Yale Releases Semiannual Report on Sexual Misconduct, With Perplexing Details

Yale University’s latest Report of Complaints of Sexual Misconduct relays details about 70 complaints of sexual misconduct filed in the latter half of 2013, as well as statistical summaries of the complaints and Yale’s definitions of relevant terms. Brooklyn College Professor KC Johnson took a critical look at the report and wrote for Minding the Campus yesterday to note some particularly vague complaints that illustrate just how little it takes to remove someone from campus.

Johnson comments on the case of a male faculty member who remains suspended while the school investigates an anonymous complaint of “inappropriate comments [and] other inappropriate conduct to several staff members”:

[A] Yale faculty member was suspended solely—at least according to the [report]—on the basis of an anonymous complaint. Even if the professor is ultimately exonerated, this move exemplifies the remarkable, unchecked power given to virtually anyone on the Yale campus to commence a witch hunt against a male student or even faculty member who has crossed the accuser.

Still, that case seems downright reasonable next to the complaint that Johnson says “best reveals the Kafka-esque environment that now prevails at Yale”:

An anonymous [graduate] student reported that a [graduate] student, who was not identified, made inappropriate remarks of a sexual nature. The case is pending.

It is not clear how Yale plans on investigating a case where both the accuser and the accused are unnamed.

Read the rest of KC’s article at Minding the Campus and find Yale’s report on its website.

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