Naomi Wolf: Yale Has Been Systematically Covering Up Crimes For Decades

According to feminist author Naomi Wolf, even though 16 students filed a federal complaint against Yale University last week for its "sexually hostile environment," sexual harassment at Yale is nothing new.

"For at least two decades, Yale has been systematically covering up much more serious crimes than the ones the students have even identified," said the author, who graduated from Yale in 1984, on CBS's Early Show this week.

Wolf told Erica Hill that Yale uses "the sexual harassment grievance procedure in a very cynical way," in order to "stonewall victims and protect the university."

She also said the grievance procedure in itself is "a farce." "It exists to protect the interests of the university," she said.

The most recent complaint comes on the heels of two sexually charged incidents at the university to which the suit's signatories claim the university did not respond sufficiently. In October of last year, portions of campus were outraged when fraternity members chanted on campus "No means yes! Yes means anal!" In 2008, a different group of fraternity members stood outside the university's women's center with a sign that read "We love Yale sluts."

Alexandra Brodsky, one of the signatories on the complaint, told the Yale Herald that the complaint "certainly isn't a new idea." "This is something that has been discussed over the years," she said. "This comes from the feeling that people who care about these issues on this campus have tried all the other avenues. I don't think that Yale can feign surprise."

Watch the full interview with Wolf below.

Comments

[when will it end]

07:27 PM on 04/13/2011

When I was in college, some girls would "dress up" to impress the professor. They would admit it. Many play the game. And when it backfires, ...................

[when will it end]

07:25 PM on 04/13/2011

Surprised??? What does one expect. We live in an immoral country.

[WYHKTai-Tai]

06:22 AM on 04/08/2011

m I missing something here? If I were raped, on or off of a college campus, I would go to the police, not the school. It wouldn't even occur to me to go to the school. Did these women go to the police and were referred back to the school or something? How could it end up being unreported or covered up?

BTW: I went to Yale Drama School, (Grad school) from 89 to 92 and never even knew this type of thing was so rampant or that the university had such a reputation for it. Well, I guess now I have even more reason to be glad I spent about 24/7 in the studio or the theatre for 3 years!

[European1919]

06:03 AM on 04/08/2011

Are there any masculinist authors? Just wondering ...

[WYHKTai-Tai]

06:12 AM on 04/08/2011

Hemmingway. Totally Masculinist!!

[goodmandown]

02:10 PM on 04/07/2011

The Wolf-Bloom case is interesting. Profs like Bloom, esp. at the Ivies and other $$$ lib arts colleges are often viewed as gods by students. Read any Anne Roiphe, Mary McCarthy, Erica Jong (or Phillip Roth for that matter) to hear about some, mostly female, students' eagerness to seduce or be seduced, emotionally if not sexually, by faculty celebrati.

In 'Silent Treatment', Wolf, a senior at the time, describes the prospect of sharing a table and a cocktail with Bloom in hopes he might review her poetry like a breathless high schooler scoring a date with the varsity QB. After the incident Wolf herself says there was never any quid pro quo offer from Bloom for grades or sex, just that she felt betrayed and suddenly insecure about her entire elite college experience up to that point.

At UCLA, one of my English profs, a woman, asked me to her apartment presumably to talk about coursework or whatever. I don't know specifically because I didn't go. I was not at college to find out what type of couch or what artwork hung on the walls of my profs' homes.

Today's students need to know what role their profs play in their education, and this starts at the elite "prep" level where access and first-name privileges w/profs make things a little too cozy. "Notice me!" is cute for K-6'ers (for about a minute) but not an acceptable frame of mind for young adults going to school.

[Puck342]

11:58 AM on 04/07/2011

Well, Look At Your Precious Free Market Now. Yale is a corporation whose "customers", i.e. students, have zero affect at any given moment on the financial solubility of the university. Between its massive endowment and its legions of well-bred, well-financed, but evidently not well-behaved Legacies. When you have a corporation whose victims have no financial recourse against it, then the "Free" market has no recourse, because, in the terms of the free market, once you are financially isolated and intractable, you are an functional deity, not bound by the rules of man and able to withstand any negative PR.

