Coalition Presses Agenda at Radcliffe Tea

A handful of members of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV) approached administrators and Faculty at the Ann Radcliffe Trust’s fifth annual Winter Tea yesterday to voice their concerns about Harvard’s sexual assault policy.

The group distributed copies of recent articles that appeared in the Independent and last week’s installments of the comic strip “Sock Full or Quarters,” which runs in The Crimson, to administrators to show what they described as Harvard students’ lack of understanding of the current sexual assault policy.

CASV member Sarah B. Levit-Shore ’04 focused on the Independent column, “Scared to Celibacy: Why Harvard’s sex life is so quiet,” by William J. Wright ’03 and the publication’s choice of photos and captions. She said captions such as “Oops, I did it again,” trivialized the issue of rape and demonstrated the need for better sexual assault education.

“We wanted to use this article, the photos and the captions as a stepping stone to show Harvard that its [sexual assault] education is really inadequate,” Levit-Shore said. “It is doing a disservice to all the students on this campus.”

But Wright said he was making no attempt to downplay the severity or consequences of rape and noted that his piece should only be read in concert with an opposing piece on the same page.

“In the article I was saying rape was terrible,” Wright said. “In absence of [Harvard students] understanding that rape is one of the worst crimes a man can commit,Harvard is trying to scare them so that the ends are the same.”

The Trust-sponsored Winter Tea, open to all undergraduates and Faculty, is an effort to promote the organization and bring administrators, faculty and students together. Close to 30 people circulated University Hall’s Faculty Room over the course of the hour and a half event for tea and pastries.

CASV talked with several administrators at the Tea, including Assistant Dean of the College Karen E. Avery ’87, who deals with issues of co-education, sexual assault and harassment, and Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68.

Lewis said students had already approached Acting Assistant Dean Julia G. Fox, who is taking on Avery’s duties while she is on maternity leave, about having a discussion about policies relating to sexual assault during Take Back the Night week scheduled for early April.

The week is designed to promote an awareness of sexual violence.

“That would be a good time for the discussion, which could then involve Dean Avery and many other members of the Sexual Assault Working Group, and also as great a variety of concerned students as possible,” he said.

Avery said students should be wary of ambushing deans at social events but said she appreciated CASV members’ attendance.

The deans asked CASV to submit a proposal on the specific changes to Harvard policies that they want to see.

Levit-Shore said CASV advocates mandatory education of first-years on sexual assault, a 24-hour trained sexual assault counselor and an impartial advocate to assist students through the administrative process of bringing forth a complaint.

—Staff writer Nalina Sombuntham can be reached at sombunth@fas.harvard.edu.