Sat 13 Oct 2007
Latest update on on Tracy McIntosh ‘75, most famous convicted Eph sexual assaultist. Previous Ephblog coverage here.
Former University of Pennsylvania professor Tracy McIntosh said today that he would proceed with resentencing on his 2004 no-contest plea to sexually assaulting a graduate student.
McIntosh and defense attorney Joel P. Trigiani announced the decision not to contest his original plea during a brief hearing this morning before Common Pleas Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe.
Dembe set sentencing for Dec. 21.
Dembe became the new sentencing judge Feb. 7 when the original judge, Rayford A. Means, disqualified himself rather than go through the appeals-court ordered resentencing.
Means said his controversial 11-1/2- to 23-month sentence of house arrest for McIntosh, 54, of Media, an internationally known researcher into treating brain injuries, had made him the issue rather than justice for McIntosh or his victim.
I don’t have much new to add except that, if you are a JA romantically involved with a first year, then you are, morally, little better than McIntosh. Don’t see why? Read this.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:08 am
I was just doing what was natural — chasing good-looking ladies, whoever they were and wherever they were available.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:46 am
BS David. That would depend upon who the JA is, and who the first year is. Making those kinds of sweeping moral judgements about the morality of a legal relationships between consenting adults is nonsense.
Does Williams have a policy against sexual relationships between a first year and a JA? If not, why don’t they, if the power dynamic is such that constitutes sexual assault?
Is there a policy at Williams that bans Profs from being intimate with students?
Williams has always had a really strange sexaul dynamic to it, that much is for sure.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Uible’s Policy: Keep it in your pants (alternatively for the opposite gender, “keep your legs crossed”)!
October 14th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Amazingly, I’d somehow missed the whole story about Tracy. It hit me hard this morning. I’ve spent the morning trying to understand the story (many of the links no longer work so I’m still fuzzy about it).
I noticed that no one on EphBlog had a kind word about Tracy, and that there was speculation about how he must have behaved “back in the day.”
Tracy was one of my classmates. I did not know him very well, but I remember him fondly and I never heard of his taking advantage of anyone while we were at Williams.
Tracy was an extremely fine soccer player. Over the years, I was touched by his profound, and longstanding, gratitude for having been admitted to Williams, and for his education there. He was quite candid about having been shocked that he was admitted, as his scores were very low (he once told me what they were and, even taking into account the subsequent changes in the test, they were, indeed, extremely low). I believe that he came from a single-parent household back when that was unusual for Williams students. I have long had the sense that he had some sort of a serious (and probably unaddressed) learning disability. He may have been of the Ford Foundation “ten-percenters” (or were they “five-percenters”? - I’m getting old), someone who had lower stats and other credentials than most of the other admitted students but who, in the eyes of the Admission Committee, showed special promise. (Cynically, one could say that his promise was his soccer skill but I genuinely believe that it was for other promise that he was admitted.) And, indeed, he certainly lived up to the Admission Committee’s faith in him, going on to become a doctor and one who changed lives with his work on brain damage. Someone for Williams to be extremely proud of …
… until his fall from grace. I can’t find all the details but, based on what I can find, what Tracy did was certainly extremely reprehensible. I noted in the stories that alcohol and marijuana were involved. I thought that the pieces of the story I could find were consistent with having long-term substance abuse problems, and I was curious why there was no mention of rehabilitation (or perhaps he did not plead having a substance abuse problem out of fear of losing his medical license; he did plead it and it just wasn’t made public; or he did plead it and it wasn’t in the parts of the story that I could find). That wouldn’t have made him less guilty, but perhaps it would have somewhat changed people’s thinking about him as a whole person.
In any case, reprehensible (and inexcusable) as Tracy’s behavior several years ago was, please let’s not lose sight of the fact that Tracy is more than “predator McIntosh ‘75″ or “sexual assaultist McIntosh ‘75″ as he has repeatedly been referred to in the EphBlog entries I’ve been reading. He has been a loyal and grateful Eph, a person who succeeded despite the odds, a doctor who has made extremely valuable contributions in a heartbreaking area, and (until his fall from grace) the apparent epitome of an Eph success story.
I grieve for the woman Tracy hurt so badly and for her family(and I am saddened at the thought that the sentencing controversy has probably made their lives even more difficult). I grieve for the bright, warm family Tracy introduced me to - with such obvious pride in them - at the ‘00 reunion. But I also grieve for Tracy and hope that he will be able to get beyond this and that it won’t continue to overshadow completely all the good he has done over the years.
October 14th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Thank for sharing your memories, saddened.
October 14th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Thank you, (d)avid.
I’m still just stunned. What has struck me the most clearly is how I feel differently about this (probably because this was a person I knew when were young and have seen many admirable qualities in) than I would about someone else (whom I did not know but) who did the same thing. I feel compassion for Tracy, and I certainly wouldn’t have for a stranger in his shoes — indeed, I would have been the first to urge throwing away the key.