Note to readers

This spring, in a cover story in New York magazine, Naomi Wolf '84 charged that Yale fails to take sexual harassment and sexual assault seriously. She recounted what she described as her own experience of harassment in 1983; detailed the harassment or assault of several other students in the 1990s and the university's response; expressed dissatisfaction with Yale's answers to her questions about its current policies; and concluded, "If a Yale undergraduate came to me today with a bad secret to tell, I . . . could not urge her to speak up confidently to those tasked with educating, supporting, and mentoring her."

This is a serious charge. However, Wolf's article, which was more personal essay than investigation, did not review Yale's policies for handling complaints of sexual misconduct. The Yale Alumni Magazine decided to examine those policies in detail -- what justice is afforded the victims, what due process is provided for the accused. (This magazine is not published by the university, but by an independent nonprofit.) There are many different policies and panels for different parts of the university; we focused on Yale College, which has the most and the youngest students. Our author, Emily Bazelon, is a Yale College and Yale Law School alumna and a senior editor at Legal Affairs magazine. She found that the administrators and faculty members who help undergraduates through experiences of sexual trespass typically care deeply and do their work well. But her investigation also revealed that Yale could improve its systems, especially in how it collects and discloses information about complaints. Yale administrators have now committed to addressing some of these concerns.
-- The editors

 

To request a PDF of the full article, "Lux, Veritas, and Sexual Trespass" from the July/August 2004 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, please e-mail your request to yam@yale.edu.