What should be done about this question predicated on the Rolling Stone rape article?

Question

This question is predicated on the now-debunked "A Rape on Campus" Rolling Stone article.

As user Ben points out, this information isn't in the post.

Now that the reported rape at the University of Virginia has been thoroughly discredited and exposed as serious journalistic misconduct, I think it is worth adding a new answer to this question that reflects that updated information.

While his "answer" is certainly abrasive, it does merit consideration that the question should be changed to either reflect that the example didn't happen, or edited maybe to be about any other sexual assault that occurred in a frat:

From aeismail's suggestions:

• Baylor
• Yale
• Wisconsin

Personally, I think changing the predicating assault is fine - or the OP Ben Crowell can weigh in.

Answer 1

The question, as is, asks the question: Given that a horrible gang rape happened in a fraternity event, what can and should the university do?

This question is reasonably independent of the actual university in question. Furthermore, even if no such events had happened, the similar hypothetical question would have the same answers, and would still be on topic.

The question is not part of an argument, and is not intended to be evidence for anything, and as such editing it to point to actual examples, with maybe a note at the end about the original question, is in my opinion unproblematic.

The current situation, where the question claims that there a happened a rape at a particular fraternity where such an event did not happen, is very bad: it makes a serious false accusation. At we should edit in a note saying that that the claim about the rape is false.

In fact, I went ahead and edited the question to include a note about the retraction and similar events. A false accusation should not stand uncorrected.

Academia.SE is not an advocacy group

This section mostly addresses a misconception by the user Ben. Academia.se is not a discussion group or an advocacy group. It is a site for asking concrete questions about academic life, and for providing answers to such questions. This is not a blog or a discussion forum.

The reason why this particular question contained misinformation for such a long time is because nobody who knew about the misinformation happened to read it and bothered doing anything to address the matter. It was a good thing for Ben to let the users know about the issue.

Answer 2

Thanks to Azor-Ahai for making this meta-post. As the poster of the original criticism of the question, here is my two-cents on possible amendments/retraction:

• In my view, it would be dishonest to alter or remove the initial claim in the post, or substitute it with another alleged incident of rape. The very fact that a false rape claim was used as the example is informative of the subject under discussion. (In particular, it undercuts the OP's claim of a "pervasive rape culture" and raises the issue of false rape claims.) Given that the question asks what can be done about fraternities, it is relevant that the example raised to justify the discussion is an example where the fraternity was falsely accused.

• Replacing the incident in the post with another incident would be a classic example of cherry-picking and swapping-out of evidence. It would be highly intellectually dishonest. The question is predicated on the assumption that a rape accusation was correct, when it has subsequently been shown to be false. The OP cites this case as an instance of "entrenched rape culture", which is itself a highly controversial notion. By substituting the false rape claim for a true (or possibly true) rape claim, that would mean that the OP is able to put forward evidence, have it rebutted, and then change the evidence to ignore the original evidence.

• So what should be done. In my view, the question should be edited with an update at the end, correcting the record. The initial claim could be edited with strikethrough so that the initial claim is visible, but the reader is alerted to the fact that it is now being retracted.

Answer 3

I am at a little bit of a loss about what the question is about and how the originally cited incident and the other similar incidents relate. At the heart of the question, I think, is what can universities do to fraternities that do bad/awful things. But maybe the question is really about when the awful thing is rape. Then there is the part about a very minimal punishment (at least according to the OP). Did the other similar incidents also result in similar punishments? Does it matter?

Part of me thinks the question could avoid rape all together and essentially be be reduced to

Supposing for the sake of argument that they were willing to completely disassociate themselves from one frat, or from the frat system as a whole, would it do any good? I assume that the frats own their houses, and the schools can't actually shut them down.

but this would invalidate the answers which focus on the rape aspect.