Life Goes On

But we're still very, very sad. Matt and I both find ourselves haunted by the situation with Mark, and I alternate between a kind of numb disbelief and just bursting into tears. Whereas when it first happened, I was struck and particularly affected by the gruesome nature of the incident itself, I now seem to have moved toward a saddened remembering. I think about all the wonderful, happy memories I had with Mark (12 years worth...) and I just wish so badly that things had turned out differently.

Someone asked if I could post some of the fairer media articles about the incident, and I'm happy to oblige. Probably the most balanced one I've seen is the article "Accusations and Suicides" from the publication Inside Higher Education. Here's the piece I feel is missing from the reporting that's going on in Iowa"

Asked what the university should do following this latest incident, [Iowa Faculty Senate President Michael] O’Hara said that “we have to separate the issue of sexual harassment from the issue of why a professor or anybody for that matter would commit suicide in the face of kind of public disclosure of something that is personally extremely embarrassing if not humiliating. Those are two different issues — people face criminal charges all the time and don’t commit suicide. It’s not an inevitable consequence.” [My note: Also, these were actually only civil charges, meaning there was no possibility of jail time, just financial penalties and possible professional sanctions]

O’Hara added: “We have to continue on campus to educate ourselves and to be vigilant about sexual harassment and help everyone understand that as an academic community, these things aren’t to be tolerated.” At the same time, he said that the two deaths made him wonder about the treatment of “alleged perpetrators.” It is important to remember, he said, that “being accused doesn’t mean that something happened.”

I thought Michael O'Hara did a wonderful job of emphasizing that a case like this--even prior to Mark's suicide--requires sensitivity to all parties involved, rather than being a time to choose sides, whitewashing one while villifying the other. From what I've seen in the media and from comments by UI faculty, it seems everyone else is bent on saying that the charges are false, and the newspapers are more than willing to propagate that message, which is really too bad. Here's hoping O'Hara's recommendations are taken up by the rest of the faculty and students at Iowa.