Last spring, the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education announced that it was launching an investigation of Yale University’s response to allegations of sexual harassment on its campus. A group of 16 Yale students had claimed that members of a Yale fraternity marched through campus chanting derogatory slogans targeting women. The women claimed that Yale’s response was inadequate and, as a result, a sexually hostile environment existed on campus.
In response, Yale University President Richard Levin has taken several steps to prevent sexual assault and harassment and to strengthen the university’s response when such incidents occur.
As part of this effort, Yale University has issued its first of what will be semi-annual reports on sexual misconduct on campus. The report stated that there had been 52 cases of sexual assault, harassment, or other misconduct on the Yale campus in the last six months of 2011. Of the 52 reported cases, 29 involved students at Yale College. The others were reported by graduate students, faculty, or staff. Thirty-six of the cases were brought to the 14 Title IX coordinators throughout the university who are charged with dealing with issues of gender discrimination. Twelve cases were filed with the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, seven of which were resolved after administrators met with the people involved. Of the five remaining cases, two complaints resulted in disciplinary action, one was dismissed, and two are pending. Only four sexual misconduct charges were filed with Yale University police.
In an email to the Yale community, President Levin wrote, “Even though only a small fraction of our campus population is alleged to be violating our policies, our aspiration must be to raise the bar so that no one believes that sexual misconduct is acceptable.”