[HN Gopher] Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports ...
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Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free
speech
Author : sam345
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-02-23 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/aP6Im
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| > Senior Christian Sanchez, executive vice president of the
| Associated Students of Stanford University, the student-
| government group, said the system is necessary and important. Mr.
| Sanchez, who describes himself as Chicano, said he has bristled
| in the past when another student has addressed him as "G," short
| for gangster.
|
| Is he implying this is a reportable offense? I've never heard "G"
| used in a derogatory sense, rather always endearing. Do we not
| allow language to evolve?
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| If the accused uses "G" universally as his version of "dude" or
| "bro," then that isn't bias, just maybe a lack of tactfulness.
| If he uses "G" for guys who wear nice clothes, "dude" for
| surfer-looking guys, and "bro" for guys with muscles, it is
| also not racial or ethnic bias. It would seem that a
| [legitimate] investigator would need at least some kind of
| information on that before having cause to investigate.
|
| Perhaps the reporter didn't give us all the info from Mr.
| Sanchez, and there is more evidence of bias then we were
| informed of.
| pas wrote:
| how are dialect and speech mannerisms not protected parts of
| one's identity? :)
|
| but of course if someone consequently ignores others' request
| to call them by their name instead of various nicknames that
| might be where said identity has to adapt to be able to
| integrate into the group.
| Animats wrote:
| At least there's a public incident list:
| https://protectedidentityharm.stanford.edu/news
| kneebonian wrote:
| So reading the article this is about a student reporting system
| that allows students to snitch on other students, which seems
| even worse.
|
| Still I get a very "The Crucible" vibes from the whole thing.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Anonymous accusations are a fine way to harass and intimidate
| anyone you disagree with or have a grudge against. As the article
| points out, it's a fine tool for oppression.
|
| A fundamental right we have in the US is the right to face our
| accusers, for good reason. Here's the text of it:
|
| > Sixth Amendment
|
| > In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
| to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State
| and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which
| district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
| informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be
| confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
| process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the
| Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In all criminal prosecutions,
|
| ...not in non-criminal government actions, or in private
| contexts.
| viscanti wrote:
| It appears the argument is that was included for a good
| reason for criminal cases and shows a precedent for it. The
| argument isn't that civil cases are currently covered, but
| that they should be.
| uoaei wrote:
| Are these accusations being made to civil courts, or just
| in the public sphere? It doesn't sound like it's the
| former, so the 6th Amendment doesn't apply.
|
| If we want to play the textualist game, there's nothing in
| the 1st Amendment about free speech only for people who
| identify themselves unambiguously. The 1st Amendment
| applies to anonymous speech, too (especially).
| moronicQ wrote:
| [dead]
| freejazz wrote:
| Under the 6th amd? That's a fundamental misunderstanding
| regarding what the constitution is, which is a document
| addressing the powers the gov't is entitled over its
| citizens, it has _nothing_ to do with civil law. Civil law
| has had its own standards for as long as either of them
| have existed. Civil law always has a lower standard than
| criminal law does. Maybe a better avenue, rather than
| wielding your obtuse misunderstanding of civics, is to make
| an affirmative argument as to why civil law should adopt a
| similar standard to the 6th amd (despite never having done
| so since around the year ~1000).
| viscanti wrote:
| No. The argument isn't that the 6th amendment applies.
| It's that the rationale made sense for criminal cases,
| and because it makes sense there, it should be included
| by others (say an HR department coming up with a policy
| on how to do something with anonymous reports).
| freejazz wrote:
| But those aren't criminal proceedings, they don't have
| any of the requirements of a fair trial... are you saying
| that any time a private institution does anything that
| can have an adverse effect on an individual, they need to
| employ the standards of criminal law? have you even
| _remotely_ considered what that would entail? or you are
| you just being smarmy online
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's that the rationale made sense for criminal cases,
| and because it makes sense there, it should be included
| by others (say an HR department coming up with a policy
| on how to do something with anonymous reports).
|
| The rationale for the explicitly criminal protections in
| the legal system, whether in the Constitution (like the
| Confrontation Clause at issue here) or the "beyond a
| reasonable doubt" standard that reaches back to English
| common law, is that criminal convictions regularly and
| explicitly result in noncompensable loss of rights,
| sometimes including life.
|
| HR is not imprisoning or imposing corporal or capital
| punishments, the same rationale does not apply.