And that's the main issue here; no matter HOW bad this makes Yale look for a bit, it will be compartmentalized and eventually forgotten, especially once Yale announces some investment in some sort of Women's X,Y, or Z in the next 6-24 months. Then in a year or two you just get a friendly journalistic entity to do a write-up about the "Culture Change with New Class of Students" and it's back to business as usual. I hope some of the individuals get justice, and that it has a temporary chilling effect on the ridiculous and totally unacceptable behavior that goes on there, but there is absolutely, positively, no reason to believe, even for a second, that there will be any effect on the culture of Yale in the long run

[Michael Ludin]

09:56 AM on 04/07/2011

When Dubya attended, you can be sure there were cover ups. Where is his COKE dealer???

[yetiwatcher]

03:50 AM on 04/07/2011

of course they only seek to protect the university, it's their brand,
they can't have parents of prospective students getting the impression that campus isn't safe, so the complaints must never see the light of day,
it is the same everywhere:
http://www.dailycal.org/article/112088/handling_of_harassment_hearing_draws_complaints

institutions of higher education in the US have gone down the same drain as much of the rest of the seats of governmental and economic power: integrity is gone, image control is everything, the ends are perceived to justify the means.
somehow it never occurs to them that when the misdeeds are uncovered the blow-back will be greater, or maybe they believed they could spin their way out of every situation

[infodoc1]

11:17 AM on 04/06/2011

Yale - Where America's best and brightest practice degrading women before working to screw us all in the financial sector

[when will it end]

07:24 PM on 04/13/2011

Best & Brightest??? What %%%% of applications get into the Ivies based on academics? about 40%. Sports, quotas, legacies, children of government officials & corporate executives account for about 60%.

[JayMonaco]

10:30 AM on 04/06/2011

I don't know why, but Yale has always struck me as an evil place.

[StrawHat]

06:18 AM on 04/06/2011

You've got to love the ardent defenders of Yale. If only they were so ardent in making sure that Yale is a safe place for all students -- perhaps then Yale would be deserving of their breathless polemics on its behalf.

[BishopKingPawn]

02:34 AM on 04/07/2011

People commenting on HP generally aren't security guards.

[goldandmudd]

10:59 PM on 04/05/2011

Yale (as a corporation) is allegedly complicit in rape and other sexual crimes for decades but none of this has translated into actual convictions? A vast CONSPIRACY to protect the evil men has been operating for decades and that's why no evidence has been brought to bear upon these allegations? It's all a big conspiracy? Really, Naomi? Why didn't you say anything about Bloom for twenty years? Why didn't you go to the police immediately after it happened? Why should we believe this is anything other than hearsay? What's with the pathetic conspiracy theories?

[JayMonaco]

10:31 AM on 04/06/2011

You're so right. Rich, ivy league males never get to rape anyone without getting in trouble.

[Cornelius Pigg]

08:49 PM on 04/05/2011

universities are pretty much the same as corporations, and everyone knows how hard it is to go after them when they do wrong.

[compliancepmp]

08:11 PM on 04/05/2011

So, if I understand this correctly - - the environment is hostile, the sexual harassment grievance procedure is a joke, victims are stonewalled and that whole brew serves well to protect the university.

Still waiting for the shocking part of the story.

[Crystal Macmillan]

08:21 PM on 04/05/2011

Shocking part is that no one ever does anything about it. We should get comfy with these ideas, because as the decades continue the issues get worse. Especially in the case of sexual harassment and assault, because it sends a message that they can get away with whatever they want at the expense of someone else. Rape rates have been hidden on campuses all over the country, and certain studies show they have been getting worse. Who's going to protect our woman when they get kicked out of school for going to the police? So you have 20k in debt and you have to forgo a degree or get further harassment from your rapist.

[StrawHat]

09:15 PM on 04/05/2011

Where is Louise Sawyer when you need her?

[StrawHat]

09:13 PM on 04/05/2011

Rape and sexual assault victims range in age from infancy to men and women in their 90's. It's not about "desire" or sexuality, per se. It's about power, control. domination and hate.

But then, you already knew that, didn't you?