Warwick University- would you want any dgc of yours to go there?

Well let’s just hope these ‘men’ have been left in no doubt about their parents feel now about their behaviour. If any of them had been my ds , they wouldn’t have been back under my roof until they’d publicly apologised to the women concerned ( and actually wouldn’t have been back because of the very fact they’d appealed and thought it was acceptable to go back because on campus)

Yes Ready I don't know about others but I always feel responsible even for things I have no control over. When I hear that young people have done bad or stupid things I would not blame the parents unless I knew them. We none of us know everything our children are doing so can never feel smug.

Nonnie I agree. A parent can do everything to try and bring their child up with values, but at the end of the day it relies on the well brought up child having the inner strength to resist the urge to fit in with their peers, go along with their jokes, know when the joke has gone too far and put the brakes on. And the courage to resist in this way I believe is largely part of your innate constitution. And then you get the badly brought up ones too, of course, but I suspect it's the parents who really did care and really did try their best who feel the most shame, because they are the responsibility-takers.

The VC has said the ‘men’ are not returning ( but it’s their decision) I hope that the whole mishandling of this is still investigated and necessary changes made. I hope other universities take note. Still not a word of remorse from them I note. As a btw when I was just reading newspaper reports now of this, they all quoted some of the posts but the much ‘tamer’ ones. This gave a really misleading message - if they were going to quote, they should have used my examples or said that they couldn’t quote because what was written wasn’t fit for a newspaper. Just a thought about how we are misled deliberately or otherwise by the media and that what we are not told can be as important or more so than what we are

Yes MissA I think we all would and would keep questioning ourselves about what we could have done differently. I think parents start to lose some of their influence about the time children go to secondary school.

I would hang my head in shame if I were the parent of one of these specimens, but not because I felt I was to blame.
Nice parents children sometimes do very bad things.

PECS I haven't seen any suggestion that anyone is^so open minded to think it is OK to talk & joke about raping your friends?^. I am talking about life in general. Perhaps being open minded about where they may have learnt this behaviour rather than simply blaming their parents. Not everything is the fault of the parents and they will be feeling bad enough as it is without SM blaming them. Don't judge unless sure of the facts is my message to everyone.

I think there's a vast difference between being interested in sex and being interested in rape.
I also think the pack mentality kicks in, not just with young men or women, but wherever groups of like minded people gather - be it the workplace, university, or anywhere else.

Nonnie But not so open minded to think it is OK to talk & joke about raping your friends? The trouble with being too 'liberal' is that the boundaries that keep people safe start getting lost. I do agree we need as few rules as possible but people must feel and be safe too.

Jalima that is what made it so vile. It was all about hate and humiliation, through the weapon of sexual violence.

Iam apparently there is a move to make universities stop preventing visiting speakers being banned because their views are unpopular. I think we should all try to be more open minded whenever possible

Nonnie, so far as I'm aware, heightened awareness would need to be accompanied by training and policies. We're living in such 'interesting times'. No platform for old style feminists like Germaine Greer and Jenny Murray because of their views on transgender.
So far as sexual responsibility goes, it does seem like one step forward and three back.

Iam the reason I think Warwick could be safer than other universities is because of the heightened awareness due to the publicity.

I think that outside influences are much greater than when we were growing up, we didn't have the Internet. As previously stated the parents of the 14 year old who committed suicide had no idea and they seemed like caring people to me.

How could anyone think that Warwick will be ' the safest university because of all this attention'. How can making this kind of statement without any evidence to back it up doesn't help anyone.
As others have said, there is evidence of sexual harassment on many university campuses. Families are the main source of influence as children are growing up. That remains the case, the influence of my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles remains with me. We do have cultural problems in the UK which aren't helped by not challenging sexism and racism when we find it. It's not helped by trying to dilute what these young men did by dragging in an alleged false allegation against one young man.
The research evidence is clear, yes false allegations are made (by men as well as women). They are rare and the police should be able to investigate properly- specialist teams being closed down as part of austerity can only make things worse

One prospective employer has already done so.

Some men seem to confuse power and sex. They use positions of power to get sex, and use sexual relationships to exercise their power over women.

Young men have a strong interest in sex and sexual matters

I wonder, though, if this was not so much about the sexual act but more about hatred, a weapon to use against women who had (unwittingly) annoyed them. Rape is, after all, used as a weapon of war.
At least one was also anti-Semitic and thought Hitler was a hero.

Two (at least) were members of the Student Union Exec - horrifying that they were probably 'leading lights' at the university, organising events etc and at the same time leading this nasty, vile secret life with others.

Their names are out there and this will follow them - the university may put it behind them but future employers may not.

All this stuff about boys in all male schools is stuff and nonsense.. More and more private schools, especially boarding schools are now mixed and these boys have a social group outside school along with their sisters and other female relatives and friends

I went to boarding school decades ago and even then however cloistered school was, in the holidays I was back home on an army base and mixing with other children on the base and by 17 dating the young officers.

Yes, men, and not just young men will have these vile thoughts and conversations but by responding immediately and punishing those who get found we make it clear to them that this type of talk and conversation is unacceptable and will be penalised if found out.

The Exeter students were more robustly dealt with I think.

Oh please! Let's not dilute this situation with another , though equally immoral, one.

Ready that's true, remembering that poor chap in Croydon whose life was ruined by his ex-girlfriend who I don't think has been named and shamed despite his name being all over the media. It poses the question of whether the 'new evidence' which reduced the punishment, was something a girl did? Don't suppose we will ever know and not sure I want to.

Young men have a strong interest in sex and sexual matters. The sexual impulse is at its height in the late teens and early twenties, which is also the age when they are thrown together with young women in centres of education. Those who have been to all-male schools may have a distorted image of women, as alien creatures whose main characteristic is their ability to rouse their lust and make them want to satisfy it. Add to that the standard male conviction that their own role is to be in charge and keep others in order, and the way that small boys are often indulged if they get aggressive and act outrageously ("he is a real boy!! Always in trouble!!") and you can get people who act like these boyos, saying that for "stealing food" the girls would be punished with rape. They are combining business with pleasure, and confusing their own desires with "justice". Hope they don't end up as high court judges.

And male victims!!!

NB my above post looks a bit sexist, I really should have added that there are also female offenders.

Punishment of the men is, of course, a separate issue from the safety of the women. For every man that is caught threatening to rape a woman, there are probably two more who'd like to but haven't been detected yet or haven't offended yet. And that goes for probably any uni or any neighborhood. Same with pedophiles. The danger would be if, by the uni expelling these men altogether, the women might feel safe and let their guard down. Sadly, we're not safe anywhere and must always exercise the same care we would if we knew there was an offender studying nearby.

There have been lots of reports of this sort of behaviour in various universities, including those that some view as being academically superior. I believe these men should have been expelled, not least to discourage others from behaving in this way.

However, it is worrying that this sort of behaviour appears to be fairly commonplace, despite all the discussion and controversy about sexual harassment and sexist behaviour. It seems that it has completely passed some young men by.