Yale & Witt

Readers of the New York Times might have noticed that the paper has gone after another athlete that fits the negative race/class/gender stereotype, Yale quarterback Patrick Witt. Witt, a Rhodes Scholar finalist, was the subject of an "informal complaint" through Yale's sexual assault/harassment program, which lists an undergraduate male causing "worry" to a female as a legitimate grounds for filing complaints.

I've written three posts at Minding the Campus on the topic, one just after the story broke, the second after Witt had issued his side of the story, and the third looking at the extraordinarily poor response to the case by so-called media critics. The worst of the latter was an article from Poynter, which describes itself as an institution "that exists to ensure that our communities have access to excellent journalism—the kind of journalism that enables us to participate fully and effectively in our democracy." To whom did this institution turn for guidance on how the Times should have handled the case? You guessed it: Wendy Murphy.