Back to school! Back to harassing your female classmates! Yay!

Take it away, Yale:

University administrators are investigating an anonymous e-mail circulating through the Yale undergraduate community that ranks certain women in the freshman class based on their physical attractiveness.

The e-mail message — which was originally sent from an anonymous e-mail account — came to the attention of administrators and freshman counselors earlier this week after first being circulated among athletic teams and fraternities. Titled “The Preseason Scouting Report,” the message lists the names, hometowns and residential colleges of 53 freshman women, who are organized into categories based on appearance. Some of the names are accompanied by vulgar commentary on the students’ Facebook photos or Facebook profiles.

The e-mail classified the women into several categories, including “sobriety,” “five beers,” “ten beers” and “blackout,” based on perceived degree of desirability. Some are also given “overall grades” of “HIT” or “miss.”

Now, this kind of behavior—unfortunately—isn’t all that surprising. What surprises and frustrates me is the response, or lack thereof.

The Yale College Dean’s Office informed residential college masters of the e-mail Tuesday morning, prompting some masters and deans to alert freshman counselors that they might need to provide support to affected freshmen.

Yale College Dean Mary Miller said the University’s investigation into the e-mail is still in its early stages and that she is unsure whether disciplinary action can be taken against its author or authors.

“I can’t prejudge whether the e-mail has violated University regulations,” Miller said.

Really? REALLY? You can’t “pre-judge” whether or not the University sanctions the public embarassment and sexual harassment of 53 of your female students? What, is this protected by freedom of speech? Give me a break.

Because the investigation of who sent the email is in it’s “early stages,” Yale administrators apparently feel they can’t do much. They can’t, apparently, make some kind of public statement about how this behavior fosters a campus environment that promotes sexual harassment and will make some students feel unsafe, and such behavior won’t be tolerated. They can’t immediately plan a forum for students to process the incident. They can’t organize some kind of campus-wide campaign or event focusing on why it’s unacceptable to harass and objectify your female classmates—or ANY of your classmates—in such a matter. They can’t take a moment to address the role that alcohol plays in the email, and have a teachable moment about drinking, healthy sexuality, and consent.

The Dean of Student Affairs has not ruled out the possibility of an undergraduate forum to discuss “the incident,”  and I hope they go ahead with it. I hope that Yale doesn’t let this slip by as a “boys will be boys!” situation, consequently letting their female students know that the school is not particularly bothered. I can’t even imagine how horrible I would feel if I was one of the girls on that list. You’re 18, you arrive at college, and you’re greeted with this? And you have to walk around and meet people? What a miserable way to start college. I hope the guys who started this are super pleased with themselves for being so hilarious. I’m sure they are.

(h/t studentactivism’s twitter)

Update: So the original article was from September 3. As of yesterday, the administration still had not figured out who wrote and distributed the email, and a lot of students on campus are pretty disappointed with their school. I would be too.

According to the Yale Daily News, the campus sexual assault line at Yale recorded 24 sexual assaults on campus during the past year. The school’s annual crime statistics, however, recorded only eight assaults.

There are a lot of potential reasons for the discrepancy, but if 24 people are comfortable reporting their assault to someone, the school should have some way of recognizing that those assaults took place. For example, some schools set up a way for people to make an anonymous report for statistical purposes (not for disciplinary action) when they report to the local crisis centers.

By comparison, Harvard reported 52 sexual assaults last year, which does not mean that Harvard had more assaults on campus. It actually shows that Harvard is doing a pretty good job of letting students know where to report, making it possible for students to report, and including reports in their annual statistics.

Statistically speaking, a college Harvard’s size should have about 240 rapes per year, while the somewhat smaller Yale should have about 175. There is no reason to think that Yale and Harvard have a rate of sexual violence among students that’s any lower or higher than the national average, so low reporting doesn’t mean those assaults aren’t happening—it just means the school isn’t making reporting accessible. The fact that Harvard had about a fifth of its sexual assault survivors feeling comfortable enough to go to the school shows that students know who to report to, and they feel they can trust them.

In a nutshell, Harvard is doing a better job of responding to sexual assaults than Yale is.

Sounds like a good rivalry to get going to me. Way more useful than football.

Clery reporting (see here and here for more on what this is) is generating some good conversations this year, as people seem to be paying attention to discrepancies and underreporting. Yesterday comes the news that Yale’s Sexual Harassment Assault Resources & Education Center (SHARE) released a report that counted triple the number of sexual assaults as Yale’s Clery report, 24 vs. 8. While Yale is being investigated by the Department of Education related to an earlier complaint about undercounting, it is quite possible that the discrepancy is also related to some of the same problems with Clery stats already mentioned: what counts as campus? what happens in an urban location when large numbers of students live in non-university housing?

The numbers coming from the SHARE center include all reports of students being sexually assaulted, no matter where they were when the event occurred, which is ultimately a much more helpful number. Perhaps that’s the number that we need to start lobbying to have reported under the Clery Act?

