Saturday, April 02, 2011

Yale students/alums file complaint

Citing a hostile sexual environment on campus, 16 current and former Yale University students have filed a Title IX complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. The complainants have said the university's internal processes for dealing with sexual harassment and misconduct have not been effective. Such conduct has made national news in the past few years. Most notable was last year's incident involving the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Pledges were publicly chanting on campus "No means yes, and yes means anal"--among other misogynist things. Several years ago, another fraternity's pledges stood outside the campus Women's Center with signs that read "We love Yale sluts." The complaint includes several anonymous testimonies by some of the 16 complainants. OCR will go to the Yale campus to perform its own assessment of the campus climate. Despite the serious nature of this complaint and the incidents that inspired it, it's good to see that Yale students, decades later, still have that activist spirit and Title IX awareness. The photo that is featured on this blog (by permission of 50 Eggs Films) is of a Yale rower protesting the lack of facilities for female rowers in 1976.