at Dartmouth and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University.

In the lawsuit, Rapuano accused Whalen of inappropriately touching her in 2014 in his office, advances that she rejected.

The next year, Rapuano and Kelley attended a neuroscience conference in San Francisco and got drunk. Rapuano alleges that she informed Kelley that sexual contact would be unwelcome, but the two had sex nonetheless. Rapuano said she has no memory of the episode or how she returned to the hotel, but Kelley told her about it, according to the lawsuit.

Rapuano repeatedly tried to establish a more professional footing with Kelley, but felt his willingness to support her work was reliant on her complying with his sexual demands, according to the lawsuit.

“I felt trapped,” Rapuano said in an interview this week.

In 2016, Rapuano explicitly told Kelley she didn’t want a sexual relationship. He later wrote in an e-mail, “I don’t know how to separate the personal from the professional. I don’t know that it makes sense to do so.”

Rapuano went to Heatherton, who conducted research with Kelley, to voice her concerns and in January 2017 contacted Dartmouth’s then-provost to report the sexual harassment, the lawsuit says.

The provost informed Rapuano that she should talk to the Title IX office, which handles sexual harassment complaints, and to her department head, but did not open an investigation, according to Rapuano.

Marissa Evans, 22, who worked as an undergraduate in Kelley’s lab, alleged that the professor bombarded her with “unwelcome and offensive” text messages, including naked photos of himself, questions about her sexual practices, and his intention to have sex with her. Evans eventually blocked Kelley’s number and transferred to another lab, according to the suit.

The women said they all thought they were alone in receiving unwanted and inappropriate attention from their professors. That changed in March 2017 during a professional conference in Los Angeles, according to the students and the lawsuit.

Sasha Brietzke, 26, a doctoral student at Dartmouth, was out at a karaoke event at a Korean bar with other conference participants. Heatherton arrived drunk and called Brietzke over, groped her buttocks, pulled her onto his lap, and asked her what she was doing later that night, according to the suit.

“I felt really humiliated,” Brietzke said. “This is my introduction to the scientific community, and now I’m a sexual object.”

Brietzke started talking to other female students during the conference and realized that some shared similar experiences. Less than three weeks later, in early April, Rapuano and several other graduate students made a Title IX complaint against Kelley, Whalen, and Heatherton.

According to the lawsuit, Dartmouth didn’t inform the professors about the complaint until July 20 of that year.

Vassiki Chauhan, 27, a doctoral student at Dartmouth and Whalen’s teaching assistant at the time, also wasn’t aware of the allegations.

In mid-April, after a going-away celebration for a research assistant that involved drinking, Chauhan agreed to return to Whalen’s house for another drink.

Whalen repeatedly tried to “initiate sexual contact” and Chauhan kept rejecting his advances, according to the lawsuit.

Chauhan tried to leave multiple times, but Whalen followed her and talked her into staying, she said.

“Whalen then forced her to engage in nonconsensual intercourse with him,” according to the suit.

The next day, Whalen called a meeting with Chauhan, told her to keep their encounter private, and asked her if she thought it was consensual. Chauhan said she told him, “Yeah, I guess.”

But after the incident she was in pain and sought medical attention on campus, according to the lawsuit. In the weeks that followed, Whalen kept texting and asking for a meeting, but she made excuses to avoid him, she said.

“I always respectfully replied,” she said. “I felt really cornered about how to tell him to stop.”

She finally told him that she felt uncomfortable with his attention that May when he approached her at a bar. That was their last conversation, Chauhan said.

She had prepared a 10-page statement to present during his disciplinary hearing describing how the experience felt like an open wound. But Whalen resigned first.

“There is also lack of acknowledgment about how badly things were handled and how problematic the culture was,” Chauhan said. “All people want to do now is move on and pretend that Dartmouth is a land of peace and joy.”

SOURCE 







Our flawed college system takes toll on families years before tuition is due

Busyness. It’s among the most common complaints from parents today. It isn’t just the rise of dual working families, which means both parents must weave child-rearing responsibilities in with careers. Life with kids today is busy in itself.

Standing on the sidelines of a sports field, parents exchange battle stories: “My kids have three games today, and we’ve got two overlapping practices tomorrow. How can I be in two places at once?” I tell the other parents. They invariably come back with equally jammed schedules, replete with language lessons, music recitals, sports travel teams, and Odyssey of the Mind.

Why do we knowingly over-schedule our kids?

Despite the complaining, part of the reason is because we enjoy it: I enjoy seeing my children gaining skills and confidence at an activity they love, and I enjoy the chit-chat with other parents while we watch our kids. Yet we also go overboard and commit to activities that yield little pleasure, and create a whole lot of headaches, for both parents and children. That’s at least in part because, much as we hate to admit it, college applications are already on our minds.  

The specter of student loans

Mostly public discussion of the burden college places on families focus on costs. Wise elders begin refreshing blear eyed parents — many of whom still are paying off their own student loan debt — about the power of compound interest, explaining why saving early will be the key to minimizing junior’s future student loan debt, as soon as the baby’s home from the hospital.

