Yale students give sexual misconduct report a failing grade
We recently reported that Harvard’s students were completely unsatisfied with report on the school’s secret e-mail search scandal.
Earlier this year, Yale was fined $165,000 for under-reporting sexual assaults; students there are just as unhappy with the school’s recent report on the handling of those cases.
Yale’s policies on sexual misconduct have come under renewed fire from students and alumni since administrators released the University’s fourth semiannual report a month ago documenting 61 new cases of sexual assault and harassment.
The findings, which detail complaints brought to University officials between Jan. 1 and June 30, include the largest number of cases since the University issued its first report in 2011. Title IX coordinators handled 30 complaints, while the Yale Police Department dealt with 22 and the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct oversaw nine…..
Members of the Yale community have criticized administrators for taking insufficient disciplinary action against perpetrators of sexual misconduct. Fifteen current and former students founded a group called Students Against Sexual Violence at Yale following the report’s release that advocates for changes in University policies and resources relating to sexual misconduct. SASVY published an open letter with over 350 signatures to Yale administrators on Aug. 12, suggesting expulsion as the preferred punishment for sexual violence perpetrators.
“By allowing offending students to remain at Yale, the administration deprives survivors of justice and puts other students at risk of victimization,” the letter states. “Lenient disciplinary action also sends a clear message to the student body trivializing sexual violence, encouraging future violations.”
An Aug. 19 open letter from over 200 alumni also criticized aspects of the report, such as the minor consequences given in some of the sexual assault cases and the use of the ambiguous term “nonconsensual sex,” which the alumni allege “appears to draw a distinction between ‘real’ rape and its ‘lesser’ counterparts.”
Emma Goldberg ’16, a former staff reporter for the News, posted a petition on Change.org on Aug. 2 calling for stronger administrative action, such as suspension and expulsion, in response to sexual misconduct. The petition had collected 700 signatures as of Thursday night. Another Change.org petition started by Samuel Ward-Packard ’14 on Aug. 4 that has over 1,400 signatures demands that administrators punish all instances of rape and “so-called ‘nonconsensual sex’” with expulsion.