| notch898a wrote:
| That only applies to criminal prosecution. Can still have, say,
| your children taken away without ever facing your accuser. In
| fact the law keeps you from ever finding out who made the
| complaint. I believe another case ruled it's fine for police
| etc to make retaliatory civil complaints for your speech, or
| call CPS, code enforcement etc.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But anonymous posters are also exercising their free speech.
| Sometimes this is out of a genuine fear of political
| persecution, sometimes it's hateful trolling or spamming (a
| problem not helped by anonymous domain registration, for
| example). A prohibition on anonymity has very negative
| implications for privacy.
|
| I's weird that a rational person like yourself conflates all
| anonymous speech with criminal prosecutions, a very narrow
| subset of public communications. Can you clarify what your
| broader position on anonymity is?
| WalterBright wrote:
| "All three said they wouldn't discuss their views publicly on
| campus for fear of being reported to the school's bias-
| response team for harassing students who disagree with them."
|
| Anonymous complaints are ok and are important to allow.
| Providing an official method for "name and shame" based on
| anonymous complaints are not. Having a "bias-response team"
| come after you based on anonymous complaints is not
| acceptable.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Yes, exactly. And I understand that you are not suggesting that
| Stanford is violating the 6th amendment, since this is not a
| criminal prosecution.
|
| What you're saying is that Stanford should adopt the _same line
| of reasoning_ embodied in the 6th amendment, to the extent that
| being accused in this fashion is a very high cost, and that the
| accuser should not be able to escape accountability for making
| false or misleading accusations. If the accuser thinks you did
| something wrong, they should stand up in public and say so.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
| version_five wrote:
| This is a good clarification - there are so many "it's not
| the government, constitution doesn't apply" comments that
| ignore that fact that the constitution is generally good
| advice for large institutions and it's a valid criticism when
| their policies differ, even of there is no legal requirement
| m463 wrote:
| how does that work with speed cameras?
| IncRnd wrote:
| I don't know of a camera that can write a ticket. My
| understanding is that the accuser is normally the officer of
| the court who signed the ticket based upon the camera's
| recorded video. If you are told that the People of the <State
| Name> are the accuser, it doesn't seem as if you can be
| charged criminally, unless all the People of the State are
| brought into court.
|
| IANAL (I am not a lawyer), so maybe one could respond?
| freejazz wrote:
| Key word: criminal prosecutions
| tengbretson wrote:
| "It's a private institution - They can quarter soldiers
| wherever they want."
| freejazz wrote:
| I wish people would just make their points instead of
| making statements like this as if I'm a mindreader. I don't
| know what you know. I don't know what you don't understand.
| Reading this post, I would assume you don't understand a
| lot about the constitution, so I ask that you make your
| point clearly.
| db48x wrote:
| The third amendment states that no soldier may be
| quartered in any house without the consent of the owner,
| but since that only applies to the government it is ok
| for McDonalds, the RIAA, Microsoft, or Elsevier to
| quarter their soldiers in your house even without asking
| for permission.
|
| This was a pretty common tactic of oppression back before
| the war; it's harder to plot a rebellion if a squad of
| Redcoats is camped out in your living room. I understand
| that China is fond of it as well.
| freejazz wrote:
| McDonald's doesn't have soldiers, but if they did and you
| allowed them to stay, what exactly would be the problem?
|
| > it is ok for McDonalds, the RIAA, Microsoft, or
| Elsevier to quarter their soldiers in your house even
| without asking for permission.
|
| really? trespass and private property are not a thing, or
| just not in your hypothetical because it would obviously
| be stupid then?
| afraid_to_speak wrote:
| Isn't this is the actual issue? HR doesn't have to be upheld to
| the sixth amendment.
|
| If someone makes a complaint about me at work, I don't exactly
| have the right to know my accuser. The issue is that the people
| that now make up these corporations and various education
| administrations don't care about these protections people are
| granted when dealing with the federal government.
|
| Maybe they should be? That would be an extremely hard legal
| argument to make, that would go up against the first amendment
| and the idea of freedom of association.
|
| After all, no one is forcing you to teach at Stanford right?