The specter of huge college costs creates a lot of pressure, and even impacts people’s decisions about whether or how many children to have. More than half of respondents in one survey reported planning to have fewer children than their parents had, and more than 1-in-10 of those who don’t want children or weren't sure cited concerns about college costs as the reason.

When having my fifth child, I was often asked how we planned to pay for college for all these kids? My husband and I both work and are comfortably middle class. It seemed crazy to me to think we couldn’t afford to have as many children as we wanted. We have done the best we can to save for college and figure we will make it work when the time comes.

But, really, financial worries are only part of the college burden. For those who aspire for their children to not just go to college, but go to a competitive or even prestigious college, there’s also pressure to do everything you can to help your kids build the skills and accomplishments that will impress future admissions committees.   

My daughters dreaded the violin lessons I enrolled them in when they were starting elementary school. So did I: Classes were expensive and required a long drive across town where there was little parking. I should have been relieved when they asked to quit. Yet there was a sense of such failure: I was letting them down by not ensuring they had some musically ability on which to build. Sure, in part I sincerely wanted them to be able to have the pleasure of being able to play an instrument, but those future college applications were also a factor.

We parents know it’s a little crazy to resume build when your son or daughter still sleeps with a security blanket. But there’s a fear that if kids don’t start developing skills early, they’ll be irretrievably behind the kids who do and never have a chance to excel.

Getting back to what college is really about

Parents will always want to advantage their children. For the most part, this is an overwhelming positive instinct. Yet changes to our higher education system could help redirect parents’ efforts so they are more effective for the long-term.

Instead of fixating on how children will appear to a college admissions committee (which is often looking for a mix of qualities which have little value outside of the college arena) parents could focus on helping their kids gain skills and experiences that will actually help them find careers that will be remunerative and that they’ll enjoy.

The sad truth is that depressingly little actual learning goes on during the typical college experience. According to the 2011 book, "Academically Adrift," 45 percent of students learn little to nothing after two years of college, and more than 1-in-3 learn next to nothing after four years.

Many companies, including giants like Google, Apple and IBM, no longer require four-year degrees, likely because they recognize that someone with a college bachelor’s degree isn’t necessarily more qualified for a job than someone who chose a different path.

Increasingly, there are other ways for students leaving high school to gain skills that will prepare them for careers. Computer-code schools and boot camps, for example, can work directly with employers to train people for jobs in the tech field that are currently unfilled. Other education providers offer more traditional degree programs, but tailor classes to prepare students for more specific industries.

These new education providers, which often offer more flexible schedules and encourage online engagement, also understand that education doesn’t just happen between ages 18 and 22. It should be an ongoing process.

Of course, four-year colleges still have plenty to offer and are the best path for some students. Many parents will always start planning early for how to give their kids the shot at one of the few coveted spots at elite colleges. Yet parents should be able to take comfort that a four-year degree at a liberal arts college isn’t the only path, or even the best path, to success.

Knowing that success doesn’t rest on the resume you build by age 17 may help parents relax a little, so we can enjoy our weekends, and our families, more today.

SOURCE 





School cancels prize giving ceremony so students don't get upset when they're beaten by their friends

A school has cancelled prize giving ceremonies in a bid to move away from ranking systems so students don't get upset when they're beaten by their friends.

Silverdale Primary School, on Auckland's Hibiscus Coast in New Zealand, announced their plans to abolish award ceremonies in their October school newsletter.

Principal Cameron Lockie told the New Zealand Herald handing out awards at end of year ceremonies no longer aligned with the school's beliefs and values.

Mr Lockie said singling out students as 'special' made no sense - especially when the majority of kids are trying their hardest to be the best they can be.

'Try explaining to a child that has tried hard all year with their learning that they didn't get the Commitment to Learning award because someone else was trying harder, this is subjective,' he said.

The principal said schools are supposed to be about 'learning and creativity' to empower children, not 'ranking and sorting', which only rewards high achievers.

'If we continuously tell our children that every single one of them is important to our school, I do not see how end-of-year prizegiving aligns with this belief,' he said.

The decision to change the school's award ceremonies was met with mixed reviews from parents and generated 'a lot of talk' in the community. 

Silverdale resident Tracey Smith questioned the principal's decision, saying if we don't each kids to how to fail, they may struggle transitioning into high school.

But another resident, Theresa Yaroshevich, agreed with Mr Lockie, saying prizegiving ceremonies are outdated and awkward to sit through for those not being rewarded.

The principal explained his reasons for the changes in the October newsletter.

Mr Lockie wrote the changes wouldn't have an impact on certain reward systems, such as sporting activities, inter-school competitions and team awards.

He said prizes would continue for these events as they were 'competitive' and not 'subjective'.

If a student comes first in the cross country race, then obviously they've won and deserve first place and a reward, everyone understands that, he said.

The principal said the way to promote 'lifelong learners' is to provide them with an engaging curriculum in a 'safe, caring community in which to discover and create'.   

He said there is 'abundant research' that show awards can undermine a child's intrinsic motivation to to succeed.

'We are trying to get our children to succeed because they want to succeed and not because of a reward at the end which is subjective at best,' he said.  

SOURCE 



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