09:21 – In bizarre local front-page news a 23-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with having consensual sex with a 19-year-old man. The problem is that she’s a public school teacher and he is a student at her school, although the sex took place off-campus. North Carolina has a very strange and probably unconstitutional law that says a teacher who has sex with a student who attends his or her school is committing a crime, unless the two of them are married. Eh?
It seems to me that if two people, regardless of their sexes, decide to have sex it is not a matter for the law unless one of them is under the age of consent, which should be 14 years old at most. Now, it’s probably reasonable for schools, public or private, to have a no-fucking-the-students rule. But if a teacher violates that rule, he or she should be fired, not arrested. I don’t buy the argument that the teacher being in a position of authority automatically means the student can’t consent. Anyone who believes that has no experience with teenagers. And a 19-year-old man is obviously perfectly capable of consenting, or not. (Not that any heterosexual 19-year-old man in all of the history of our species has ever refused to have sex with a pretty 23-year-old woman, obviously.)
And, in related news, a local teacher was cleared yesterday of charges that he’d had sex with a female student. Apparently, the investigation turned up no evidence that he had done so, so it appears the girl was lying. Of course, the assumption should always be that the person who claims to have been raped is lying. That’s a fundamental principle in law, presumption of innocence. But for some reason, when it comes to “sex crimes”, there is instead always a presumption of guilt. This guy was very lucky indeed.
I spent some time on the phone yesterday with Catherine Conant of Triarch, a family-owned Wisconsin company that produces prepared microscope slides. She’s the granddaughter of the founder, who started the company in 1927. I asked her if she’d be willing to put together sets of microscope slides customized for the biology book.
Originally, I intended to put together these prepared slide sets myself, using slides purchased in bulk from an Indian manufacturer, but after looking into what would be required I decided it was simply more than I wanted to take on, not just in terms of work but in terms of storage space and carrying costs for inventory. This way, all I have to do is come up with lists of the slides to be included in the sets. Triarch will produce and package the sets and sell them direct to anyone who wants to buy one.
The only downside is cost. Chinese-made slides in sets of 25 typically sell for $25 to $40, depending on the particular slides in the set. The same slide set from India might sell for $45 to $75. The same set from Triarch might sell for $85 to $120.
The upside to US-made is quality and specificity. Chinese slides simply can’t be trusted. There’s zero quality control, to the extent that sometimes the specimen is actually not present on the slide. Even worse, the specimen may not be what it’s supposed to be. For example, yesterday I looked at a Chinese slide whose description was “Hydra, l.s.”. What was on the slide was indeed a longitudinal section, but it sure didn’t look like a Hydra to me.
So I emailed the vendor, saying that this sure didn’t look like a Hydra to me, and I suspected it was some kind of Planarian (flatworm). I got email back thanking me for reporting the problem. The customer service rep said her boss, the owner of the company, had looked at the rest of their stock of that slide and pulled it from inventory because the quality was unacceptable. He maintained that it was in fact a Hydra ls, however, but that the sectioning was poor and didn’t show any “polyps”. Okay, whatever. But Hydras are vase-shaped, with a thinner portion on the posterior, where the basal disk is located, then swelling to larger diameter for most of the body, and again narrowing toward the mouth and tentacles on the anterior end.
Of course, the real problem is that the average student is going to assume, reasonably enough, that the slide label is accurate, so that student may look at what he assumes is one type of specimen when in fact it’s quite another. That can get confusing fast.
That’s one of the major reasons–along with typically poor sectioning and staining–that led me to rule out Chinese slides when I was considering assembling my own slide sets. Indian slides are generally much better than Chinese slides, with decent specimen selection and sectioning as well as useful staining. The problem with Indian slides, unless you import them directly in large volume, is that US resellers are generally clueless about what specifically they have available. Also, if a particular slide is out of stock, it’s often literally several months before it’s back in stock.
So that’s why I decided to punt the slide sets to Triarch. They carry about 4,500 different slides, nearly all of which are always in stock. If they do run out, they make another batch quickly. And anyone who buys Triarch slides knows exactly what they’re getting and can be confident that what they’ve ordered is what they received. Triarch slide sets won’t be cheap in any sense of that word, but they also maintain their value. People who pay $90 for a set of Triarch slides for a school year should be able to turn around after that year and resell that slide set for very nearly what they paid for them.
Of course, the assumption should always be that the person who claims to have been raped is lying. That’s a fundamental principle in law, presumption of innocence. But for some reason, when it comes to “sex crimes”, there is instead always a presumption of guilt.
Well, actually, that is not a fundamental principle by which courts operate, it is merely an instruction most often presented to juries as the starting point when considering the evidence. The fact is that in misdemeanors, subjects are generally free citizens until proven guilty, but in most felony offenses, the accused is quite literally imprisoned and treated as guilty until proven innocent.
In fact, psychological studies have shown that a mere accusation is enough for the majority of people to believe a person is already guilty. That is possibly the reason so many politicians are hell-bent on running negative campaigns. Then the decision hinges on whose arguments appear the most believably negative.
Good point. The entire bail bonds industry exists because of the presumption of guilt.
Yes, agreed. I have never understood why someone can be jailed before they have been convicted of a crime. It seems to me the police should simply issue a citation telling that person to show up for trial. There should be no arrest, bail, and so on. If the person does not show up for trial, he is declared an outlaw, and anyone is free to kill him and claim the reward.
