"Lawyers for Reed College have fired back at a former student who has accused the school of wrongly kicking him out and falsely labeling him a sex offender."

"The school alleges that even before 'John Doe'... filed his lawsuit last month, he admitted that he used cocaine, violated Reed's honor principle, provided alcohol, Xanax and ecstasy to other students (to be the 'cool friend who facilitates a fun night'), made vile statements to his ex-girlfriend accuser and retained a sexually explicit video of her on his cellphone until Reed ordered him to delete it...."

Doe accuses [another student, "Jane Roe"] of lying to school officials about their consensual relationship and he alleges that The Reed Institute - better known as Reed College - railroaded him through a disciplinary process intended only to expel him.

He maintains that he and Roe dated and later engaged in group sex with other young women, sometimes under the influence of ecstasy, a psychoactive drug better known as "Molly." But, he alleges, things blew up when he broke up with Roe and she later punched him in the face and went to school officials, telling them she didn't consent to one of their evenings of group sex.

Reed takes the position that "ingesting impairing substances renders consent void."

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss said: "So did John Doe ingest impairing substances? If so, is the school treating Jane Roe as a rapist too?"

"We want our young ladies to be dressed beautifully; we want them to be dressed with class and dignity."

"But we are going to draw the line relative to attire that would be deemed overexposing oneself," said Freeman Burr, the superintendent of a Connecticut school that managed to get a NYT article written about its prom-dress policy, apparently because some mothers are aggrieved that their daughters' dresses have been nixed.

Students and parents signed permission slips that outlined rules and regulations for the prom. Students say the rules were vague, calling for �appropriate formal dress� and warning that students dressed �inappropriately� would be sent home without a refund.

The article has a picture of a student who was told her backless dress wasn't appropriate (unless she wore it with a camisole). Her mother, Tonny Montalvo, is making an issue out of it: �They say it�s in the student handbook...There�s no specifics anywhere.�

If "appropriate" doesn't cut it, I guess "class" and "dignity" won't help either.

IN THE COMMENTS:  Ignorance is Bliss says:

Would it have been too much trouble to include a picture of the student who was told her backless dress wasn't appropriate while she is actually wearing the dress in question? Maybe so we could see for ourselves if it was appropriate? And would it have been too much trouble to get a copy of the text of the permission slip, and the text of the student handbook?

I know. And the NYT also declines to make the comments function available for this one. This has a real feeling of bias to it � giving ear to these mothers and depriving readers of what we need to judge the facts and a forum to point out these shortcomings.

Finally, some cake other than same-sex wedding cake is in the news...

... in this NYT interview with Senator Tom Cotton:

Do you have any guilty pleasures? I run a lot every morning.

That sounds neither guilty nor pleasurable. But I do it so I can indulge in the guilty pleasure of eating birthday cake.

Every day? Most days, with ice cream. Early on, when my wife and I were dating, we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said: �Really? I do, too.�

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss asks: "Is a cake a birthday cake if it wasn't bought for someone's birthday?"

I think the best answer to that is that Tom Cotton and his wife like to eat a kind of cake that they think of as "birthday cake." Either they like the idea of calling it "birthday cake" or they go stores where it is labeled birthday cake or has "Happy Birthday" written in the icing. What kind of people are they that they enjoy that kind of cake � light, spongy cake with thick, sugary white icing� or they get a kick out of a birthday feeling when it's not anyone's birthday?

I think of 2 things:

1. The Beatles "You say it's your birthday/It's my birthday too." When that song came out, it was generally understood � as I remember it � to refer to something other than one's actual birthday. Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon said later that they just set out to write a birthday song. Paul said it wasn't anyone's birthday, but birthday songs get played. And John said "It was a piece of garbage." If I remember correctly, we hippies of the time thought The Beatles were offering the theory that every day is your birthday or every day that you achieve heightened awareness of your existence is a birthday.

2. The idea of an "un-birthday" in the Humpty Dumpty chapter of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," which is combined with Carroll's Mad Hatter's Tea Party (from "Alice In Wonderland") in the Disney movie "Alice in Wonderland." In the movie, Alice arrives at the party as the Hatter and others are singing "A Very Merry Unbirthday to You." In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains that "there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents... And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!" Alice doesn't understand his use of the word "glory," which leads Humpty Dumpty to utter his most famous line (beloved of lawyers): "When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean � neither more nor less." (In this view, "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument.") I'm thinking that when Tom Cotton eats cake, it's birthday cake if he chooses to think of it as birthday cake.