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Stanford takes lots of federal money so HR is bound to Title
| VI of the Civil Rights Act, plus Title IX and Section 504. If
| the bias investigations result in a discriminatory disparate
| impact or some kind of double standard they will eventually
| get steamrolled.
| moronicQ wrote:
| [dead]
| HALtheWise wrote:
| Nitpicking, but I think people here often don't think clearly
| about the value of expecting Constitution-inspired behaviors
| from non-government organizations. This frequently comes up
| when discussing free speech on moderated online platforms.
|
| In particular, there are underlying _reasons_ that we want
| the US government to respect certain individual freedoms, and
| _to the extent_ that some other organization is sufficiently
| government-like, we might want it to respect those freedoms
| for it 's users for similar reasons. In the case of a
| university, I think it's pretty clear that Stanford is a de-
| facto government over the students attending there. Sure,
| attendance is technically voluntary and you can leave at any
| time, but that's also true of normal governments, especially
| state and local governments. The key thing is that being
| forced to leave your home and community to avoid a state
| government violating your rights would really suck, so that
| gives them a significant position of power over you, and we
| have a constitution to ensure they don't abuse it.
|
| Stanford _absolutely_ has that level of power over its
| students, and so it 's totally reasonable to claim that they
| ought to abide by due process restrictions that are similar
| to (although probably not identical to) those from the
| Constitution. These things aren't binary, a university can be
| government-like in some ways and private-citizen-like in
| others.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Nitpicking, but I think people here often don't think
| clearly about the value of expecting Constitution-inspired
| behaviors from non-government organizations
|
| Especially when even for the government, those rules don't
| apply outside of the criminal sphere.
|
| (Those rules that apply to government outside of the
| criminal sphere are more often appropriate expectations for
| fairness in private interactions; "due process" in broad
| terms is appropriate, whereas the specific criminal
| procedural protections generally are not.)
| floren wrote:
| > In the case of a university, I think it's pretty clear
| that Stanford is a de-facto government over the students
| attending there. Sure, attendance is technically voluntary
| and you can leave at any time, but that's also true of
| normal governments, especially state and local governments.
| The key thing is that being forced to leave your home and
| community to avoid a state government violating your rights
| would really suck, so that gives them a significant
| position of power over you, and we have a constitution to
| ensure they don't abuse it.
|
| Not to mention that moving to another state requires... a
| U-Haul and an apartment lease. Becoming a "citizen" of
| Stanford takes a hell of a lot more work, and if you annoy
| somebody enough that he and a dozen friends make false
| anonymous reports to get you kicked out, well, that was
| your chance, hope you like CSU Chico.
|
| edit: actually I googled Chico and it looks pretty nice, I
| was just trying to think of a "remote"/unfashionable state
| school, no offense meant to Chico grads
| chmod600 wrote:
| "if you annoy somebody enough that he and a dozen friends
| make false anonymous reports to get you kicked out"
|
| There's all kinds of reasons that might happen that
| aren't your fault. In the past, maybe having the wrong
| skin color might have done it. In the present, I'm sure
| you can think of some ways to be unpopular that aren't a
| good reason to get kicked out.
|
| One-sided power is never good.
| lliamander wrote:
| > After all, no one is forcing you to teach at Stanford
| right?
|
| Sure, the point is not that the bill of rights applies to
| Stanford. The point is that the teachers are morally right,
| for the same reason that we have the 6th ammendment.
| burnished wrote:
| Its unclear to me the point you are trying to make. It reads
| to me that you think because that law does not apply here
| that the principles involved do not?
|
| Your points about freedom of association are likewise
| illegible in this context.
| kube-system wrote:
| The principles outlined in the Bill of Rights are within
| the context of a relationship with a government that uses
| force to apply their actions without any higher recourse.
| Losing a job is different in magnitude than being sentenced
| to death or imprisonment.
| burnished wrote:
| So you wouldnt suggest that you should generally be able
| to know who your accuser is (the principle), but rather
| that is a standard we hold the process of whether or not
| some one can out you into a little box?
|
| Thats coherent. I was originally thinking about this as a
| 'good for the goose, good for the gander' situation
| because the idea that you should generally speaking know
| who is accusing you and of what seems pretty reasonable.
| lliamander wrote:
| Anonymous accusations are easy to abuse. They should be
| treated with a skeptical eye regardless of the context.
| Any institution that makes decisions on such accusations
| is going to be rife with petty, vindictive politics.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Yes. It is important to remain cautious of anonymous
| accusations since they can pave the way for the
| implementation of algorithmic prosecution or a zero
| tolerance policy.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't disagree. But "should" is different than
| "fundamental right".
| cld8483 wrote:
| Whenever an institution makes the decision to start
| taking anonymous accusations seriously, you can bet the
| bureaucracy of that institution has already been captured
| by precisely the sort of people who are eager to abuse
| such a system. To anybody else without such a malicious
| intent, the hazards of anonymous accusations should be
| obvious.
