To read Yale University’s latest report on its sexual assault investigations, one might think the school is a hotbed of sexual violence against female undergraduates. One expects media headlines — if they cover the report — to hype the numbers of reported assaults as if the school has a serious problem.
Indeed, the report from Yale’s Deputy Provost for Health Affairs & Academic Integrity, Stephanie Spangler, shows that 50 undergraduate females reported being sexually assaulted in the first six months of 2018. With a female undergraduate population of around 2,700, that means that roughly 1.85% have been sexually assaulted — a violent crime rate twice as high as Detroit, America’s most dangerous city, as pointed out by author and professor K.C. Johnson.
Johnson has read the report and can conclude that far from having a campus more dangerous than anywhere else in the country, Yale is actually suffering from a moral panic that increases reports of non-offenses.
“As always with the Spangler Report, the details don’t match the apocalyptic toplines,” Johnson wrote. “The report lists 50 undergraduates who were sexually assaulted between January 1 and June 30 of this year. Of these, 18 cases have no details at all, because the allegation came ‘from a third party, such as an administrator, a friend of those involved, or a witness,’ and the accuser did not pursue the matter.”
Only five of the 50 cases went before Yale’s pseudo-court, which doesn’t maintain transcripts of the proceedings. One of the accused student’s in these cases withdrew from the university to avoid the kangaroo court. Another accused student was found responsible and suspended for one semester — indicating the alleged conduct was not that serious. Two other students were found not responsible, and the remaining case didn’t go before Yale’s hearing panel “because it did not meet the requirements necessary to accept jurisdiction.”
Johnson notes that those last three cases are included in Spangler’s report as sexual assaults, even though just one undergraduate was found responsible for sexual assault in the first six months of the year, under a biased system that has proven eager to expel students for flimsy accusations.
This lack of danger despite a school that uses an overbroad definition of sexual assault in an era where accusations are strongly encouraged.
Johnson also points out that 25% of the undergraduate reports “didn’t or couldn’t identify whether their attacker was a Yale student.”
“The report provides no additional detail on this matter, but presumably, some of these cases fall under a rubric that Spangler eliminated in 2016: complaints from Yale students saying that another Yale student was attacked (without saying who the student is) by an unidentified party,” Johnson wrote. “These reports, in short, testify more to an atmosphere of moral panic than anything else, yet are treated as credible allegations in the Spangler summary.” (Emphasis original.)