Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Cavender, Amy" <>]

"Sickening" is a good word for it. I really can't convey through email how mad I was when I read it.

I think your recommendations sound like excellent starting points.

I think that the vast majority of the people who do or support things that trivialize sexual violence while online wouldn't ever admit to it in person, but it doesn't take much courage or effort to spew nastiness or wreak all sorts of havoc online. I've never had someone say things like this to me personally, but I've seen some appalling messages on campus-specific student message boards... and Reddit and 4chan, et cetera.

What I found especially worrisome was that these people were using an anonymous form, and therefore:

1.) might be difficult or impossible to identify and/or block, depending on how the form site is set up
2.) even if identifiable on an IP address level, they might not be identifiable on a personal level
3.) even if they are identifiable, they may not be students at all, much less students at the school whose online anonymous reports are being misused, so out of the reach of student affairs
4.) depending on the number of fake reports filed, they might actually crash the site and make it unavailable to people who actually need it (a DoS attack-- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack for more information on the hows and whys of this-- sounds like this original discussion was users doing it one-by-one, but there are ways to automate attacks on particular servers)
5.) any false reports, even if few in number, waste resources and may diminish some people's faith in the system while skewing campus statistics-- and they leave us with the tricky question of whether or not a dubious report should be added to the overall numbers

It would be interesting to hear a law enforcement perspective about this, too-- I wonder if it could become more serious if someone was doing this across state lines and ended up sparking a police investigation?

I think there are also some interesting questions in the space where legal theory and technology intersect about how truly anonymous these reports can/should be from a technical perspective, and whether or not it's a good idea to have some sort of mechanism to track-back to the computer that was used to file the anonymous report.

If any of you have more thoughts about this, let me know!

Best,
Amy

---

From: Felty, Wade P. []
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 2:33 PM
To: Cavender, Amy;
Subject: RE: Upsetting story about misuse of an online SA/SV reporting form

My recommendations, having had someone file a bad faith report once (and we did look into it to make sure they weren’t recanting for emotional/healing reasons, the person admitted it was malicious) would be –

 

-Talk to your conduct director to see if it fits under a prohibited conduct category, or at the very least, a catch all (disruptive behavior, for instance).

-Look at your law enforcement resources – if you have a commissioned police force or if you have good relations with your local police. Sometimes a strong word from the police about what COULD happen if the report had ever become involved in a criminal investigation and they were found to have submitted a false report or given false information to police.

- talk to your student affairs stakeholders – sometimes a strong word from your Dean or Associate Deans can hit home to people the seriousness of what they have done.

 

In the end you have to look at your environment and the students concerned to see what approach is best to stop the behavior and prevent it from happening again. Sometimes warnings will do it, sometimes judicial action needs to be taken. 

 

I’ve never had someone tell me sexual assault isn’t a serious issue, and our anonymous on-line system has been around so long (at least 10-11 years) it has never been a divisive issue.

 

This is REALLY sickening.

 

Wade

 

 

Wade Felty

Wade Felty

Office of Residence Life & Housing and Judicial Affairs

Randolph-Macon College

(804)-752-3234 (Office)

(717)-813-3513 (Mobile 1)

(804)-441-4187 (Mobile 2)

 

From: Cavender, Amy [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 2:46 PM
To:
Subject: Upsetting story about misuse of an online SA/SV reporting form

 

Greetings!

As I was browsing the news during my lunchtime today, I found this story:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/18/mens-rights-activists-conspire-to-cripple-college-rape-reporting-system-with-false-reports/

Long story short, some people using the Men's Rights subreddit (which is an online message board, if you aren't familiar with Reddit) decided to file a bunch of "joke" reports using an anonymous online reporting service at Occidental College.

My immediate reaction was anger, but then I started to start thinking about how to pragmatically deal with this sort of issue, especially since I see/hear a lot of schools considering this sort of system in light of the Campus SaVE Act going into effect next year.

I was wondering if anyone else had had a similar experience, or if you had run into other forms of resistance to the idea that sexual assault is a serious matter. If you have had a similar experience with misuse of online reporting forms, I'd also be curious about how you dealt with that after realizing there was an issue. I work with a lot of schools, and if there's something that has been working to either prevent or redirect these sorts of bad faith actions, I'd like to be able to share it.



Yours in service to students,

Amy Cavender, M.Ed.

 

Amy Cavender, M.Ed.
MyStudentBody Implementation Specialist
866/831-5714 (business)
512/968-1777 (direct)