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<p>“I can tell you that one night a drunken girl got into my S’s bed without invitation. She pee’ed on his Latin books,”</p>
<p>THIS is the caliber of student admited to Amherst? I wouldn’t hire someone like this to muck out my horse stable, and these are our most elite and brightest?</p>
<p>MythMom’s son attends Williams. And the qualities of one Williams student do not reflect the qualities of all 2,200 Williams students.</p>
<p>Amfreborg, as Kwu points out, this story was not about an Amherst student – go back a few posts and re-read. However, things like this can happen at any college, even among the “most elite and brightest.” </p>
<p>All kinds of other things happen there too; innovative thinking, invention, social action, writing and designing, engineering, analysis, scientific research, historical study and art restoration… the list goes on and on. So if you want to fixate on some poor behaviors of drunken kids (which go on at all colleges unfortunately), go ahead, but you’d be missing the important part of the picture.</p>
<p>I know an EMS professional who lives in Hamilton, NY – is regualrly called to “situations” at Colgate. The “situations” he’s described include over done bing drinking, drug OD, and sexual assaults. As Mike Rowe says in his Ford commericals = “I’m sensing a pattern here.” </p>
<p>Then this …
[Trey</a> Malone, Late Amherst Student’s Sexual Assault Case Never Reported To District Attorney’s Office, Officials Say](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Trey Malone, Late Amherst Student's Sexual Assault Case Never Reported To District Attorney's Office, Officials Say | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>Oh, and regarding the “all college campuses” excuses … we’re not talking about all college campuses. Or are you saying there’s no difference between Fla State/Penn State and Amherst/Williams students?</p>
<p>amfreborg ( applied ED last year), sorry you were rejected from Amherst and now have a lot of extra time on your hands</p>
<p>I haven’t read this whole thread, but the kid who killed himself was arrested on Felony charges the day before he killed himself. Amherst expelled the kid who they found guilty of sexually assaulting the victim. </p>
<p>Enough already. We are all responsible for our own behaviors and our own choices, no matter how ill-advised or impulsive they may be. I am sorry for this kid, but he had big problems that have nothing to do with the sexual assault. If you read his (very articulate and poignant) suicide note, it is heartfelt until he goes off on the rant about statistics and sexual assault. Clearly 1/5 women and 1/7 men don’t go and kill themselves. </p>
<p>This poor soul’s issues are not Amherst’s fault. I see no indication that Amherst did not respond appropriately.</p>
<p>Lillypod … yup, lot’s of Schadenfreude … and at least I know I’m safe from homosexual rape and cover-up.</p>
<p>I attended Amherst College for the first time this year in the midst of all of these sexual assault scandals. In that time, I have seen the students rally together to create change in the culture. Rape, particularly rape of females, is less of an Amherst College problem and more of a cultural issue in the United States. The statistics indicate that it is common and often results in being unreported in the entire country, not Amherst College. I have never once felt unsafe on campus, nor have any of the friends that I’ve talked to about this. It isn’t as if there are masked rapists running around campus. The victims of rape at Amherst tend to put themselves in situations where they are more at risk, where they are intoxicated and alone with another intoxicated person. I am not blaming them, but it’s extremely unlikely for two sober people to rape/be raped on campus. If this concerns a student, the student should either refrain from drinking or have a buddy system in which friends keep track of one another.</p>
<p>The administration has taken many steps to combat the way they handle these types of situations. I have not heard any feedback yet, as I haven’t heard of anyone reporting a rape. However, if you’re looking for a school that’s willing to face the real issues then I’d suggest Amherst. From what students from other elite institutions have been saying, their administration’s policies are not much different. If you’re concerned about rape (and you should be), I’d suggest working to change the culture of the United States, not Amherst College. There are always people looking out for you in the community - Campus Police, administrators, and, most importantly, other students. Believe what you choose to, but the policies and protocol may not be much different from Amherst College. If they are, then you have yourself a great institution. However, Amherst College is home to some of the happiest students I’ve ever met.</p>
<p>I do not have any connection to Amherst. I looked at this thread only because of the articles about the female rape victim I read online and in the NYT. One person (a local high school girl) who commented on an online article (I think it might have been the article in the Amherst student newspaper) said she said she could not walk through the town of Amherst without being sexually harassed by male Amherst College students.
I am old enough to remember the days (1970s, in my case) in NYC when teenage girls had to cross the street to avoid the catcalls of construction workers at a construction site. My sense is that this is not the huge problem today it once was. I suspect this is not a problem in most college towns. Yet, if post written by a high school girl in Amherst, MA is “for real”, it would suggest to me that the culture at Amherst College is still deeply anti-women and that they never “got over” going coeducational. The current students at Amherst were all born decades after Amherst College went coeducational, but it sounds as though institutional memory at Amherst runs deep.
If this is all true, the new president has her work cut out for her, and her job is much bigger than most of us appreciate.</p>
<p>@Amfreborg, your comment, “THIS is the caliber of student admited to Amherst? I wouldn’t hire someone like this to muck out my horse stable, and these are our most elite and brightest?” is funny and I’m presuming it was offered more mockingly than critically. One of my best friends at Middlebury graduated in the top ten of his law school class at Stanford, yet my first memory of him at school was when he pee’d in his dorm closet. My point is that there are plenty of ridiculous nights and stories at almost any school (no matter how elite). </p>
<p>Also, to those claiming this is a problem related to all NESCAC’s and their history of all-male education, I’d like to remind you that Colby has been coed since the early 1800’s and Middlebury has been coed since 1883. That means there is no one alive who remembers when these schools educated men only (and there’s probably no one alive whose parents remembered such a time). This is not a NESCAC culture. The NESCAC schools are all small, with top-tier academics, but that’s probably the limit of any universal statements we can make. While they have many similarities, they also have many distinguishing features.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/452118/original/Toward_a_Culture_of_Respect_Title_IX.pdf[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/452118/original/Toward_a_Culture_of_Respect_Title_IX.pdf</a></p>
<p>It’s a sobering read. 5% of Amherst women, and 1% of Amherst men had experienced unwanted sexual penetration in the past year.</p>
<p>To suggest that the same things happen at all colleges is ridiculous. It’s the culture. At Amherst, it’s the prep-school, pre-Wall Street old-boys’ network, among other things. Miami of Ohio has similar problems, even though it is not as “elite” as Amherst. So does Dartmouth. Many, many colleges do not condone or turn a blind eye to students doing such things as, oh, let’s see…having a pig roast advertised with t-shirts and posters featuring a woman in a bra and underwear being roasted on a spit while a cartoon pig smoking a cigar looks on. Yes, this happened at Amherst in one of its “underground” fraternities. This simply would not happen at my son’s school or in most other tolerant, respectful environments.</p>