I am writing you because you are the change agents on Grounds. I am not writing the administration because they have failed you miserably. If you're looking for the adult in the room to help with this mess, don't look at the administration. The adult is you.
The RS article is a blessing because it produces the outrage and the sense of crisis that are the building blocks for transformative change. I urge you to resist following the administration's lead in blaming the article's author for targeting UVa, claiming sexual assault is commonplace at colleges everywhere. These are the tone deaf whinings of a leaderless bureaucracy that threatens to divert attention away from the task at hand, which is to build a culture within the student body of zero tolerance for sexual assault at the University.
How should you start implementing change and how do you know the change has taken root?
Students within Residence Life, the Greek System, Varsity Athletics, Intramurals, Student Government, etc. — come together and commit to change. There exists enormous resources for sexual assault prevention and counseling but this alone will change nothing. When predators know UVa is hostile territory and victims feel the unconditional outpouring of support from fellow students that gives them the courage to file a police report — then students, you will know change has taken root.
This is your time and this is your school and these are your classmates. Jefferson's ideal of student self-governance has never faced a more critical challenge. I wish you well.
I just read the Rolling Stone article, and am now sick to my stomach. I'm sick to learn of the pattern of sex abuse that apparently runs unchecked on this campus; I'm sick of the twisted, misogynist, privileged, moronic culture maintained by our Greek system; I'm profoundly disturbed to hear of a culture in which even the "friends" of abused women on this campus have a greater fear of not being invited to the next party than of standing idly by while their supposed friend has just been gang raped; and I'm sick of hearing about slick UVa administrators in their blue blazers and windsor knotted orange ties reassuring a morally clueless Board of Visitors that, really, everything is just peachy here in spite of a federal probe into sexual abuses.
Given the facts as described in this article, which your response doesn't question, instead of reassuring the university community and the larger world that UVa is a national leader in the reform effort — hey, we held a conference here! — as the President of this university your hair should be on fire at this moment. Heads should roll, criminals should be named and brought to justice, and efforts to radically reform the culture around here should take center stage. This is a moral disaster of the first magnitude, not just a temporary PR glitch. At moments like this, I am embarrassed to be a professor at the University of Virginia.
I'm attaching a brief article I wrote for the Cav Daily back in the late '90s, calling for the abolition of the Greek system in favor of an expanded network of residential colleges, like Brown and Hereford. Back then I accused the Greek system of being alcohol-sodden, elitist, and anti-intellectual — i.e., a system that really should have no place at a university with pretensions to seriousness, let alone greatness — but, alas, it now turns out that I was barely scratching the surface of the moral turpitude of this shoddy tradition.
It's time to get serious about this. Forget about conferences and white papers. We need decisive action, and we need it now.
As a member of the faculty of The University of Virginia, I welcome, finally, your message to us today, on the evening of November 20th. You state that rape “should be punished as a crime under applicable law,” that “we must do everything possible to ensure that the opportunity for a timely and appropriate law enforcement response is maximized.” You lead us in the right direction. Rape is a crime.
Rape is a crime everywhere in this nation. On college and university campuses it is possible for rape not to be treated as a crime. As you state, at our university a victim of rape can file either a “criminal or administrative complaint.”
We should not harbor administrative complaints of criminal behavior. Colleges and universities cannot adjudicate crime. Only law enforcement institutions can. The administrative complaint must be eliminated.
To protect and support our students who come to us as victims of sexual assault, we should encourage them to seek assistance at our hospital as soon as they can. They can file a criminal complaint or decide not to do so. This is a decision no one can take easily. Nor is it a decision they need to take immediately. They are our students. As teachers and role models, we are in a singular position to support them over the days and weeks as they decide what to do.
The University should work together with the Charlottesville and Albemarle police departments to assure that our students are treated by law enforcement officers with the respect and dignity that all human beings deserve. We are fortunate in this city and in this county to have highly professional police departments.
As we now know too well, administrative complaints have served to coddle the perpetrators of rape more often than not. We have made it possible for the perpetrators of rape to walk free too often on our Grounds. This needs to stop. The legal system determines culpability.
If you arenât willing to follow the law
yourself, then you canât demand a role in making the law for everyone else,
which is what you do when you ... on Debate continues over felons' right to vote
