Sexual harassment lawsuit against Yale

An anonymous reader points at this very important article (also noted by the Feminist Philosophers) in comments over at my recent post on sexual harassment. Yale University is now being sued for failing "to properly address incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault, [which] has resulted in a “hostile environment.”" The trigger was the incident with members of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity chanting offensive slogans (as reported here), but the lawsuit reflects the growing frustration accumulated through the years with Yale's failure to implement corrective measures in cases of inappropriate behavior of this kind. It's not so much that there aren't formal regulations to reprimend this kind of behavior, but they simply don't get enforced. At several occasions the whole procedure does not move forward as it should, according to the article:

“There’s this idea that it should stay all within the family, that Mom and Dad will take care of it and quietly reconcile it,” says Brodsky. “They treat cases like they’re these tiny skirmishes between brothers and sisters at Yale.” 

In the discussions we've been having this week after the post by Mark, John and Eric, at several occasions people ask: why go for an informal approach, e.g. social shunning, rather than handling it more officially? Well, there you go: the issue is that, even if there are regulations, getting them to be enforced is often by no means straightforward. Of course, it is not an exclusive disjunction: ideally, both formal and informal approaches could and should be combined to address the problem. But most importantly, and this is what I was trying to say in my post, what we need is a change in how sexual harassment is perceived. It must be acknowledged as a serious issue, rather than dismissed as "tiny skirmishes between brothers and sisters". Do read the whole article!

UPDATE - An anonymous reader writes the following in comments at the original NewAPPS post on sexual harassment:

"The White House, in response to the Yale University lawsuit, is due to make an announcement on sexual harassment in universities this week. Yale reports a statistic of 62% level of harassment, but only 7% of that 62% is addressed structurally (if that)."