The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
Warning: This blog post discusses sexual violence and assault.
By Iris Zhang Iris Zhang is a rising junior at University of Pennsylvania. The statistic that 1 in 5 college-aged women has experienced rape and sexual assault is frustrating; and we’ve heard it over and over. [1] What’s even more frustrating is that 40% of these victims will never have the chance to seek justice – of every 100 rapes, 40 get reported to the police, 10 will lead to an arrest, 8 will get prosecuted, and only 3 will see the rapist serving time. [2] The criminal justice system is ill-equipped to handle sexual assault, but universities are arguably even worse, with campus sexual assault slowly beginning to come under the nationwide spotlight. Just this past month, the New York Times has published numerous articles on the issue: [3] the Times picked up news around the country about students rising up against school administrators for mishandling allegations of rape. [4] In response, the Obama administration spearheaded a White House Task Force to oversee various enforcement actions undertaken by government legal agencies against offending schools. [5]
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By Iris Zhang
Iris Zhang is a rising junior at University of Pennsylvania. The scholarship on the link between lack of education and the disproportionately high rates of imprisonment of minorities is clear. According to Wald and Losen, “68% of state prison inmates in 1997 had not completed high school. 75% of youths under age 18 who have been sentenced to adult prisons have not completed 10th grade.” [1] Researchers claim that being “suspended, expelled or held back” during middle school is the “single largest predictor” of an adolescent female’s arrest. Thus, we have the “school-to-prison” pipeline, whereby youth are criminalized for their behaviors in school and sent directly into the prison system. It doesn’t help that schools facing a dearth of resources are increasingly relying on “zero-tolerance” policies that push out low-performing students or students who commit minor infractions through the use of suspensions and expulsions. [2] Schools have significant discretion when it comes to the use these disciplinary measures, and, overwhelmingly, a disproportionate amount of students who are suspended or expelled are minorities. [3]  By Iris Zhang
Iris Zhang is a rising junior at University of Pennsylvania The Fair Housing Act of 1968 guarantees “equal opportunity” for all citizens of the United States in accessing housing and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, disability, and other factors. [1] One of the ways in which access to housing is curtailed occurs when services relevant to acquiring housing, such as mortgages and loans, are made unavailable. In a landmark case in 1994, the Department of Justice (DOJ) settled with Chevy Chase Bank in the District of Columbia for redlining—a practice of denying banking services to residents in predominantly minority and low-income areas. [2] In line with the stipulations of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the DOJ argued that Chevy Chase engaged in unfair lending practices by deliberately avoiding majority African American neighborhoods in designating its service area. This discrepancy occurred mainly by refusal to open branches and the lack of advertisements of Chevy Chase’s services in majority African American neighborhoods. |
