The Huffington Post published an article last Thursday addressing the recent turn in former SMU student John David Mahaffey’s sexual assault charge-the Dallas County district attorney decided to drop the charges, and the reporter of the article, Pierre R. Berastain, had his own strong, but just, views on the situation.
Berastain addressed the suspicions surrounding the fact that this charge of male-on-male sexual assault was dropped for the reason that the prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to prove that said assault was not consensual, as reported by the Dallas Morning News.
However, there was a phone call recorded by SMU Police made from the victim to Mahaffey, in which it is crystal clear-made by Mahaffey himself, in fact-that the assault was in no way consensual. During the phone conversation, cited in Berastain’s article, the unnamed student said to Mahaffey, “You know I did not want to do that.”
Mahaffey’s response? “I know you didn’t, but we have to say it was consensual or lawyers, parents and the school will be involved.”
When it is claimed that prosecutors do not have enough to prove non-consent, and yet there is a recorded phone call stating otherwise by the perpetrator himself, something does not add up. Berastain suggests the influence of privilege and community views on gays.
“A grand jury indicts a student from a very wealthy family with tremendous influence in one of Texas’ most prominent university, but then, at the sole discretion of the DA’s Office, the charges…are dropped…I wonder what message Dallas County sends to LGBT college students when it refuses to prosecute wealthy, white fraternity men who are accused of sexually assaulting other male students.”
Some members of the SMU community have called the Post’s piece out on citing SMU as one of the Princeton Review’s top 12 least LGBT-friendly colleges as irrelevant when the university is no longer on the 2013 list. Berastain does, in fact, clarify that this ranking took place “last year”-and SMU was on the 2012 edition of the least-LGBT friendly list.
This is not a personal attack on Mahaffey. Rather, this instance brings to light larger institutional and systemic issues that the SMU community needs to evaluate. To what extent were Berastain’s claims legitimate or grounded in some form of the truth?
Do one year and qualifications posed by one publication amount to time and proof of SMU making leaps and bounds in accepting the LGBT community? Beyond that, at the root of the issue is the question, how concerned is the student body as a whole about examining and changing intolerance?
And even if students want to contest that such accusations that high socio-economic status, family legacy, and fear of confronting questions of one’s sexuality constituting cause to drop a case are false and based on untrue stereotypes of SMU, they must note that this article is not the first observation of such. The Elite Daily article published earlier this year described SMU as saying ,”The students pride themselves on their lavish lifestyle, abundance of career opportunities and upper-class taste…”
If such opulent privilege-and by that token, favoritism shown to the students in possession of such-is not a reality at this school, why does the reputation say otherwise? The university offers an infinite amount of opportunity to learn as a community and develop with the rest of the country-but do the students take advantage of it, or are they unwilling to look past their own way of life?
With the decision on gay marriage at the forefront of current national news, the question of favoritism to a wealthy student and the desire to push a possible spotlight on intolerance toward the LGBT community under the rug comes at a pinnacle time. It makes the need for honest evaluation of tolerance and equality, and its place at SMU right now, absolutely essential if the university and its students want to remain in-step contemporary, forward-moving American society.
Gough is a sophomore majoring in theatre and journalism.
