Giving us a piece of your mind

Profoundly Inadequate

Your article (“San Diego Universities Botch Sexual Assault Investigations,” September 3 cover story) focused on a couple of campus sexual assault cases poorly handled by authorities at local universities. It concerns me that you write of the Clery reports as if they contained reliable data. Those reports, with very few exceptions across the nation, were, at best, profoundly inadequate.

In 2000, a national survey authorized by Janet Reno, then U.S. attorney general, found that one in five coeds were sexually assaulted every year! That was 15 years ago. Consequently, the Clery reports appeared to be covering another country with often single digits per year on large campuses. So, over a decade and a half, how many thousands of assaults on college women were botched?

Many women did not report assaults for fear they would receive inadequate support and suffer further abuse. Now you report on two or three men whose lives have been tarnished. Few men and some women fail to grasp the often life-long emotional residual harm from a single rape. These unfortunate men, and your unfortunate writing, will promote that women must be feared for their sexual aggression. How about more balance next time?

• Robert Schmitt
• Mission Hills

Street-Smart Feminism

Re: “San Diego Universities Botch Sexual Assault Investigations,” September 3 cover story

“After the great victory won by the insurgent, pro-sex, pro-fashion wing of feminism in the 1990s, American feminism has amazingly collapsed backward again into whining, narcissistic victimology. College campuses are hysterically portrayed as rape extravaganzas where women are helpless fluffs with no control over their own choices and behavior. Colleges should confine themselves to education and cease their tyrannical surveillance of students’ social lives.

“If a real crime is committed, it must be reported to the police. College officials and committees have neither the expertise nor the legal right to be conducting investigations into he said/she said campus dating fiascos. Too many of today’s young feminists seem to want hovering, paternalistic authority figures to protect and soothe them, an attitude I regard as servile, reactionary and glaringly bourgeois. The world can never be made totally safe for anyone, male or female. There will always be sociopaths and psychotics impervious to social controls. I call my system ‘street-smart feminism.’ There is no substitute for wary vigilance and personal responsibility. “

Those words aren’t my own, but paraphrased from a fairly recent interview with feminist Camille Paglia, a well-needed voice of common sense in modern academia — although the seas of perpetually outraged professional victims plaguing college campuses today wouldn’t think so.

• Nichole Fullerton
• City Heights

To Be Continued

Re: Letters, September 3, “continued on page 7” — I couldn’t believe it until I actually saw it. [Letters were actually continued on page 80. — Editor]

Oh, and your type is really small, just like everybody says. Wah wah wah.

• John
• via voicemail

Not an Island

Re: Neighborhood News, September 3: “Island Community Plans for a More Crowded Future”

An island is a tract of land completely surrounded by water. Coronado is not an island. Coronado residents can put up a sign calling it an island, and delude themselves into thinking they live on an island, but that doesn’t make it so. It’s fine if the Reader wants to quote a resident calling it an island, but the writer shouldn’t incorrectly refer to it as an island as well.

• Name withheld
• University City

Lawsuit Forthcoming?

To the person who reviewed Carl’s Jr. and their All-Natural Burger. You have been fooled by deceptive advertising. The burger is not “all-natural.”

Checking the website for ingredients, you can see that the bun that contains hydrogenated oils and monoglycerides. These are transfats. Transfats have been proven to lead to heart disease and breast/colon cancers. I am surprised there has been no lawsuit filed yet.

• Roger Leszczynski
• Logan

HOA Good News

The article, “Fruit from Grapefruit Groves in Temecula Pays Homeowners’ Fees,” was excellent. I work with homeowner association boards and understand the challenges. It is nice to hear good news about HOAs. There are many good board members and homeowners in HOAs.

Thanks again for the great article.

• Victoria Cohen
• San Carlos