Last week, the public got a glimpse of the attitude some administrators at the historically black Lincoln University are taking toward sexual assault. In a video shot in September of a convocation delivered to an all-female audience, the university’s president, Robert Jennings, says, “We have, we had, on this campus last semester three cases of young women who after having done whatever they did with young men and then it didn’t turn out the way they wanted it to turn out, guess what they did? They then went to Public Safety and said, ‘He raped me.’ ”
His remarks ignited a firestorm of criticism, and Jennings has since released a letter to the students at Lincoln apologizing for his insensitive remarks. In this clip, Melissa Harris-Perry explains just how serious such attitude toward sexual violence really is.
—N’Kosi Oates
