I attended a private university during the late 70s - early 80s

[yardwork]

I attended college with men who had attended prep schools in the D.C. area and the northeast.

The alleged behavior of Kavanaugh and his buddies sounds familiar to me. Their alleged behavior matches behavior and attitudes that I witnessed among college men of Kavanaugh's background.

Spiking the punch at parties to get women drunk? Check.

Targeting vulnerable women to get them drunk and then gang rape them? Check.

Getting drunk and becoming loud, belligerent, and abusive toward women? Check.

Speaking of women in demeaning and exploitative ways, even when sober? Check.

It's all there. It's all familiar. It's why I avoided fraternity parties, in fact I avoided men of this type while I was in college.

And by the way, the same people who behaved this way toward women were ALSO highly racist and homophobic. I expect that Kavanaugh is as well.

These are the worst. They are the core of the Republican Party: privileged wealthy white men who treat everybody else like dirt.

That's how Kavanaugh would rule on the Supreme Court.

[Squinch]

1. You make me wonder if we were classmates.

[Solly Mack]

2. All too familiar for me.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Wow, I must have led a sheltered life.

I was talking about this very thing with some friends yesterday, and we found that none of us had ever attended or even heard of parties like that. We'd all been in college in the late '60s or early '70s, and while there was certainly plenty of drinking, pot-smoking and making out, none of us encountered gang rape - nothing worse than some crude passes or ass-grabbing, which was easily dealt with - or drugged punch or any of that other really debauched behavior. We drank til we puked sometimes but that was about it. Maybe those other things happened sometimes but we never witnessed them. But maybe the difference was that we had all either attended state universities or liberal arts colleges that didn't have fraternities. And if there were many students at our schools who had attended elite private prep schools we didn't know them. I guess that's just a different culture.

[LisaM]

18. I never encountered parties like this, either. Late 70s, early 80s.

I went to the University of Michigan and there were plenty of rich kids there - maybe this went on in fraternity parties, though I even went to a couple of those and didn't see anything along these lines.

I never even heard of the date rape drug until long after I was out of college. I don't remember hearing anything about it when I was in school. And I was no stranger to parties. In fact, as I noted in a different thread, when someone had too much, it was the norm to care of the person, making sure he or she was put in a quiet room to sleep it off, or making sure the person got home okay, giving them water before they went to bed, that kind of thing. I never witnessed anyone taking advantage of a drunk woman at the parties I went to.

[yardwork]

20. Reading through the responses on this thread, it appears that fraternities are the problem.

After what I witnessed my freshman year, I avoided fraternities. I went to parties off campus or with non-fraternity social clubs. We drank a lot. We took drugs. There were punch bowls with "additions," but the difference was that everybody drank from the punch bowl, including the guys, and they weren't doing it to rape women.

I was very lucky. I put myself in vulnerable positions. Apparently, staying away from fraternities was an accidentally wise move on my part.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

23. Yes, I think the frat "culture," especially where the members were entitled rich brats

from posh prep schools, led to an attitude that they could do whatever they pleased, social mores be damned. It seemed to have really flourished during the '80s, when being a rich entitled preppie was considered a good thing instead of a putative douchebag.

[Dulcinea]

35. I went to college in the mid-80s.

But I went to a large state university, not an elite private school. I didn't like frat parties. I had plenty of friends to party with who didn't act like assholes. I never could stand that whole frat culture. I resented being treated like I was less human than they were.

[lapfog_1]

4. Ditto

all except I knew these assholes from private "academies" in the midwest. Something something "Country Day School" or blah blah Academy. They all joined frat houses at the state U. They were all given cars by daddy. They all acted like the entitled assholes they actually were.

morally bankrupt...

[GoCubsGo]

14. That describes the University of Georgia in the 1980s to a tee.

That's where I went to grad school. My undergrad alma mater was not a big fraternity/sorority school, so I didn't see any of the drunken partying there. A good chunk of the student population was, and still is commuters. When I got to UGA, it was a whole different world. It wasn't just the Greek culture. which was and is HUGE, that was like that, either. There were loads of rich kids from Atlanta who didn't get into the frats and sororities, but still partied like they were. And, they also behaved like drunken, entitled assholes. UGA, at the time, had the reputation for being THE "party school." That shit went down not only in frat houses, but in off campus housing, and downtown in the many bars and night clubs. What's been described regarding Kavanaugh is far from an anomaly. It was the norm back then.

[yardwork]

21. The entire culture in the 1980s was sick. Reagan got elected by Young Republicans.

Greed was good and everybody was yapping about Ayn Rand. I hated the 80s.

[MountCleaners]

26. Tritto...

I went to Northwestern in the late 80's. I lived in a women's dorm. We were told which frats to avoid because of how they treated women. It was clear what that implied: rape.

One time we were so bored we went into one of the sporty frats. We were punk and goth kids who wouldn't be caught dead in them, but one of our more conservative friends was invited to a party there and she made us go. I saw a bunch of frat boys pick up a TINY girl and try to carry her up the stairs. She was screaming. A bunch of us intervened and they let her go, but they seemed to think it was funny. They were all drunk as fuck and awful.

