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Opinion: Schoolyard slander writ large

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Today is International Women’s Day, and the United Nations--which started the commemoration in 1975, long after labor groups had celebrated various women’s days--marked the event by discussing violence against women at U.N. headquarters. While the Security Council reaffirmed its commitment to Resolution 1325, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called violence against women a ‘pandemic.’ An prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia astutely pointed [pdf] to legal structures that make violence against women a lesser crime--the Tribunal considers such violence a crime against humanity, for example, but not a war crime.

About 80 miles north east of the U.N. at Yale Law School, where the men and women who might one day make those changes to international law live and study, female students have become the subject of sexually slanderous speech by their classmates. It would be the stuff of high school locker rooms--if only their classmates didn’t anonymously post their comments on a highly-trafficked discussion website. The women under attack found themselves shunned by google-happy firms who sought to avoid ‘controversial’ hires, according to the Washington Post. A day after the Post story, the stream of slurs on AutoAdmit.com haven’t stopped.

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Such talk is bad enough in a locker room, but coming from law students at a prestigious school that prides itself on its public interest work, it’s egregious. On Tuesday, the Yale Law Women’s board will call on students to wear red in solidarity against anonymous trash-talking.

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