I actually like the idea of security cameras being mandatory in the hallways of dorms, frat and sorority houses. That would be a very good start to provide some basic corroboration of an alleged assault. It would at least confirm she was there and provide some insight into her condition upon arrival - was she carried into the room or did she walk in herself?
Granted it doesn’t shed light on what went on behind close doors but it would put to rest the idea that the whole thing was totally fabricated.
I know rape happens at every college. However, I too think the letter sent to the Peel was creative writing. I’m not saying this means it didn’t happen, but there are just enough false notes and perfect, cliched literary turns in the piece to make it sound inauthentic to me. It’s a very odd case. I hope the truth outs. No matter what the truth in this case is.
If this letter turns out to have been written by a 50 year old hetero male, it won’t change the fact rape is a huge problem on college campuses.
For those of us following these rape threads since the Rolling Stone thread more than a year ago, I appreciate it may be interesting to speculate about the veracity of the letter. And I’m always interested in JHS’s literary analyses. Always.
However, we have at least one new poster on this thread seemingly stating he didn’t know campus assault was a problem. So it makes sense to me to concentrate on that rather than questioning the letter. We don’t really need the distraction in this particular place. That is just my opinion, It won’t hurt my feelings if no one agrees with me.
I posted before that most women I know, of a certain age, seem to be writing some sort of memoir. And those memoirs all seem to include a rape or assault story. If this particular story isn’t true, just pick another. There are truly too many to count.
I second the idea of cameras in the halls of residential dorms. If students are housed by gender, just cameras in the passages between different dorms might suffice–I am aware that it could feel intrusive to have cameras in the dorms. On the other hand, the video evidence was decisive in the Vanderbilt cases.
There is a Twitter allegation of rape at Morehouse college tonight. Also anonymous at this time, but the poster claims to have reported the event to campus security, and to have completed a rape kit.
For anyone with students heading into freshman year of college this year, tell them to pay close attention to the Title IX training they’ll get. Huge focus on consent education now (finally). And on being an interrupter of potential sexual misconduct.
Video cameras are a very powerful tool. CNN is running a story where they just arrested a man in Ann Arbor, MI who was spraying produce and food bar items in grocery stores with rodent poison. Without that video they may never have been able to identify him.
Well, I would say that there appears to be no basis that it is a work of fiction, either. It could go either way. Certainly there are rapists at the 5Cs. In fact, one of my D’s friends there was raped by a boy in HS who is now a student at another 5C. She didn’t press charges… and now has to see him on campus. He was, in fact, elected to a position of authority in campus government recently, which makes him quite visible in the 5Cs community. I admit, I used this discussion with my daughter to remind her that she needs to report and be examined if anything happens to her – keeping guys like that out of the colleges and helping potential future victims.
@dyiu13 - It is a problem at the graduate level, but much more severe at the undergrad level. The surveys revealed that at some schools over 30% of the females are sexually assaulted during their time as an undergrad. The average across all surveyed schools was 27%.
This is a very big problem.
Here is a summary from Harvard. The individual school reports are available on line and contain much more detail including rates by year.
“maybe the writer is an English major”. One of the odd things about this account is that while it’s written more in the style of a fictional story, as though someone thought about how to structure it and possibly did a few revisions, the account itself is full of writing errors, as though it had been dashed off and not even proofread. Again, this doesn’t mean the assault didn’t occur, but it’s a strange way to present it.
I also feel that publicly naming a dorm but not the alleged perpetrators is really not OK. Regardless of the truth of the account, there are plenty of innocent guys in that dorm who have now been cast under suspicion, and I’d be furious if my innocent son lived there.
If she is, she’s not especially good at it – the story is poorly executed, and full of cliches. In my mind, to some extent, that’s something that cuts both ways: There are elements of the story that don’t ring true, but the bad writing itself feels very authentic, like there’s a real person there who is trying to process something really upsetting.
Another part of my reaction, I have to admit, is the similarity of this story (including its lacunae) with the repeated pre- and post-rape flashbacks during the first season of Veronica Mars. I don’t know how many current freshman women are Veronica Mars fans. Ten years ago, the answer would have been “lots,” but it has lost its cultural currency. And it’s not like the show’s depiction of the rape was particularly unique. But it does start, like the letter, with the protagonist waking up in a bedroom in someone’s house, in the wake of a party, without her underwear, and being exposed to cruel comments as she leaves. Shots of her feeling alienated at the party, and passing out, waking up, being mocked, then walking home, are repeated in multiple episodes. The incident changes the main character’s life, and motivates her to stay outside her school’s social hierarchy and to bring malfeasors to justice.
In any event, that, too, does not mean the story isn’t fundamentally true. It may be fundamentally true. And 16% of female Harvard seniors who say they have experienced unwanted sexual penetration during college – they’re not making it up.
Back in the day (late 80s, early 90s), date rape was covered extensively in the freshman orientation program I was a part of it. I was so naive that the presentation startled me in its detail (I was a very sheltered late-bloomer) and the impression it made on me stuck all four years – never went to a party without a friend, never drank out of a cup I did not pour myself, never went up to a room with a guy unless our intentions were aligned …etc. They made us go through a co-ed small group discussion after the presentation which embarrassed me by its frankness. Do they not do this anymore (my eldest is a rising HS senior so I don’t have first hand knowledge of recent orientation programs)?
Maybe a thorough “shock and awe” sexual assault program needs to be reinstated in freshman orientation? This type of program acknowledges the reality of what could happen and makes it a community conversation. If it doesn’t give the campus any protection from legal liability, it’s still a good PR move to let the female students know that administrators are responsive/sensitive to this issue and puts the boys who are tempted to try this on notice. I know this won’t prevent all rapes, but putting it all out there in the open was very helpful to naive students (like me at the time).
The tone of the letter also caught my attention but were have no way of authenticating it. Word of the rape made it to other area campuses as soon as it hit the Peel, according to my D who attends a Los Angeles college.
My girls were taught in high school health not to drink out of a cup they didn’t pour and supervise. It wasn’t the sort of thing they taught in health when I was young.
Date rape through drugs is actually quite [url=<a href=“http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10369321%5Duncommon%5B/url”>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10369321]uncommon[/url]. Most people who think they’ve been drugged are actually just underestimating the effects of the alcohol. In this way, date rape drugs are a lot like stranger danger: the real danger is the people you know and don’t suspect. Drinking from your own cup is certainly good advice, but it pales in comparison with simply drinking responsibly.
I work with the sexual health education program at my uni. There are very, VERY few things that will shock freshmen. Most of them think our very explicit, required education programs are a joke.
Yet, these are the same freshmen I’ll see in October wanting an HIV/STI test and telling me that they were coerced into sex at a party (from them saying “no” but didn’t feel they could leave or else they’d be hurt all the way up through passing out and finding out in the morning that they’d “had sex”). (And then I have to explain to them that I have to make a sexual assault report- after reminding them several times that I would have to before they started telling their stories- and being adamant that they did not experience a SA.)