MORE THAN 200 FACULTY MEMBERS signed a letter in The Daily Princetonian, responding to comments about sexual assault made by Susan Patton ’77, author of Marry Smart. In her book, Patton wrote that a provocatively dressed, drunken woman “must bear accountability for what may happen.” The faculty letter stated that signers “do not believe that [students’] manner of dress or drinking behavior makes them responsible for unwanted sexual assault.”
In a Prince interview, Patton said women must take responsibility for themselves and their own safety, since they are most likely to be harmed. In their letter, faculty members said they “stand behind victims of sexual assault and want them to know that our campus is a place where they have a voice, where they will not be made to feel responsible, and where they can find support and justice.”
SIMON LEVIN, the George M. Moffett Professor of Biology, will receive the $200,000 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement April 25 in Los Angeles for research that has shaped environmental policy and advanced the study of complex ecosystems. Levin’s work “has bridged the theoretical with the work of ecologists in the field, and connected complex ecological systems to social science and environmental and public policy,” said the head of the prize committee.