To the editor:

I was recently contacted by Northwestern’s Office of Alumni Relations and Development staff and asked to renew the senior gift that I had donated last year. I want to write publicly to explain exactly why I will not be doing so. I spent the last four years at Northwestern fighting alongside other student activists to reform University policy on sexual violence so that survivors of sexual violence on campus would not have to count University administration as an opponent in their struggle for healing and justice. We obtained some victories, especially a serious overhaul of the disciplinary process, and increased transparency about the functioning of that new process in practice.

But what the new era of transparency has brought to light has been deeply unsettling, culminating in Thursday’s announcement that no disciplinary action will be taken against the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity despite the allegations brought against it by multiple sexual assault survivors. Given that scholarly consensus estimates the rate of false assault accusations at 8 percent, the probability that the SAE-related accusations are incorrect is therefore extremely small. To continue to allow SAE to exist on campus and benefit from University support despite knowing its role in perpetuating violence against students is a moral abdication of staggering proportions.

It has become clear that despite its willingness to make some procedural concessions to student activists, NU’s administration lacks the courage necessary to confront the deeper structural causes of sexual violence at the university. Whatever reformist spirit I once thought may have been cresting in the administration has broken on the shore of the entrenched institutional power of fraternities. They have made their choice, and I have made mine: I will not donate to NU again, and I will encourage other alumni to do likewise.

Erik Baker
Northwestern class of ’16
Harvard University Department of the History of Science