[LuckyCharms]

5. Holy cow, just saw this.

We must have been having the same train of thought at the same time. I just posted something similar.

I'm watching MSNBC, and the discussion made me think of college days.

[yardwork]

22. Where's your thread or post? I'd love to read it.

[LuckyCharms]

36. Here you go:

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100211184036

[Wellstone ruled]

6. It has been

fifty six years since College. Yes,we had one Frat on Campus that fit everything that has surfaced around Kavanah and Gang. Many moved on into Wisconsin Politics .

Familiar comment was,Daddy has my back.

[R B Garr]

7. Thanks for this, yardwork. This described behavior does not sound unfamiliar.

There are young people, a young man in a recent case, who was killed by the alcohol poisoning/consumption and frat pranks, so everything this new victim described has been seen and heard of before, especially about scoring with women.

Wasn't Facebook founded by frat boys who started an internet chatroom where they graded women by looks and other measures of sexual scoreability,etc??

I didn't go to school in the East, but these parties are very well known. This Kavanaugh creep is such a liar.

[yardwork]

24. Yes, Facebook. The name says it all.

At my school they called it the "pig book" and male students scanned it for targets.

And when women walked past the fraternity benches, the men called out numbers from 1-10 to rate us based on our appearance. That's what we were to them - objects to be rated.

And then we were all supposed to graduate and be treated equally in our professions? No wonder there's a glass ceiling and gender-based pay disparities.

No wonder we can't get a woman elected president.

[janterry]

30. I remember the pig book!

I transferred out of that college .

There were frats and talk about 'trains'. The next day we were well aware of who got 'trained.'

Terrible.

Just before I went to college, I remember Animal House was popular. College was not all that far from that experience

[Guilded Lilly]

8. This male behavior existed at small liberal arts college campuses..

in the late mid to late seventies as well. Where there were fraternities, there were houses. Where there were frat houses there was drinking, there were parties. There were habitual and horrific abuses and disrespect of women at those colleges.

It existed.

Make no mistake, it was a part and parcel of many campuses, elitist, church-backed, private or broadly publicly attended.

If you never heard of or witnessed such activity, you were lucky.

It was not that rare.

[C_U_L8R]

9. I don't know Kavanaugh but I know Kavanaugh

Same here, went to school with the same yuppie jerks... reveling in their piggishness and entitlement... complete with the stupid jargon, keggers and pussygrabbing. Such assholes.

[yardwork]

25. The jargon, yes! Entitled twits.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. That wasn't a "private university" exclusive

EVERY big university (notably state schools) had the same thing going on (I attended one during the late '70s - early '80s).

The drinking game "Pass Out" was popular.

You STILL have magazines publishing annual "Top Party Schools", something popularized by Princeton and Playboy.

[mulsh]

11. as Micheal Moore said to Chris Hayes last night "We all know these guys" Judging from the handful

of jerks at my all boys Catholic high school in the '70's I say you're spot on.

[H2O Man]

12. Recommended.

[Johnny2X2X]

13. Frats today

Last edited Wed Sep 26, 2018, 08:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Just about a couple times a year a college fraternity gets banned for drugging women at parties.

I've got an unpleasant truth for people, in the 80s it was much much likely not to be reported and the women who were drugged and raped were most likely shamed as whores afterwards and blamed themselves.

[yardwork]

38. Yes, the women who were targeted and victimized were blamed.

I now know a lot more about predatory behavior. I realize now that the women who were victimized at these parties were identified, stalked, and attacked as prey by young men for whom this was a game.

And if they dared to complain, they were blamed. "Why would you wear that?"

[Initech]

15. And the frat boy douchebags are the ones currently running the country.

Oh you know - "boys will be boys".

[yardwork]

16. Thank you for all your responses.

This IS the core of the Republican Party.

[zentrum]

17. Check.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

19. I guess I was lucky to have gone to a school where this sort of partying wasn't common,

although there was plenty of garden-variety beer drinking and pot smoking. I would have been a prime target for one of those frat party gang rapes because I was kind of nerdy and shy, and I wanted to be popular and accepted but didn't know how to go about it. I'd have been the girl who was flattered and pleased to have been invited to a party where the cool kids were, and I'd have drunk the spiked punch because I'd have been too clueless to see what was going on until it was too late. I'd have been fresh meat. And I probably never would have reported it to anyone, either.

[shanny]

33. I think the decade between the 60s and the late 70s/early 80s

made a big difference. Vietnam, Watergate, the assassinations? Leading to loss of respect in institutions, mores? I don't know...but there was a sea change.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

34. Could be.

We thought we were pretty hard-core party animals in the late '60s, but when somebody got too drunk to stand we took them home and put them to bed instead of leaving them alone and vulnerable. I distinctly remember helping carry a very drunk female friend back to her dorm room. Smoking pot also seemed to operate against orgiastic behavior. Must have been the Reagan years that caused kids to go nuts.

