Politics in Brief

by SOCHIE NNAEMEKA

October 2009

Director Roman Polanski’s recent arrest in Switzerland has stirred the international community.  The terms of the debate are nebulous.  Polanski’s “artist” status has, in some minds, exempted him from punishment.  Others believe that his very identity as an artist has made the crime unfathomable. More Polanski supporters believe that his innocence or guilt is entirely irrelevant as 36 years in refuge, during which he has remarried and become a father, have necessarily been healing– as if it is he, and not his victim, who deserves the healing time.  The framework of this debate is increasingly ambiguous because we as a society have failed to educate ourselves about sexual abuse. This faulty framework also hints at an egregious moral publicity campaign that paints criminals with a single brush stroke, leading us to redefine the act perpetrated to conform to our understanding of the perpetrator’s identity or social value.

Closer to home, Yale released its 2008 Campus Safety Assessment Study, which noted a jump in “forcible sex offenses including forcible rape”– from 4 reported in 2007 to 11 in 2008.  The university should be entertaining ways to drastically reduce the number of such offenses. Our first goal should always be to actively maintain models of justice and to create safe communities founded on egalitarianism. Whether in the workplace, in the dorms, or on our streets, an emphasis needs to be placed on the individual’s ownership over his or her non-commodifiable body and enforcing zones of sexual freedom and trust.

Sochie Nnaemeka is a senior in Yale College. She is the Politics Editor for Broad Recognition.