What's It Worth?

Obama czar doesn't report rape

President Obama's "safe schools czar" Kevin Jennings said Wednesday he "should have handled [the] situation differently" when he didn't report an underage student told him that he was having sex with an older man.

Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, was teaching high school in Concord, Mass., in 1988 when a sophomore boy confessed an involvement with a man in Boston. He told the boy, "I hope you knew to use a condom."

In a statement, Jennings said: "Twenty one years later I can see how I should have handled this situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities."

"It's not as though, 'oh, this was a youthful mistake I made as a brand-new teacher, but now that I'm an adult I realize that I handled it wrong.' Because he has told this story as recently as last year, in another book, and has not expressed any regret until now. So that indicates to me that this is more out of political necessity than it is about genuine remorse,"

Jennings also released a statement on his past writings on drug use.

On page 103, discussing his high school years in Hawaii in the early 1980s, Jennings wrote:
"I got stoned more often and went out to the beach at Bellows, overlooking Honolulu Harbor and the lights of the city, to drink with my buddies on Friday and Saturday nights, spending hours watching the planes take off and land at the airport, which is actually quite fascinating when you are drunk and stoned."

"I suspect that the vetting procedure for Jennings was fairly superficial... This controversy about the possible statutory rape was raised in 2004 when he received an award from the NEA. So it's not like it's been a secret. So I think it shows yet another failure of the Obama administration's vetting process."