"You can just warn a boy and chastise him. That doesn't help. Expulsion is a very difficult thing for a university to accept as a policy."
Former Pres. Jimmy Carter
America's 39th President Jimmy Carter, 90, was critical of Yale University's handling of sexual assaults during a visit to the campus this week.
Carter was promoting his latest book, A Call To Action. In it, he wrote that mistreatment of females is pervasive, and that inequality manifests itself overseas through "religion, violence, and power."
"But we have a horrible situation in this country as well," Carter said at Yale. "The reason it has persisted and still is growing is because we don't want to admit that it goes on. Partially, [it's] because we are responsible."
The former president said some of that responsibility belongs to American colleges. He cited a recent Rolling Stone article about a reported gang rape at the University of Virginia, and during a question-and-answer portion of the lecture, he called out Yale University for its past handling of sexual assaults on campus.
"I read one article up here on the web -- on the way up here on the plane, as a matter of fact -- from Huffington Post that pointed out that Yale had six boys that had been found guilty or had admitted that they had committed sexual assault," Carter said. "They had not been expelled. You can just warn a boy and chastise him. That doesn't help. Expulsion is a very difficult thing for a university to accept as a policy."
The Huffington Post article was published in mid-2013. Since then, Yale President Peter Salovey, who shared the stage at Yale with Carter, said the university's policies and procedures have since changed to "see better outcomes."
In an email, Yale Spokesperson Karen Peart said that Carter referred to a Huffington Post article "that did not correctly state the facts." From the email:
The cases referenced in the article involved violations of Yale's stringent standards of consent, which require positive, voluntary, and unambiguous agreement throughout the sexual encounter. At that time, to address the concerns raised by the article, Yale clarified its definition of consent as well as its approach to violations to its sexual consent policy .... Yale takes all violations of its sexual misconduct policy extremely seriously, even if they do not meet a criminal standard. Yale addresses violations with sanctions up to and including expulsion, as are indicated in our semi-annual reports and will continue to do so as warranted.
The school's latest report on campus sexual misconduct details one case of non-consensual sexual intercourse that occurred this year.
The document stated that the university found "sufficient evidence" to support the allegations, which were raised by a female undergraduate. The male perpetrator was suspended, and will be eligible to receive his degree in May.
