Yale Daily News blames the victim
Last Wednesday, pledges from Yale’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity paraded through campus past the area where most first-year women are housed and toward the Yale Women’s Center shouting, “No means yes, yes means anal.” Almost immediately, a video of the initiation was posted on YouTube, and in the days following the appalling incident, the blogosphere exploded with reactions and responses. Women’s groups spoke out against the misogynistic episode and numerous articles were written attacking DKE and the event, including Vaidehi Joshi’s powerful column on Tuesday.
At Yale, President Dick Levin and the dean of Yale College published a statement condemning Delta Kappa Epsilon’s actions, and students openly expressed their outrage and disgust. The Yale Women’s Center said that Delta Kappa Epsilon’s actions treated “sexual violence as a joke” and that its chants, “when taken at face value,” were a “call to commit rape.”
Almost as upsetting as the DKE incident was the Yale Daily News’ response to it. In its staff editorial published on Monday, titled “The right kind of feminism,” the News failed to address the most serious issue raised by this incident—the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses, including Yale’s. Instead, it attacked the Women’s Center, while letting the brothers of DKE off with a slap on the wrist.
The editorial admonished the Women’s Center for its “initial overreaction,” saying that it “responded with histrionics.” Chastising the Women’s Center for rushing to “condemn the foolhardy DKE bros,” it criticized them for throwing “overwrought epithets, some almost as absurd as the chants themselves.” In minimizing the severity of the chants and equating the brothers’ outrageousness with the Women’s Center’s response, the Yale Daily News completely missed the mark.
Its editorial essentially blamed the Women’s Center for the incident, and in doing so, the Yale Daily News made a dangerous mistake. It neglected an opportunity to use its significant influence to demand a change in Yale’s culture. Unsurprisingly, readers were outraged by the editorial board’s lack of moral and journalistic standards, and the newspaper published a half-hearted editor’s note acknowledging regret for “the tone, and many of the phrases” that had been published.
As the foremost journalistic organization at Yale, the Yale Daily News had a responsibility to make a strong statement against last Wednesday’s events. Hopefully Yale students will reject the Yale Daily News’ approach, and will choose to condemn the fraternity’s inexcusable actions instead of attacking the strong reactions that followed.
The News needs to do some soul-searching. It needs to apologize sincerely and consider some personnel changes. Because its words really did do damage.
As Vaidehi wrote in her column, this incident reminds us that we must remain vigilant. And that it is our responsibility—as individuals and as a university—to protect, not blame the victim.
Rightly said so.
I read the article, and it is BULLSH!T.
“Radicalism”…. radicalism my @ss, why is painting vaginas seen as radical, when so many people glorify drawings of phalluses?
YDN editorial was actually sickening. Feminism’s goals have been achieved? The other sentences said otherwise.
agree that the article is scary and bullshit, but c’mon… admit you chuckled when you read “no means yes and yes means anal”
not even an offended grin?
Not even an offended grin.
Not funny whatsoever
Not at all.
I thought it was kinda funny…guess that means i’m backwards and sexist…
get off your feminist high horse…everyone says this stuff and so what
its part of life
please right more meaningful columns in the future
“please right more meaningful columns in the future”, I mean you are telling someone to get off her high horse and you can’t spell write correctly? I think you have bigger issues to worry about.
This column is calling into question one of the more significant issues about this; the fact that the Yale newspaper did not condemn them.
is not a high horse
once the world realizes this we will all be better off
“so what its a part of life”—
so was every human rights issue before people stood up to rectify them. complacency is the worst.
columbia must be really boring. we’re reduced to airing out yale’s dirty laundry. how do any of you know the circumstances under which YDN is writing? it seems to mostly be responding to past actions of the Women’s Center… which we don’t really know anything about.
please, someone go create a controversy on this campus so we can troll each other for that.
these issues are relevant to students on any college campus, and we should be paying attention to how peer institutions deal with them. The YDN suggests that the villain in this situation was the Women’s Center for overreacting, rather than the frat for calling for rape in the streets. Even if the Women’s Center did overreact (which it doesn’t seem to have done), I’d hardly say the reaction could ever be worse than what happened in the first place. I’m glad the Spec is considering this issue, which directly affects so many people at Columbia, in a far more sane manner.
pussies
Well written, Ms. Katz. Thanks for keeping us informed. Kindness can’t be overrated here as I see a lot of violent comments. Rape is not kind, nor is making it into a joke. The world would be better if we treated others the way we’d like to be treated. Perhaps the ones being critical would like to try shoving a cucumber up their ass to see what rape is like. Not nice. Not kind. Ouch.