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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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At least part of the issue's that there's a mess of allegations, here. Some of them are just creepy combined with the rest of the stuff (eg, he'd buy students expensive dinners); others are the sorta thing that justify pitchforks and torches on its own.

TOSU's college locker rooms were allegedly a nest of peeping toms and exhibitionist masturbation, and a lot of people unrelated to the lawsuits giving allegations that Jordan knew about (and reacted to!) Strauss being part of that. See page 55 here. This is pretty bad behavior unless you're in a gay bathhouse, and honestly a little distasteful even there, but it was also allegedly not just Strauss, and while it's illegal it's usually the sorta thing that just gets you banned rather than arrested. There's not a good count for how many times this happened, but eighty-four students said they observed it at least once; there's basically zero chance Jordan was unaware of it.

Then, separately, Strauss was also inviting random people photo sessions, sometimes having the photo subject pose topless or in wrestling singlets, then groping them. That's wildly inappropriate given the power disparity. The investigation found 16 students who described this behavior, most of them encountering one or two incidents before avoiding the man entirely after that, and since we're mostly talking the 1980s or early 90s, there's a lot of very good reasons that they would not have told everyone contemporaneously, or that everyone would have recognized what Strauss was doing -- even for some gay people in the 80s, this would have looked like 'just' really awkward overtures rather than grooming. A larger number were targeted for photography in their underwear as part of medical studies Strauss lead, but this is not as clearly abuse rather than just creepy given the abuse. Jordan probably would have heard of at least some of this, but probably not in detail, and it's not certain.

Then you have a lot of molestation pretending to be medical exams, ranging from groping them beyond any necessary testicular exam to unnecessary rectal exams. This seems to have been the largest category, with 122 athletic students being targeted, some with multiple incidents. This was and is legally and morally sexual assault, but not all victims realized it at the time, and the extent it was present in earlier complaints rather than rumors is not well-established. By 1994, there had been both internal and external complaints, but it's not clear if Jordan would have been involved in the resolution of those complaints, as a lot of this occurred through Strauss' access to the medical care team rather than through the school's sports program, but he might have heard of some rumors.

Then you have overt sexual assault or, to borrow from Oprah, rape-rape. This ranged from performing unnecessary digital rectal exams and then grinding an erection against the victim to digital or oral sex to try to create an erection or to completion. There are clear reports of this behavior by January 1996, and Strauss used some shaming tactics that probably would have prevented earlier victims from coming forward, and the investigation found 44 students who described behaviors along these lines. Again, much of these happened under the auspices of TOSU's medical care side rather than its sports medicine one, and most of the complaints along these lines were from the end or outside of Jordan's tenure, so it's not clear that he would have been involved but might have heard rumors.

And then you have the molestation of minors, which was the highest-profile allegation. The investigation found a couple people who probably were abused in manner related to Strauss's position in high schools, but only one gave a first-hand account, and that account was not clearly abuse. There's not much obvious reason why Jordan would have been aware of these allegations.