“Something” Might Have Happened: The UVA Fraud Continues (and Continues)

As the U.S. political culture continues to dive steeply into destruction (and dragging everyone along with it), there is a culture that is in an even steeper dive: the political culture that envelops higher education. One would think that with the findings that one campus “incident” after another fall into the hoax category, that people on campus might think twice before jumping off the cliff.

In previous eras, experience mattered, but today experience is whatever those in authority wish to make of it, so even though an extensive police investigation has found that a student named “Jackie” really was not raped, attacked, or anything else at a University of Virginia fraternity house in September 2012, no one in a position of influence is willing to add two plus two. Despite the fact that “Jackie” refused to cooperate with the investigation (she must have a good lawyer who has reminded her that lying to police really is a crime), and despite the fact that the fraternity had Against the State: An ... Rockwell Jr., Llewelly... Best Price: $5.02 Buy New $5.52 (as of 11:35 UTC - Details) no party at the house on the evening in question, and despite the fact that the whole story as outlined in the November 2014 issue of Rolling Stone was ludicrous on its face, apparently the Charlottesville police chief is falling back on the “something-might-have-happened” account with the following statement:

We’re not able to conclude to any substantive degree that an incident occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house, or any other fraternity house, for that matter. That doesn’t mean something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie on the evening of Sept. 28, 2012. We’re just not able to gather sufficient facts to determine what that is.

This is an amazing statement, and what makes it more amazing is that the chief and every cop in Charlottesville knows that the entire account was a sick hoax that “Jackie” cooked up in order to Suicide Pact: The Radi... Napolitano, Andrew P. Best Price: $0.25 Buy New $2.84 (as of 04:15 UTC - Details) get attention for herself. The chief does not believe “Jackie” and he does not even believe what he told the media. Furthermore, despite what almost surely will be a whitewash of the incident by Columbia Journalism Review, which is “examining” how Rolling Stone published an article that was One Big Falsehood, Rolling Stone and the author of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, are going to skate. Even though Phi Kappa Psi’s national office is looking to sue RS for what clearly is libel, my sense is that nothing negative will happen to the magazine and to Erdely.

Why do I say this? I say it because the president of UVA, Teresa A. Sullivan, is facing no recriminations from her employer, whatsoever. This is amazing because Sullivan helped Erdely put together the story and was involved in its creation long before RS actually published it. Yes, the UVA president helped create and nurture a massive fraud that damaged lives and scarred the Progressivism: A Prime... James Ostrowski Best Price: $8.99 Buy New $10.95 (as of 08:30 UTC - Details) university, yet she remains gainfully employed and there is no movement by anyone associated with the university or with higher education in Virginia to show her the door.

Sullivan’s antics are not the first time the president of an “elite” American university has actively tried to smear the president’s employer. Duke University president Richard Brodhead played an active role in having three Duke lacrosse players wrongfully indicted in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case of 2006-07. Brodhead not only made inflammatory remarks that implied the accused were guilty – despite having massive amounts of evidence at his fingertips that no one had raped or even touched a black stripper at a lacrosse team party – but he also encouraged Duke employees to spread false stories and pandered to the blacks and hard-left advocates in Durham, North Carolina, to give the hoax more life. Real Dissent: A Libert... Thomas E. Woods Jr. Best Price: $8.48 Buy New $7.93 (as of 03:10 UTC - Details)

Brodhead still is employed at Duke. None of the people who enabled and encouraged the lies lost employment at Duke despite the fact that the university was forced to settle with the three lacrosse players for nearly $7 million apiece or almost $21 million in total. Had a CEO of a private firm performed as wickedly as did Brodhead, he or she would have been out of work in no time.

So, a president who decides to help create and nurture a hoax at UVA in order to have clear sailing in the implementation of huge restrictions on fraternities at the university gets to keep her job. Her actions created untold damage to her employer, yet nothing happens.

How America Was Lost: ... Roberts, Dr. Paul Craig Best Price: $5.35 Buy New $2.99 (as of 10:30 UTC - Details) On the “law enforcement” end, the chief of police wants people to believe that maybe, just maybe, something just awful happened to the student who apparently has no intention of cooperating with police to report that awful “something.” Well, the cop wants others to believe what he himself knows to be absolutely untrue.

That puts him in line with Sullivan, who surely should have known that the details of “Jackie’s” story were false (including her being thrown through a glass table and having shards of glass sticking in her), yet Sullivan also wanted the world to believe that a horrible, vicious rape occurred on her watch at UVA. (And if Sullivan was too stupid to ask the obvious questions when presented with the details, then that means she clearly is too stupid to be a university president.)

All of this tells me that higher education in this country is beyond redemption, or at least the dominant university political culture is beyond redemption. Don’t look for sanity – and certainly anything resembling a search for truth – to return in our lifetimes.