I also disagree with the whole idea of plea bargaining. The justice system should not be permitted to bargain with criminals. If they are caught and convicted, they should pay the full penalty.
I read several years ago that our entire US Judicial System depends on plea bargains and would otherwise be crushed under the trial load. If everyone accused insisted on going to trial and exercising their right to a trial by jury, then the US Judicial System would grind to a halt. Bench trials and plea bargaining are the only way to cope with the case load.
Of course, much of that could be avoided if all “victimless crimes” were wiped off the books.
Not that I have any data upon which to base my conclusion, but: Lots of families that buy the ‘expensive’ slides are going to amortize that cost over more than one progeny, and then possibly sell the set to another family once they’re out of kids. That would bring down the real cost of the slides quite nicely.
Well, ‘victimless crimes’ needs to be defined, but in general, yeah, I agree. And non-violent perps do not belong in our hellish jail and prison system.
And OFD wants to know where all them 23-year-old teacher hotties were when he was a 19-year-old sergeant out in Kalifornia. WTF.
Ahhh, when I was 17 my maths teacher was a certain Miss De Nardi. Normally I didn’t pay any attention to the female teachers, but she was *different*. Tall, mid-late twenties, nice rack, beautiful, as in beauty contest winner material, southern European heritage.
One of the other boys in the class claimed that she was wont to wear low cut tops with no bra and to lean right over when talking to the guys. I never noticed.
Unfortunately, she left at the end of Term 1 and was replaced by a guy.
One of the other boys in the class claimed that she was wont to wear low cut tops with no bra and to lean right over when talking to the guys. I never noticed.
My apologies to you. I did not realize that were completely blind.
I had a teacher that was a hottie. She liked to let the boys peek when she bent over. I thought all women did?
I certainly noticed!
Yeah, my lawyer dad used to tell me the same about plea bargaining — that it actually saved taxpayers significant money and lightened court case loads considerably. It is always supervised by a judge, so ostensibly the facts are investigated, and the approved agreement should be similar to how a judge would rule, were he to try the case. My dad’s take on it was that anyone who would seek a plea bargain was probably guilty, and the bargain was insuring they would not be sentenced to the max, were it to go to trial. In his era, plea bargains were only considered for first-time offenders; repeat offenders were usually tried. Not sure about today, but I am not reading that really serious crimes around here are plea-bargained down.
As far as the crime of having sex as a teenager, we need to have some judges with the fortitude to maintain that no normal male (not disabled), capable of having sex, could possibly be harmed in any way by having sex with a member of the opposite sex. I cannot imagine that a female could be harmed, unless she became pregnant, but am willing to withhold criticism there, since I am not a woman.
But with all the publicity of such prosecutions, how and why did this couple ever let it be known they were having sex?
Being curious about how info about the relationship leaked out, I did a little looking, but could find nothing. I did, however, find mentions of this incident in several newspapers throughout the country. A DC area newspaper had an article about teacher-student sex, indicating that such relationships were not uncommon. Ditto for a newspaper near W-S, which told of a former high-school coach — himself a star athlete — who was just arrested for going to a gym, which has minors who are in the building from time-to-time, and from any such place, he was barred. He worked out for a year there, in the early mornings, when no minors were present, but police said it did not make any difference whether minors were present when he was; they just had to use the building to make it a felony crime for him to be in that building at any time.
It is pretty clear from just a quick search, that student-teacher trysts are not unusual. Now if they are not unusual in this day and age, I strongly suspect they have been around for many years. Why should they suddenly be treated so harshly? I know of two of my high school teachers — both young and one of each sex — who married one of their students (both students in my graduating class). Tell me nothing went on while we were in high school.
I am just now seeing Jim’s request for headphone info. If there is a Guitar Center near you, they have quite a few different types of headphones you can try in the store, before plopping down a small fortune on something you might not like in the end.
Unfortunately, I have never found the ultimate over-ear headphones, like I have for earbuds. I have a pair of Fostex cans that I use for monitoring voice material only in the field. Those get uncomfortable after a couple hours use. Some friends in the audio world are in love with the Sony MDR-V6, but those fit much too tightly for my comfort. Another Sony model that is well-liked is the MDR-7506. I have never heard those cans, though. There is more detail in the V6, so I’m told. At one time the MDR-V6 was available at Walmart, but whether it still is, I don’t know.
Check out Guitar Center, if you can.
Ray wrote:
“My apologies to you. I did not realize that were completely blind.”
I don’t think it occured to me to be interested in females more that a year youger or older than me. She was a stunner and interesting to talk to – this was about the time Franco died and she hated him but as far as I was concerned she was a good looking woman who was about 50% older than me and my teacher. There were tons of good looking girls my own age so why waste my time dreaming about her?
“I also disagree with the whole idea of plea bargaining. The justice system should not be permitted to bargain with criminals.”
A far wose problem with plea bargaining is that is it used to force confessions from innocent people. “Admit you are guilty of X, or we will throw the book at you for X, Y, Z, and being an alien from Mars”. This is especially a problem if you consider the legal costs of defending yourself.
Plea bargaining also leads to overcharging by prosecutors. A crime that might be a low or medium misdemeanor is charged as a felony with the expectation that a guilty plea will be arranged at the misdemeanor level.
If the correct charge was made at the outset, a defendant would be more likely to go to trial, but the result of the overcharging is to make a trial much more risky for the defendant.
Thanks Chuck. There’s a Guitar Center pretty close to me. I’ll go and check it out.