Alum Questions Joffe-Walt’s Letter

To the Editors:

Benjamin Joffe-Walt, in the Feb. 8 issue, wrote an engrossing letter about sexual offense and violence. It certainly made me think. His description of President Dye’s letter as “abstracting in its theoretical approach to violence” still has me thinking. I’ve looked at those seven words for probably 30 minutes by now. Still not exactly sure what they mean. I’ll work on “systemic sexual violence,” too — I promise.
Joffe-Walt criticizes Dye’s statement that “Individuals are presumed innocent in an adjudication process until proven guilty by a preponderance of the evidence presented in a formal hearing,” by saying that “this process has the effect of valuing the rights of individuals to a ‘fair’ adjudication process over the rights of survivors.” It does? How, pray tell? Since he seems to believe that an adjudication process is inherently unfair (based upon his quote marks around the word “fair”), I’m led to believe that we should really just skip the part about discovering what really happened and the other step of attempting to impartially determine guilt (or innocence for that matter).
Joffe-Walt says he’s “armed to the teeth with weapons of sexist privilege...rape is one of them.” I’ve honestly never thought of my penis as a weapon of sexist privilege...frankly, sometimes I think I’m just vaginally impaired. Now that I know its real power, though, the next step must be to “challenge the systems that provide us with such privilege.” I think that system was my mother giving birth to me...or am I getting really confused?
Finally, it’s somewhat enlightening to know that Joffe-Walt is a potential rapist. Though, let’s not forget he’s also a potential killer (in any number of ways), a potential poet, a potential Oberlin College graduate, a potential President, and a potential alcohol abuser. Not sure if I’ve left anything out....

–Paul Wilczynski
OC ’70