Editor,

What struck me most about [the October 15 issue ofTSL] was how much interest and involvement there seems to be in Judicial Council issues on campus, as expressed through no less than three letters to the editor. While I firmly believe that the issues raised in each of these three letters merit detailed responses, I feel most provoked by and qualified to respond to Mr. Kevin Herms’ letter concerning what he claims to be J-Board’s sexist policies. It makes irresponsible allegations about the nature of Dean Clark’s and Dean Taylor’s involvement in J-Board training and offers a slanted and small-minded take on the meaning and relevance of Angela Harris’s and Lois Pineau’s essays (from the book Date Rape: Feminism, Philosophy and the Law, ed. Leslie Francis), handed out during training.

Herms’ statements "sound" melodramatic for good reason; they are both this and blatantly false. When I contacted Dean Toni Clark and Dean Matt Taylor (the two who played the largest administrative roles in the planning of the sexual misconduct training session), they averred that never had they intended for the Harris essay to take the place at any time, or in any situation, of the Pomona College Student Code. It was distributed to evoke deeper thought on the extremely complex, serious, and touchy issue of sexual misconduct, and to inspire during training more intelligent discourse on the too-often overlooked and too-easily dismissed feminist viewpoint of sex crimes. Though I did not attend this year’s Judicial Council training, knowing what I do about the training process in general and the quality of Dean Clark and Taylor’s characters, it seems to me ludicrous that a veteran J-Board member would make such outlandish claims about administrators who know as well as he does that it is impossible to alter the Student Code once it has been printed for the year, and that the Student Affairs Committee is the only fair and possible way to change current policy for the future.

That a document or opinion fails to mimic the language of the Pomona College Student Code verbatim does not make it irrelevant to J-Board training. On the contrary, extra-Code materials are crucial in helping council members to understand the societal context in which their judgments and that which they judge are taking place. Herms’ assessment of the relevance of extra-Code sources betrays a fanciful ignorance of J-Board processes that I’m convinced was merely adopted to rhetorically serve his argument. The Student Code provides classifications of violations and appropriate sanctions, but the idea that a judicial body could sit in judgment of a case with only the Code to guide them — without, that is, the benefit of experience, knowledge, and wisdom — is absurd. Whatever the Code is, it’s not a source of wisdom; wisdom has to come from those who interpret it. Introducing arguments like those of Harris and Pineau — arguments whose sagacity and fairmindedness are greatly downplayed by Herms — into the dialog of J-Board training is part of an effort to bring an enlightened and fair understanding of sexual misconduct to participants. Herms acknowledges that the articles struck him as "fascinating"; he seems simply to be apprehensive about discovering such "non-Code" material during a J-Board training session. Let him rest easy; it is never wrong to broaden one’s mind, especially if it is one’s intention to judge.

Although I generally agree with Mr. Herms that the policies of Pomona College "should … be interpreted through a gender-neutral standard," I believe council members must be far more sensitive to what is "gender-neutral" for a sexual misconduct case. The fact is that in the past 14 years of Pomona’s judicial history, there has never, to my knowledge, been a sexual misconduct case where a male student has brought up charges against a female student; every instance has involved a female complainant. I imagine that this is the case on many college campuses, and indeed, in many courts of law. Harris quotes the Ellison v. Brady civil court case that chose to adopt the "reasonable woman" standard over the "reasonable person" (or gender-neutral) standard after the court decided that, "a sex-blind reasonable person standard tends to be male-biased and tends to systematically ignore the experiences of women" (60). Pineau argues convincingly that "the patriarchal point of view is unfair to women. The feminist point of view, however, is not unfair to men. Thus it will not be unfair to take a feminist point of view" (85). While I find it difficult to champion a 100% female-biased standard in judicial issues, I nevertheless firmly believe that council members should be aware of this discrepancy between the sexes and be extremely cautious not to interpret testimony in the traditional manner. And this is exactly the sort of discussion that J-Board training should involve.

Is it "sexist," as Herms alleges, to ask that men "think like women"? Maybe it’s just common sense. The point is that good sex can only take place when both the man and the woman make an effort to understand the other’s perspective. This is probably accurate on several levels, but for the current purposes it’s most relevant to understanding consent. Harris writes, "in order for [a] defendant’s ‘mistake’ about the woman’s consent to be a valid excuse, the mistake must be reasonable, not just sincere" (57). According to Herms, it’s okay to make no attempt at putting yourself in your potential partner’s shoes; however the result of this attitude can easily be a sincere, unreasonable "mistake". For a man to get meaningful consent, he must be aware of his potential partner’s mindset and what affects it — and these are not the same things that will affect his mindset. But that’s sexist! shouts Herms. Call it what you like; the fact is that a man rarely feels physically intimidated by his date. An unwillingness by the woman to protest because of physical fear is, however, a frequent aspect of date rape cases. A man must take into account the oppressive effect that his advantage in strength can have on a woman. I do not deny that pre-coital conversation can rob a moment of its romantic spontaneity, but the tension that one person believes to be romantic is too often felt by the other to be an impediment to honest conversation, a momentum that is awkward to address, much less overcome. There is nothing sexist about requiring that a man understand the desires and needs of his potential sexual partner. The reason that a woman’s efforts to understand a man’s point of view are given less emphasis is simple: a woman’s failure to be compassionate during sexual interaction almost never results in a crime where a man is the victim.

Deans Clark and Taylor assigned these essays in the hope that J-Board members would think carefully about all the difficulties that are inextricably linked to determining consent during a sexual misconduct hearing. From their experience, they know that Council members need to have thought these issues through before the pressure-packed day they are summoned to sit on a sexual misconduct hearing.

Sincerely,

Emily Cross ‘01

J-Board Chair ’00-‘01