TO THE EDITOR:
Dear Chancellor Thorp,
As a faculty member, HAVEN advocate and member of the UNC community, I am saddened, outraged and frustrated after reading about former Dean Melinda Manning’s treatment by her supervisor, Jonathan Sauls, and other administrators at UNC.
Every semester I have at least one student tell me about a sexual assault that either the student has experienced or that his/her roommate/friend has experienced here at UNC.
When I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara in the late 1980s, two of my roommates were victims of sexual assault my junior year of college.
In college, I did not have a single friend who didn’t know someone who had been raped — and unfortunately I knew, and continue to know, too many women who had experienced sexual violence directly.
This has to end. We have to end the culture of silence and intimidation and lack of support that is described in the DTH article.
We need to provide as much support — concrete, emotional and legal support — to victims of sexual violence. We need to end rape culture.
To that end, one thing you can do is to immediately place Sauls, Winston Crisp, Leslie Strohm and Kara Simmons on administrative leave — or ask for their resignations.