From Female Impersonator:

At the beginning of the semester, there was an incident here at Yale involving a “fraternity prank” and the Women’s Center where 12 members of the Zeta Psi frat stood in front of the Women’s Center chanting “dick dick dick dick” while holding a sign saying “We Love Yale Sluts.” Quite the incident.

On Monday, the Executive Committee of Yale College found the members of this group not guilty of intimdiation and harassment charges. No charges of sexual harassment were ever filed, even though complaints were issued with the Sexual Harassment Grievance Board.

A Yale student discusses the disciplinary procedure at Yale in more depth here:

This incident constitutes sexual harassment. It is defined in the Undergraduate Regulations as conduct that “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work or academic performance or creating an intimidating or hostile academic or work environment.” Blocking the entrance to a campus space, the brothers of Zeta Psi made it both difficult and dangerous for me to conduct my life as a student, and they did so by using sexually denigrating words and actions.

The Executive Committee, as it stands, fails to address a large number of sexual-harassment cases. It is unusual for a student to come forward and file a complaint. Yet it is rare when students who perpetuate sexual harassment receive a harsher punishment than a mere reprimand.

The Zeta Psi case is emblematic of the University’s flawed justice system — it continues to avoid punishment rather than risk University liability. Would Zeta Psi have been punished if ExComm knew that this “scavenger hunt” was an annual initiation rite? Would they have disciplined the men who shouted in front of the center, “No means yes, yes means anal”? Did ExComm even reprimand the brothers who donned T-shirts commemorating rape as a part of their fraternity initiation? The harassment of female students occurs on this campus time and again, yet due to ExComm’s confidentiality requirements, the community can never know if censure has occurred.

Sexual harassment isn’t SAFER’s focus, but the similarities between this case and the way sexual assault is handled on most campuses are striking. What it comes down to in the end is that administrators do not recognize women’s fundamental right to attend school without being harassed and assaulted.

(Nora wrote a more optimistic post about this earlier this year. Here’s hoping she’s right, and things will get better.)

This article in the Yale Daily News raises interesting questions about freedom of speech vs. students’ rights not to be threatened or harrassed. A website called juicycampus.com is a gossip website where anyone can post anything related to gossip on their campuses and do it anonymously.

But one Yale freshman, who has been targeted by particularly violent posts that called her a “slut” and accused her of having genital herpes, said it was inevitable that the site’s anonymity would be used for personal attacks. “It becomes a vehicle for hatred and harassment,” she said. “People should be held accountable for what they said.”

Yale’s Women’s Center has spoken out against the site, since many of the postings focus on harassing or objectifing women on campus, and students have taken action to clog the page about Yale with “posts intended to overwhelm and overshadow its use for gossip. The students have posted everything from musings on the weather to the full text of the U.S. Constitution and feminist treatises.” Love that the students are taking it into their own hands and standing up against the spread of hate speech on their virtual campus, but the article does state that the students have been warned by the website’s lawyer not to interfere with its operations or face legal action…

Where do we draw the line with free speech? And what can/should you do to curb attacks on fellow students through websites like this? What could be done to make this unacceptable behavior?

Following a letter sent by more than 150 medical students last year, a working group (with a number of students) at Yale’s Medical School has completed a report on sexual harassment and sexual assault at the Medical School. They recommended a number of policy changes, including:

The report’s recommendations call for an official Dean’s Policy Statement, an annual survey evaluation of sexual harassment, a zero-tolerance policy, increased accountability and increased access to resources like the Sexual Harassment and Assault Resource and Education (SHARE) Center, among other suggestions.

The concerns they are attempting to address will sound familiar to many students: scattered, poorly advertised survivor resources, lack of consequences for perpetrators, and student fear of not being believed.

Of course, a close read of the article doesn’t have the Dean promising to implement all the recommendations of the group. I found his somewhat apologist stance as to why sexual harassment and sexual assault are big problems at hospitals – “You have men and women working long, long hours together. They get tired.” – disturbing. Still, the working group is forming a committee to monitor the progress of the implementation, and I hope the students at Yale continue to hold the Medical School accountable.

The Women’s Center at Yale, which offers support services to sexual assault survivors among other activities, was used as the backdrop for a photograph of fraternity pledges holding a sign “We love Yale sluts.” Apparently while they were taking the photograph, they chanted a rousing chorus of “dick! dick!” and scared off at least one student on her way to the center. The Center is threatening to sue, and I hope they do. I also hope they take a page from SAFER’s manual and get a student movement started. Apparently the administration’s response to racist graffiti last year was tepid, and the Women’s Center is determined that real consequences will result this time. Sounds like Yale, like most colleges, could use a big campus-wide discussion about the kinds of behavior that make a women’s center a necessity in the first place. More links about the story at Feministing.