An open letter to President Sullivan
(04/24/13 3:07am)
Dear President Sullivan,
Serving the University Community Since 1890
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Dear President Sullivan,
The University Judiciary Committee announced its Issues, Marketing and Sexual Misconduct subcommittee chairs Sunday evening.
At 2:44 p.m. Monday, Deadspin tweeted out a headline to a story that read: “How an Achilles Tear Affects NBA Players (or why Kobe Bryant is screwed).” The tweet demonstrated a willing conformity to the parameters of the sports world, in which wins are triumphs, losses are tragedies and hard work, resilience and selflessness are the three pillars of excellence. In that context, in which we constantly evaluate and reevaluate legacies by wins and losses, Kobe Bryant’s season-ending Achilles tear after several months of Herculean performances indeed qualifies as something of a disaster.
At the moment I’m writing this — Sunday, April 14 at 3:22 p.m. — we have exactly 12 days of classes left. By the time this column prints, we will be well on our way to a mere 10. Looking back on this time last year, as we packed up brown boxes full of clothes, threw out nine months worth of trash and headed off to the sometimes-horrifying Myrtle Beach to toast to the school year’s end, I think it’s safe to say we had no idea what we were in for the next fall.
Humility, forgiveness and catharsis created a somber experience in the amphitheater Thursday night, as survivors and supporters gathered in a vigil to cap off this year’s Take Back the Night campaign, a weeklong effort to eliminate sexual violence in the University community.
One in four college women have been sexually assaulted or have experienced attempted rape, according to a 2010 Department of Justice study. Women between the ages of 16 and 24 will experience sexual violence at a rate that is four times higher than the rate for all women. And approximately 32 percent of college students are victims of dating violence.
In an effort to raise awareness about University policies for taking sexual offense charges to trial, the Sexual Misconduct Board presented a mock trial Tuesday. The trial was part of a weeklong sexual assault advocacy program, Take Back the Night, which began Monday.
On Sunday, several hours before fraternities were required to initiate all pledges, the Inter-Fraternity Council hosted its second annual MadBowl Madness philanthropy event.
As last semester wound to a close, University students woke one Saturday to find seven black banners hanging prominently around Grounds. “No man is an island, Entire of itself,” they began, summoning the famous words of the poet John Donne. The Seven Society hung the banners in light of a series of tragic events during the fall 2012 semester, including the death of a student, several sexual assaults and an alleged hate crime. The words invoke the principles of our honor-inspired, student-maintained “community of trust.”
Writing a science article is a bit like coaxing a 5-year-old into eating foie gras. Upon seeing the plate, the kid will become suspicious. He will complain about the color, poke the spongy texture and make a few skeptical faces. He must be spoon-fed the first couple of bites. If he likes it, you’re lucky. More often, you simply realize a 5-year-old won’t eat foie gras and maybe jumping straight from chicken nuggets to duck livers wasn’t the best idea.
The national press surged on Steubenville, Ohio in March, as two high school football players — aged 16 and 17 — were convicted of raping a 16-year-old classmate while she was too intoxicated to give consent. The nationwide conversations about rape culture, prevention and policy that the trial prompted remain particularly relevant on college campuses across the country.
The topic of rape and sexual assault is not easy to bring up or discuss, but here at the University, broaching tricky topics is somewhat routine. Rape discussion has dominated the media recently because of the conviction of the perpetrators of the Steubenville, Ohio case as well as a similar case emerging in Torrington, Conn. Most of us have friends on Facebook reading and posting about these specific cases or just the topic of sexual assault. Pundits have taken on the issue: celebrating the verdict in Ohio, calling for better treatment of the victim by educational and legal systems and, in some instances, criticizing the “be careful” message that arises around rape and sexual assault cases. It is the criticism of the “be careful” message that concerns me.
A University lab headed by Chemistry Prof. James Landers is working with forensics labs to develop a more efficient process of separating sperm cells from epithelial cells, which would have an important impact on sexual assault cases.
