Yale Students React: 'Behavior Not Acceptable'

They agreed that freshmen email was horrible, action should have been taken.

ByABC News
April 4, 2011, 6:21 AM

April 5, 2011 — -- Lawrence Lim said a now-infamous email ranking the looks of freshmen women at Yale University was "completely 100 percent repugnant [and] inexcusable."

"To say that boys will be boys, and because boys will be boys, they should be given an excuse or given free license to do whatever they want," said Lim, a Yale sophomore, "I feel it's just allowed for this string of events that have occurred on campus to repeatedly unfold."

He and three other young men who attend the Ivy League university in New Haven, Conn., talked with ABC News and shared their reactions to the 26-page Title IX complaint alleging a "hostile sexual environment on campus." On Friday, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights said it would be conducting an investigation.

Three of the men said they knew a girl who had been sexually assaulted. Three of them said they thought the university had let the offenders get away with it.

Lim said that "groups of people, especially women, are being targeted on campus" and that needs to be addressed. "That sort of behavior is not acceptable," he said.

"Sobriety, five beers, 10 beers, blackout."

In September 2009, an email greeted the freshman class. Called the "Preseason Scouting Report," it ranked incoming freshmen females' looks by how many beers it would take to have sex with them.

Alexandra Brodsky, a Yale junior, said she had a friend who was so upset by the email that she transferred to another school.

"This was her introduction to Yale," said Brodsky. "She had gone through high school as a star student and all of a sudden she was introduced to Yale as someone who was worth five beers."

Thomas Smyth, a junior, said most of the campus felt the same way.

"The email was totally out of line and inappropriate," he said. "I was struck and amazed by how horrified so many people were. [It was] reassuring that I was not the only one."

Last month, Brodsky joined 15 Yale students and alumni to file the complaint.

The group of 12 women and four men say the 2009 email -- and the university's slow response to it -- is a prime example of how the university has failed to address sexual harassment on campus.