[Eliot Rosewater]

27. GOP has supported rape from day one. Women who disobey will be raped or killed

in back alleys.

[torius]

28. I picked a women's college in the early '80s

because what I knew of frat-boy culture terrified me.

[bettyellen]

29. Me too. Rutgers and NYU at age 14-16. By the time I was in college I could afford booze and

Avoided them like the plague.

But when I did, I...
Never drank from an open container.
Never went downstairs or upstairs.
Kept an eye on my friend and vice versa.
Discreetly dumped beer in the floor becasue dudes were trying to get me to drink too fast.
Declined too many invitations to “lie down somewhere”.
Got out before we were too drunk, went someplace else less rapey to dance it out of my system.

[Moostache]

31. The coverage and discussions about this have impacted me personally...

I know first hand about prep-school party culture. I lived in it during the mid- to late-80's, though not on the East Coast. Money, privilege, luxury and a lack of accountability or consequences combined with access to drugs and raging teenage hormones all combine to make for a seriously toxic mix. I know that some people are reading the barest of details from this case and are shocked, all I can say it you really are just scratching the surface of what was (and certainly still IS) happening.

I believe every single word of Kavanaugh's accusers. Every. Single. Word.

I don't believe ANY of Kavanaugh's denials. They are clearly put together to appeal to a subset of people who WANT to believe him and will latch on to ANYTHING to put out of their mind the possibility that he really is as scummy as these charges make him out to be....well, HE IS! GUARANTEED.

My kids have been sheltered and held away from this culture intentionally. I never felt the need to describe chapter and verse all of the hedonistic, misogynistic and downright amoral things I was witness to...lately, judging by the level of shock in general, I am thinking it may be necessary and cathartic at the same time.

But know this much...these brave women coming forward to tell their stories are ALL familiar to anyone who experienced this particular culture at any level. It is all true and then there is much, much more.

[customerserviceguy]

32. I went to a public university in the mid to late 1970's

and we had that sort of thing going on, too. I pledged a frat house when I got there, and promptly dropped out when I figured that I was there to get an education, and not a permanent hangover.

It was part of the culture back then, and that's why Kavanaugh gets any sympathy at all.

[AngryOldDem]

39. I graduated from a private university in 1983

This is my first post on DU in a very long time. I’m back because I’m getting sick of the worsening state of this country, as well of those who are having no issue with destroying it for their own twisted agendas.

That said, whenever I see Brett Kavanaugh I am reminded of those boys — not men — who swaggered around campus, thinking the world owed them all deference and honor because of their very existence — the boys who would strut around campus and into classes late, sit in the back and openly mock the professor, brazenly cheat on tests, and provide cover for one another if need be. Of course, they had their posse and made the rest of us who weren’t part of the beautiful people feel like shit. They ruled the roost.

I had a roommate my sophomore year. One night I had a basketball game on TV, and a member of the campus jockocracy appeared. Her reaction was immediate, unexpected, and frightening. All she would say was she was at a party with this guy, and she never wanted to see him or hear his name ever again. I didn’t feel right pressing her for details, and I honored her request.
After all these years, I still think about her and wonder how she’s doing, moreso after Dr. Ford bravely came forth with her story. There is no question that something bad happened at that party, all because of some asshole who thought he had the God-given right to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And he’s out there somewhere too like Kavanaugh, a success at whatever he’s doing, and totally oblivious to the pain he caused a 19-year-old all these years ago. If he even remembers.

It’s time these Cocks of the Walk be called on their criminal, entitled, misogynist behavior. We owe them nothing. They deserve nothing. They have earned nothing. Kavanaugh will most likely be confirmed, but we can all put him and the rest of his twisted ilk on notice that we are on to them, we know what they were/are like, we will never forget, and that we will always stand with those they abused in all their “youthful indescretions.”

[SWBTATTReg]

40. I remember a party that a good friend of mine had, at her house (she was ...

single at the time, recently separated from ex-husband, w/ 4 good kids.)

I enjoyed going to her parties for she had friends that would come in from the caves along the MO/AR border and who grew pot inside the caves and so forth. Very interesting and very revealing to a kid who was just starting out in life (me, in college). I really enjoyed her gatherings and met the most interesting people. A experience in life I'll never regret.

One time, someone was caught spiking the punch bowl...and it wasn't just alcohol, it was something else (we never could figure out what it was, probably a preliminary date rape drug or something of the kind) and
they were caught. We ran him out of the party, especially after a couple of people started 'acting' up and tempers were very hot. I'm surprised that they didn't lynch (I hate this word) the guy after he was caught spiking the punch bowl. Probably thought it would be a good ol' boys trick. Pathetic.

This is why I never trust an open punch bowl. Too easy of a target. And there are scumbags who'll take advantage of it. True scumbags who'll dump crap into something and not realize (or they may, pathetically taking advantage of someone) the impact that the unknown drugs could have on people.