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Not long after midnight on January 16 of this year, twelve pledges of Yale’s Zeta Psi gathered at the entrance of the campus women’s center. They shouted “Dick! Dick! Dick! Dick!” and held up a sign that said “We Love Yale Sluts.”
Their act was part of a pledging “scavanger hunt,” and a photo of the group holding the sign was soon posted on Facebook.
Interference with the women’s center is an annual ritual during fraternity initiations at Yale. Last year an unidentified group gathered outside the center and chanted “No means yes, yes means anal!”
Under Yale’s code of student conduct, behavior 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” constitutes sexual harassment. This year women’s center members, arguing that the chants and the sign had the effect of interfering with women’s access to the center, filed charges of intimidation and harassment against the members of Zeta Psi.
The members of the fraternity were found not guilty of the charges nearly a month ago, but the committee’s decision did not become publicly known until this week, when news leaked to the Yale Daily News. Executive committee disciplinary proceedings are confidential, and no formal statement on the charges or their outcome has been made.
Story via Feministing, who have the best ongoing coverage of campus issues of any major political blog I know.
Update: In the course of filing the charges, the women’s center submitted a 26-page report on fraternity culture, university policies on frats and on sexual harassment, and the status of the women’s center on the Yale campus. That report is now available online.
The University of Georgia has been buffeted by sexual harassment scandals in the last year. One professor has resigned, another was placed on administrative leave, and the women’s golf coach left under a cloud.
In response, the university has initiated a massive restructuring of its sexual harassment investigation procedures, a restructuring that has attracted criticism and is still ongoing.
Given this context, the administration’s decision to invite Clarence Thomas to be the undergraduate commencement speaker this spring has proven predictably controversial.
Two years ago an undergrad at the University of Portland, a private Catholic college, asked a male friend to walk her back to her dorm after a party. He claims they had consensual sex when they got there. She says he raped her.
Some time later, she reported the incident to the campus police, but the university brought no charges against the alleged assailant. When she criticized them and asked why no action had been taken, she received a letter from the university’s judicial coordinator that read as follows:
Based upon my findings in my investigation, I am unable to determine if a sexual assault occurred. I have reason to believe that intercourse occurred, but both parties admit to drinking and therefore, consent—or lack of consent—is difficult to determine. Given these facts, there are possible violations for which you could be charged.
Students at the university are now pressing for new campus judiciary policies to ensure that students who come forward with charges of sexual assault are not themselves targeted by campus judiciary authorities. “The school owes it to the students to do everything they can to make sure rapes are reported,” says junior Devon Goss.
The university reported no instances of sexual assault for the year in which the incident took place, although the federal Violence Against Women Act requires that campuses disclose all such allegations, no matter what their disposition.
(Via Feministing.)
Shakesville reports on an event at The College of New Jersey in which men literally walked a mile in women’s shoes to raise awareness of rape and to emphasize male responsibility to fight sexual violence.
Shakes’ favorite part? The article that alerted her to the event was titled “OMG Shoes.”
(Good discussion in comments about the slightly iffy aspects of this action, too.)
studentactivism.net 
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