Subject: Stossel Whore pulls similar stuff at Brown University

Hey Bartcop (and Christian),

First some background(which I hope I get essentially correct):

At Brown University a few years back, there was a notorious case involving a student who had been
accused of 'date rape'.  This was going through the student judicial system, and not the police and the courts.

The facts of the case, essentailly not in dispute, were that a male student at Brown had taken a drunk
girl home from a party. I believe she was sick, and he helped her.  Then, at some point she came onto him and
they slept together.  The next morning they parted company with no apparent animosity.  Later, she
reported him to campus authorities, and after going through the student disciplinary system, run largely
by students, he was I believe initially expelled and then later instead suspended for one year.  Eventually
he dropped out, sued, and won (or had it settled).

This was a big controversy on campus, with constant debate going on both in the student newspaper
and in the campus at large.  People were talking about it.

I would say, most students thought that either
a) nothing should have happened to him, or
b) even if he deserved some punishment the way in which it was handled was unfair and ridiculous.
And, plenty of people thought that sleeping with a drunk girl is not appropriate and he should be punished.
Let's just say both sides were represented on this one.  The merits of this case are not an issue.

Enter Stossel
 
Stossel wants to do a story on this case as a way of pulling a Horowitz.  He basically wanted to prove
that this kid was attacked by the PC police, that campus debate on this subject had been stifled,
that evil feminists were unfairly persecuting the kid, that there is No Free Speech on college campuses
due to a vocal majority of militant lesbians or something. You know the deal.

So, there is going to be a rally on campus.
Not about this case, but a rally for women's freedom and against sexual abuse.
It was not about this case.
However, Stossel shows up with his cameras.
He starts baiting the crowd.
He starts yelling things at them.
Some of them, of course, take the bait.
He's yelling obscenities at them.
They yell obscenities back.

The point of this?
He's trying to prove that these evil student feminists are preventing a campus dialogue.

Of course he managed to get a few juicy quotes from students who were too dumb to realize what he was doing.
That is what made it on TV.  Proving Stossel's point, or something.

Let me just say that my feeling is the kid that got accused of rape got a bum rap.
But this doesn't really matter.  There was never any silencing of campus dialogue.
Students were never prevented from speaking out on this.
A quick perusal of the student newspaper from that time will prove that point.
It was all people were talking about.
 

This wouldn't be such a big deal -- I would like to dismiss this is being unimportant.
However I can't.

A couple of weeks ago Bill Maher was on Larry King. The conversation steered into this issue.  Bill Maher
brought up the censorship on campuses and used this Brown incident reported by Stossel to make his case.

I don't think Bill Maher was whoring on this.  I think he just believed what he saw.
What he saw was a bunch of crap.  But, 3-4 years later, the story still has influence.