In Wednesday’s Daily, Natalie Johnson started her letter by saying she was “… appalled and distressed that a female could fabricate a sexual assault claim in today’s day and age when the issue of diversity and acceptance of people has become the soapbox of so many forums and conferences.” First off, you’re mixing apples and oranges.

Fabricating a claim is usually personally motivated and would have nothing to do with any soapbox, forum or conference. Second, you don’t really believe that false accusations of sexual assault or harassment don’t happen, do you? Anita Hill comes to mind almost immediately, but that’s a false case of harassment, not assault.

So I did some research on the Library’s Expanded Academic Index for the topic. I came up with an article by Dick Haws in the Nov./Dec. issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. “The number of rapes that are falsely reported . vary from two percent, which is the same nationally for other major crimes, to as high as twenty-five percent.” Well, Natalie, you can be appalled and distressed pretty often, depending on whose stats you use.

Your letter also mentions an assumption about what would happen if an arrest were made, based on the description. You know what happens when you assume? Enough said.

Based on the reports from the Daily and DPS warning signs posted on campus, I can logically come to a couple conclusions. In Sara Drewry’s article in Aug. 30 Daily, Gene Deisinger said the guy accused “was not a total stranger . She doesn’t know him personally . He matches the description of an individual that has confronted her recently.”

OK, ,he’s someone who she’s had a confrontation with and is more than likely pissed off at. Seems to me that it was coincidence that he’s African-American. I can see the leap in logic that could be made. “I’ll accuse him of raping me.”

Now she has to make the story more believable, so she adds the gun and the three other guys.

If I remember correctly, the signs from DPS that were placed around campus had a decent description of the first guy, but that the others were all of average height and weight. So, since she knows what the guy she’s pissed at looks like, she gives his description and in order to keep her story straight, she assigns the other guys a non-descript height and weight and keeps them the same race as the first.

I actually believe her when she says that it wasn’t racially motivated. Given that state of mind, if my conclusions are correct, she’d make the same accusation regardless of race.

I also found your solution to be a little self-serving, given your major is related to those “feel-good” courses. It seemed that your mentioning those classes and the “enlightening lecture” were more of advertisements than actual help.

My opinion is that DPS and the state are making a good decision in filing the charges against her. There is a law against filing false charges. If you break the law, you should be punished.

But, I also believe that the court should weigh the accuser’s age and mental health, when passing sentence, but please don’t send her to those classes Natalie suggested. That would be cruel and unusual punishment.

Chris Pellack

Freshman

Pre-MIS