Two years ago comments by top College administrators on the victim's responsibility in date rape set the campus ablaze.

"When people are drunk, they may not remember whether they said yes or not," said Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57. "The person that's drunk is not always clear, is not articulate, and that's why you get these cases."

"I think women often find it difficult to say a forceful no," said Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz. "I have a sense that in many of these cases the woman thinks she has said no, but it may have been in subtle ways--ways that may have cause confusion."

Women's rights advocates reacted immediately--and angrily expressed their outrage. Two women postered the campus questioning the College's handling of date rape, and more directly, calling upon students to "Attack Jewett." Subsequently, a candle-light vigil and a sit-in at University Hall compelled Jewett to set up the Date Rape Task Force to examine the College's policy on the issue.

Last week, Jewett announced the College's plans to define date rape as sexual intercourse which occurs "against the will of the victim." The new definition espouses the negative criterion--an expressed no--which Jewett has advocated all along.

In an interview last week, Jewett did not back away from his comments in 1990. He says he was unfairly criticized at the time, and maintains that experience show his comments were on the mark.

"We've not had any cases that have come to the Ad Board that at least one of the parties had not been involved with alcohol," says Jewett. "Violence of any kind is usually accompanied by alcohol."

The decision may end three years of debate--which goes out not with a bang, but with a whimper--on how to define the issue, but it is unlikely that date rape and the controversy of how to discipline offenders will disappear.

The administration has quietly marshalled the volatile issue into committees and reports to contain a debate which once roiled the campus in fierce and angry discord. Three years of reports and responses, legal squabbles and statistics have led to tangible changes in the workings of the College's Administrative Board, which hears date rape cases. But these changes have come less from the politics of the campus and more from the inner machinery and introspection within the College administration.

To a great extent, the bureaucratization of the date rape question has also defanged the grass-roots campus debate and exhausted its momentum.

Most of the campus activists who railed against Jewett's alleged insensitivity have graduated. Most of students who served on the Date Rape Task Force, which was formed after the 1990 controversy, are also gone. Even Assistant Dean of Co-Education, the chief architect of the

We've not had any cases that have come to the Ad Board that at least one of the parties had not been involved with alcohol.  Dean L. Fred Jewett '57

In 1990, comments by Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 and another College administrator sparked off angry protests from women's rights advocates, including posters which blared 'Attack Jewett.' Two years later, the campus is largely silent on the issue as a steady stream of proposals and counter-proposals have trickled out. The Date Rape Task Force defines date rape as intercourse without 'expressed consent.' The Undergraduate Council defines it as intercourse 'despite expressed unwillingness.' Jewett has proposed a compromise definition. Resolution of this volatile issue may be in sight, which begs the question, Task Force's definition which Jewett and the Ad Board scuttled in November, left for law school last week.

Despite a recent Crimson poll that shows that students are almost evenly split between the council and Task Force definition, few voices of protest have been raised. The advocates of women's rights who succeeded the protesters of the 1990 controversy over date rape seem to play only an unsubstantial role in the current incarnation of the debate.

RUS Co-Chair Maura Swan '94 says she is not familiar with the intricacies of the College's reevaluation of its date rape policy. In the last year, RUS has have offered only a written statement endorsing the Task Force definition.

In the cycle of campus politics which seems to turn over every two years, Jewett alone remains the constant figure. And this constancy concentrates his influence. Students, on the other hand, lack the insight of institutional memory and perspective.