While writing my column this week I struggled to find the right words to articulate what I was feeling, which was offended, shocked and saddened. This week, two football players from the athletically prominent Steubenville High School were convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl. The arguments against rape and sexual assault don’t need to be made — most everyone realizes that both are heinous and unacceptable crimes. If this is true, though, how can we explain the disappointing and skewed news coverage of the trial? The Steubenville controversy disturbs me because it points to the larger societal problem of perpetuated rape culture. Society as a whole needs to work on changing attitudes towards rape and its victims. Throughout the Steubenville trial, media outlets such as CNN almost exclusively played the role of rape apologists. Again and again the public was asked to empathize with the convicted boys. The New York Times used a photo of the boys crying to accompany their news story. CNN drew notable criticism for their coverage of the trial, which attempted to humanize the two convicted boys by focusing on their athletic talents and their academic achievements rather than their crime. CNN reporter Candy Crowley posed the question: “What’s the lasting effect … on two young men being found guilty in juvenile court of rape?” CNN’s Poppy Harlow discussed how the boys had to watch their “lives fall apart” and CNN’s Paul Callan said being labelled as sexual offenders would “haunt them for the rest of their lives.” A better concern to raise would have been the emotional impact the crime and the highly publicized trial would have on the victim, and what the trauma meant to her future, but this perspective was rarely explored. The central issue in this case became that the victim had been drinking prior to being assaulted by the boys. Despite numerous text messages written by the victim on the night of her assault, which read “I said no” and “[the boys] were taking advantage of me,” along with testimony that she had never been seen more intoxicated and photographic evidence that she was at one point passed out unconscious and being carried away by her eventual rapists, the victim’s credibility and honesty were constantly questioned. Had she been aware of what she was doing? Had she actually consented to the sex acts? For those who don’t know, rape wasn’t the only charge in the trial. The defendants also circulated nude photos and video of the girl and bragged about their sexual triumphs on social networking sites. Who would consent to that? The victim’s classmates can also be seen in the video laughing and taking no action to intervene. Let me make something very clear: if a girl (or anyone) is passed out or clearly intoxicated at a party, the right thing to do is to call her an ambulance, a cab or at the very least leave her alone. Women do not invite rape, ever, and the fact that issues like intoxication level or choice of attire are even brought up in criminal rape trials demonstrates how twisted our view of the crime is. Those boys made a conscious choice to impose themselves upon a girl in a compromising situation. The girl should not be shamed; the boys should. I am not condoning irresponsible drinking practices. The safest choice would be to go to a party, remain completely sober and be aware of your surroundings. But there is something unjustified in the fact that women are taught by their parents, rape prevention seminars in college, and other sources to anticipate rape if they happen to get drunk. Instead of sympathizing with guilty men so easily, parents and institutions should focus on teaching respect and decency. Rape culture needs to be eradicated, and there are many ways we could do that. I am not saying all rapes are committed by men, or that the victims are exclusively female. That is not the case, and all types of sexual assault are abhorrent. Generally, though, parents, schools, and the news media should teach men to respect a woman’s space, privacy, and vocalized opinions instead of focusing on indoctrinating women with a constant sense of fear. In sexual education classes, the importance of consent should be discussed frankly alongside things like birth control and STI prevention. We should focus more resources on funding PSAs and ad campaigns about consent and how to navigate difficult situations such as parties with alcohol. We also need to encourage media outlets to be more responsible with their coverage of delicate topics such as rape and to present a factual and unbiased, rather than emotional or sensationalized, view of the issue. The Steubenville case effectively proves that rape culture is pervasive and yet almost unacknowledged in American society. There are resources available to educate oneself about issues such as these, but most people are not proactive or concerned enough to take advantage of them. Some people don’t think twice before labeling a girl a “slut,” making a rape joke, or feeling sympathy for a convicted rapist. We are all responsible for the perpetuation of unfair stereotypes, such as the mistaken conviction that victims, drunk or sober, could ever be “responsible” for their rapes or that boys are only being boys when they commit sex crimes. We need to be more conscious of our actions and words to combat this trend. We need to train ourselves to speak more delicately, reach out to victims, and sift through the biased coverage that news networks offer us until things change in a more permanent way.
Crime in Charlottesville should serve to remind us that the community we live in is not always a safe one. And the University’s policies and actions make such a community even less secure. The statistics do not lie: one in four college-aged women are sexually assaulted, yet the University has not expelled a single student for sexual assault in over 10 years.
This semester has brought to light, for me, a topic that was never really talked about during my first year — suicide. Events of this year, both here at the University and around the country, have demonstrated that suicide is an important topic, one that needs to be understood and openly addressed.
Sexual assault against women is all too common, and the University is no safety bubble — as the disturbingly frequent emails from University police regarding fondlings and other forms of assault against female students make clear. Though there are groups on grounds such as the Sexual Assault Resource Agency that help victims of assault, few efforts have been made to prevent the assault in the first place.
A female University student was abducted at about 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning near 513 Rugby Road, the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house, according to an email sent to the University community by University Police Chief Michael Gibson.
Human rights groups from around Grounds joined forces Thursday to raise awareness about sexual and domestic violence by participating in a global campaign called One Billion Rising.
It’s safe to say this has been a politically charged year at the University. Before we even set foot on Grounds, students and faculty alike took up arms to defend the name and position of University President Teresa Sullivan. We were praised across the nation as defenders of justice and democracy as we protested the un-Jeffersonian nature of the entire ordeal in newspapers, in our every day discourse and here in Charlottesville. And here we are, again in hot water, calling into question not the decision of an easily demonized Board member, but rather the very foundation of the university we call home: the honor system.