A few thoughts on #UCD200
LATE FRIDAY EVENING, UCD released the results of an investigation into allegations of a “revenge porn ring” reported to have involved over 200 male students. The allegations, originally reported by The College Tribune, centred around the existence of a Facebook group chat in which male students shared and rated photos of female students they had slept with.
Upon investigation, university authorities found that “the evidence cited in the article was based on hearsay from anonymous comments on Yik Yak by a quoted source to the College Tribune” and described the allegations as “baseless”. Authorities stated that, despite their best efforts, they were neither able to identify any students who were “victimised by inappropriate social media posting” nor locate any student who had any “first hand sightings” of the posts in question.
In fact, the only post that could have been deemed inappropriate was an amateur photograph of a bikini-clad model that was shared on an Agricultural Science class page in November. According to the report, the image was liked by 64 students, male and female, before being removed by a page administrator on or about January 4th. However, it was found that this photo was taken from a “publically (sic) accessible site in the UK” and didn’t warrant any further investigation. (Page administrators did nonetheless get a slap on the wrist from investigators for not being more “vigilant” in monitoring content posted on the class page.)
It’s easy to read these findings and conclude that the allegations must have therefore been exaggerated or fabricated. However, once you read the report and the chronology of the investigation, it’s hard not to feel that the investigation wasn’t quite as thorough as it ought to have been.
The timeline of events reveals that just one e-mail was sent by the Dean of Agriculture to Agricultural Science students on February 5th, urging students to come forward with any information they had on the alleged group. This appears to have been the only communication between the university and Agricultural Science students.
Furthermore, it appears that just seven Agricultural Science students were interviewed by university authorities — six class reps and the student responsible for posting the aforementioned image of the model. The report states that the students in question had “sought out and failed to find any indications of the Facebook groupchat site as described, and had no knowledge of its existence.”
It seems, then, that the investigation’s findings hinged almost entirely on the testimony of these students and that authorities were content to take them at their word. Given the sensitive and potentially criminal nature of the allegations, it seems naive to implicitly trust that class reps would readily turn classmates in during such interviews, but sure, look. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course, the investigation faced obstacles from the beginning. The ephemeral and anonymous nature of Yik Yak meant that authorities were unable to examine the original Yik Yak conversation about the Facebook group, which allegedly took place at some point before December 28th, and were instead reliant on just a small selection of screencaps provided by The College Tribune.
The report also makes clear that UCD SU was aware of the allegations from as early as December 28th, but failed to bring them to the attention of university authorities. Instead, six weeks elapsed between UCD SU learning of the allegations and the publication of the article in The College Tribune. Or, you know, ample time for a group chat to be deleted from Facebook. (And given that there’s no mention in the report of university authorities so much as taking a gander at Facebook during the nine-day investigation, this isn’t an implausible scenario.) Had university authorities been made aware of the allegations at an earlier date, perhaps this possibility could have been explored. As it is, however, we’re left with a report that doesn’t inspire much confidence in UCD’s ability to adequately investigate such complaints.
On Friday night, I visited the UCD Yik Yak to see what students were saying about the findings of the investigation. To describe it as a complete shit show is an understatement. One participant wrote, “So the Ag chat was never real :-) just another thing some extreme feminist made up to degrade lads”. This anonymous poster was not alone in his/her assessment with others jumping on board to pin the blame on overzealous feminists. Indeed there was no shortage of misogynistic rhetoric and jokes at the expense of feminists. “I wonder what specific group of men the feminist book club are going to focus their hate on now,” wrote one. “MAN POWER,” wrote another. “It’s frightening to see how quick people turn against men, especially when there’s no evidence.” “I bet you girls do the exact same thing and they don’t have this shitstorm against them.” “The world cries on about women being fucking oppressed or whatever yet they have leeway with so many things like this.” And so it went on.
What the chat revealed was a horrifying distrust of and disdain for women. These students’ mentality seemed to be, “You can’t trust those women. They’ll say and do anything to get us men in trouble.” There was no acknowledgment of the fact that a precedent for such a group in UCD already existed in the form of the now-infamous “Girls I’d shift if i was tipsy” Facebook group. No acknowledgment of the “lad culture” that ensured these allegations were readily believed. And certainly no acknowledgement of the fact that that it’s precisely this distrust that ensures women stay silent in the face of sexual assault, sexual harassment or domestic violence.
Whether or not the Facebook group chat in question existed, these Yik Tak conversations prove that The College Tribune was correct in at least one of its assertions: the prevalence of “a harmful and derogatory ‘lad culture’ amongst the student body in UCD”. That, and the circumstances of the official investigation, is cause for concern and worthy of a larger conversation.
