On a hot spring day 15 months ago, I sat outside St. Paul’s School, my high school, watching the class below me graduate. The final and most prestigious award, the Rector’s Award, is presented every year to the senior who “through selfless devotion to School activities, has enhanced our lives and improved the community.” The recipient that day was a student named Owen Labrie.
Little did I know that a week later, Labrie would be accused of rape by a freshman. Following his recent, highly publicized trial, he was found innocent on three sexual assault felony charges. However, he was found guilty of a felony of a different nature: using a computer to "seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child under the age of 16."
As a graduate of St. Paul’s and a personal acquaintance of the newly convicted felon, I have had conflicted feelings about this trial that has consumed a place I still know as my second home.
While Labrie’s alleged actions are despicable, I have also been surprised by how poorly the media has covered his trial. For the first time in my life, the person on trial was someone I knew personally, not some faceless stranger, and that has forced me to consider the entire process from his point of view as well. Due to the nature of the crime, newspapers did not display the name of the accuser. However, Labrie, the accused, was not afforded this same right. Instead, the media publicly paraded his name before the trial even began. The unfortunate result of this is that even if Owen had been acquitted of all charges, his association with rape would still have followed him until the end of his life. It is of course important for the purposes of a just legal system that the government discloses all parties involved. Nonetheless, in the case of particularly heinous crimes, the media should still have the decency not to encourage the association of the accused with potentially false accusations by not releasing his or her name until guilt has been proven.
But the media not only failed to adequately cover the people involved, but also failed in its reporting on St. Paul’s School itself. Many media outlets have described the school as abounding with traditions of sexual conquest and competition. Having graduated only one year before Owen, I can attest however that it is nothing as portrayed. In particular, the media has misconstrued certain phrases particular to St. Paul’s. For example, media outlets referred to messages between Owen and others in which he talks about “scoring” a girl, implying that Owen was in some game or competition. In reality, the term “score,” among St. Paul’s students, simply refers to any sort of romantic encounter or relationship.
Another unique term of media interest is the ‘Senior Salute’.The Washington Postdescribed it as a time where “senior men at St. Paul’s competed to sleep with as many younger students as possible.” NBCcalled it a “ritual.” In actuality, the senior salute was nothing more than the act of a senior near graduation having any sort of short-term romantic encounter with a younger student. It usually was seen as a fun way to end the school year, or as a last chance attempt to pursue a long-held romantic interest. It was in no way a culturally encouraged tradition, and certainly not a competition. Rather, “the senior salute” was just a word we had come up with to describe a naturally occurring phenomenon, and both genders partook in it. The twisting of these harmless phrases and actions into something they are not in order to fit a specific narrative has led to undeserved backlash against the school.
Rather than attempting to feed us a black-and-white story, the media should have focused on the legal issues surrounding the trial. While Owen’s alleged actions were certainly wrong and criminal, the worst crime he was convicted of was not the actual act, but rather the use of a computer to do so. Owen was not some 40-year-old man pretending to be a 15 year old in an online chat-room, or someone luring a child into an empty park with promises of candy. He was just a guy who exchanged a couple of messages with a girl on Facebook before hooking up. No disguise. No deceit. No trap. If that is a crime then most of us are felons.
If his actions are truly considered despicable and worthy of punishment, then we should be concerned that it took the ridiculous application of an outdated computer law to punish him. Owen’s actions, not his use of a computer, should be what he is convicted for. If this trial has done anything, it has caused me to lose significant faith in the way that our legal system is shaped to handle such cases involving sexual assault. To prevent future occurrences, we should stop trying to craft narratives, and focus on how we can create a legal system that convicts people of clear and sensible crimes.
Colter Smith is a computer science major from Bronxville, N.Y. He can be reached at crsmith@princeton.edu.
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