The Power of E-Mail

Once you hit "send," you can't really take it back. So learned Katie Cox, a sophomore at Rice University, who sent out a mass e-mail message falsely accusing a fellow student of being a rapist.

In the message, sent to 100 addresses, Ms. Cox alleged that Travis Boyer, a sophomore whom she'd recently dated, had raped another female student, whom she didn't identify, earlier in the year.

A few hours after sending the first message, Ms. Cox recanted, sort of, in a follow-up: "I do

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