|
| Be very careful when seeking to reform such a system,
| because those you are trying to disarm will use those
| very same bureaucratic weapons to stop you.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| Those don't apply to "at-will" employment - you have
| freedom of speech in that you won't be sent to jail, but
| you can easily be fired for something you say. That law
| actually doesn't apply here because the situation is
| different. This affects freedom of association because it
| supports the rights of individuals to form organizations,
| and also for the organization to deny membership, so the
| school has the right to remove a professor if the student
| body doesn't want them for some reason
| malshe wrote:
| "Anonymous student bias reporting" sounds mouthful. How about we
| succinctly call the system "compliance "?
| IncRnd wrote:
| https://archive.is/cKToO
| sam345 wrote:
| No paywall: https://archive.is/aP6Im
| mellosouls wrote:
| [dead]
| blindriver wrote:
| This should all be looked upon through the lens of power
| structures.
|
| If you're talking about an a student launching a complaint
| against another student, it should be non-anonymous because they
| are at the same power level.
|
| If you're talking about a complaint against a faculty member or
| the school itself, or the government, anonymity should be
| allowed.
|
| In this case, anonymity should be removed when it's a student
| complaining about another student.
| yodon wrote:
| When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career
| ending for the accused, the simplistic assessment of relative
| power between parties ceases to be correct. This is why the
| constitution (which doesn't apply here but was very
| thoughtfully designed) requires that defendants be given the
| right to face their accusers.
|
| Valid accusations and false accusations happen in all forms of
| law. There are commonly power or status differentials in the
| context of accusations. The constitution and 200+ years of case
| law have left our legal system far from perfect but far better
| than the ad hoc, administrator-defined, corporate insurance
| rate protecting pretend legal systems put in place by
| universities and the like.
|
| The right to face your accuser is a critical right that exists
| to facilitate legal systems arriving at the truly best right
| answer.
| blindriver wrote:
| Good point. I think at some point anonymity needs to be
| lifted regardless, maybe if the case is strong enough, or if
| the accusation appears to be fraudulent or in bad faith.
| cld8483 wrote:
| Not permitting the accused to know what they are being
| accused of is _always_ done in bad faith.
|
| If the accused were guilty, then they'd already know who
| the victim is and already know who the accuser is, so
| hiding the accuser does nothing. Hiding the accuser is only
| ""useful"" when the accused is actually innocent. The
| entire point of hiding the accuser is to deny the
| wrongfully accused of the opportunity to defend themselves.
| Such systems are weapons created by and for bureaucrats to
| cement their power.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Mostly true. Though certain property crimes or conduct
| violations such as vandalism, ripping down flags,
| graffiti, and the like might just have the institution
| itself as the complainant.
| xienze wrote:
| > or if the accusation appears to be fraudulent or in bad
| faith.
|
| How are either of those things determined? "Bad faith"
| seems to be a tool used to dismiss accusations without any
| objective basis, and determining if a claim is fraudulent
| may very well depend on the accused being able to rebut a
| claim based on knowing who the accuser in question is.
| lliamander wrote:
| > When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career
| ending for the accused
|
| I think this is only a problem when people treat such
| accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they
| absolutely are not. At most, it can be cause to investigate
| further.
|
| We do have whistle-blower protection laws, and I think those
| serve an important function in our legal context.
| nhchris wrote:
| The old "you have power/privileged/are the oppressor, so should
| not be allowed any means of defending yourself" trick. Also
| known as "punching up (good)/down (bad)". Quite popular these
| days.
| lliamander wrote:
| I think we are in basic agreement.
|
| > If you're talking about a complaint against a faculty member
| or the school itself, or the government, anonymity should be
| allowed.
|
| I would just nuance this by saying yes, but so long as such
| anonymous complaints are only the beginning of the
| investigation, rather than the end.
| blindriver wrote:
| Agreed. As I mention above, anonymity should be revealed once
| the investigation has reached a certain point, because now
| the power balance has shifted and the faculty member or
| whatnot has lost significant power.
| korroziya wrote:
| I understand how Stanford is a proper univeristy, but given how
| the college industry as a whole has done nothing but abuse
| students with predatory tactics aimed to squeeze every last drop
| of money out of them, I'm hard-pressed to shed a tear for
| professors. Not their fault per se, but still.
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