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12/23/11: Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83, ’86JD

Yale students want advice on their sex lives—from university administrators. So says a report on the “campus climate,” co-written by a woman who is about to become responsible for putting it into action.

Last spring, Yale president Rick Levin ’74PhD tapped four alumni to report on the campus climate, amidst a federal investigation into whether Yale has a “hostile sexual environment.” On December 20 he named one of the four, Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83, ’86JD, to the new position of vice president for campus life, as well as the existing job of university secretary. The current secretary, Linda Lorimer ’77JD, gains a new title—vice president of the university—and will continue many of her existing responsibilities.

The new position elevates students’ concerns to the highest level, Levin suggested in his announcement: “The provost has responsibility for the advancement of the faculty and the vice president for human resources and administration supports our staff, but no one in the officer group represents the students.”

Goff-Crews, who will begin at Yale next summer, currently holds a similar position at the University of Chicago, where she has gained a reputation for consultation and consensus, even when it slows down decision-making.

In the Yale report, issued last month, Goff-Crews and her coauthors wrote that students struggle to “navigate a confusing social scene that floats on too much alcohol (or other drug use) and casual intimacy, with too little support for (or models of) healthy sexual relationships.” Yalies, they wrote, “are looking for guidance about the values the university’s leaders think should frame healthy … relationships.”

The Yale Alumni Magazine is closed for winter recess.
The next Yalie of the Week will appear on January 6, 2012.

Filed under sex, campus climate
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