VIRGINIA
The New Republic
BY KIERA FELDMAN @kierafeldman
The March newsletter for Patrick Henry College’s Alumni Association began with a notice that birth announcements were temporarily suspended. Instead, it was to be a “more sober edition,” devoted to the fall-out from “Sexual Assault at God’s Harvard” a story I wrote for The New Republic in March about the mishandling of sexual assault cases at the elite evangelical school. In my investigation, I uncovered allegations that the Patrick Henry administration treated sexual assault perpetrators with impunity, discouraged women from going to the police, and blamed victims for dressing or behaving immodestly. Over the past month, the school’s administration, students, and alumni have responded to the story with an outpouring of public statements and online commentary.
Shortly after the story’s publication, Patrick Henry released a statement announcing the hiring of “a specialized legal firm” to audit the school’s policies and procedures regarding sexual assault and harassment. At the same time, the school maintained administrators “did not attempt to cover-up any sexual crimes” and “did not seek to blame women” for male students’ actions. “The fact is that the information provided by the key individuals at the time differs from the allegations now related in the New Republic article,” said the statement, which was read aloud during chapel. The student body responded with applause.
Some Patrick Henry students voiced their support for school administrators. “The monstrous Dean Corbitt described in the article is almost unrecognizable,” a sophomore wrote in an email to the American Conservative. “She seems like a twisted distortion of the friendly, cheerful woman who is always seems [sic] to be willing to help out all the students.”
By comparison, a statement from the Patrick Henry College alumni association suggested that alums have been far more critical of the administration than most current students. The alumni made several demands: transparency in PHC’s audit; “better victim care to students when they come forward”; the hiring of a victim’s advocate; and campus education “regarding issues such as consent.”
PHC did not disclose the name of the “specialized legal firm” hired to run the audit, not even to its students. The school did not respond to follow-up questions from The New Republic. “The secrecy about the firm is just shady,” a PHC junior told me. “The whole problem was that they’ve been dealing with these things behind closed doors.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.