I just came back from a long business trip to Israel last week, and have begun to catch up on my reading. As I skimmed through weeks of magazines and newspapers, I was overwhelmed by the sadness I felt around Ferugson and the fiery explosion of what feels like a new era in the fight for civil rights in our country, along with the breakdown of democracy and tolerance that I had just experienced in Israel.
And then I read the Rolling Stone article about campus rape at the University of Virginia. And I felt like time had stopped.
In fact, I felt like I was reading about my own college, Union College, 30 years ago. For when you have a school that is overrun by the Greek system, as both Union and UVA are, the story is always the same.
Drinking. Frat parties. Racism. Classism. Homophobia. Ugliness. Misogyny that knows no bounds. And rape.
Yes, the Greek system is supposed to be a place of fraternity, of brotherhood, of community spirit. You can read in your alumni magazine about all the wonderful things the brothers have done to help the poor in the city, to replant gardens in the cracks of the sidewalks of the dilapidated sections of town, of raising scholarship money to help needy students.
What you don't read about is the hideous herd mentality that takes over drunken 19 and 20-year-old boys, who, generally speaking, have come from a place of privilege all their lives, and believe that they are impermeable to repercussion. Fraternities are elite clubs, with each class of brothers looking to replicate themselves in the next class, thereby inbreeding their membership and giving the brothers a safe space to act out their innermost fears of the other outside their impenetrable houses. Offering the nod and wink of a fellow traveler when one brother screws up in some way, or displays behavior that is not acceptable in polite company.
And most of all, it is a place where the basest instincts of boys regarding girls can come out and be cheered.
Date rape, campus rape. However you describe it, it is rape. It is proceeding with sexual relations, in any form, without the consent of the other person involved. It can be as simple as two students who find themselves in a clinch, and one decides she doesn’t want to go any further, and the other decides that he is going to ignore her and proceed.
Or it can be hideous and violent gang rape, by seven fraternity boys, one after the other, including one using a soda bottle, as what was described as having happened at a fraternity party at UVA in the Rolling Stone article.
In either case, it’s rape.
Thirty years ago, I was attending a fraternity party at Union College, in Schenectady, NY. It was not my favorite activity at Union, but being a small college in a town with no social activities for students, and a campus of 2,000 students and 15 fraternities, it was often the only option for socializing on a Saturday night. As a member of the Union College Women’s Network from the day I stepped onto campus, I was well aware of debasement of women that happened at these parties, but at the moment, it seemed at harmless way to grab a beer and see some friends.
As I walked into the frat house, I heard a woman screaming upstairs. I raced upstairs, and was confronted by a big, burly guy, hands crossed against his chest, guarding a closed door. I asked what was happening and if they needed help. He told me there was nothing happening, that I should mind my own business and go downstairs.
I wish I could tell you that I summoned all my strength, wrestled him away from the door, flung it open and rescued the woman who was screaming inside. But I didn’t. I slunk back downstairs, upset and frustrated that I couldn't help. I left the party deflated and angry.
I decided to write a letter to the campus newspaper, which was printed later that week. In it, I derided campus security, saying that it would have been fruitless to call them, as they would have taken too long to get to the scene to have prevented or stopped the perceived crime.
That was a mistake on my part, both not calling security, and calling them out. Instead of an outcry from the normally staid and non-political campus about the potential rape that had occurred, I got admonished by the campus administration for badmouthing security, and they demanded a public apology from me. No one talked about what had happened at that party, only that I had embarrassed the adults.
Furthermore, I started to receive taunting and threatening anonymous phone calls from fraternity brothers. My roommates would answer the phone “Fraternity Antagonism Society,” something of which I, and I suspect they, were more than a little proud.
And that was it. But I knew it had happened. And several years later, when Alice Sebold wrote an essay in the New York Times Magazine’s Hers column about her own campus rape (which later became her book, “Lucky,”) I sent a letter about my experience to the magazine. They would publish it, they told me, only if I mentioned the name of my college in my letter, which I was reluctant to do. But I did, and the letter ran, and soon after I received a phone call from a woman who told me that her husband had been at that fraternity party, and that there was indeed a rape, and the young woman had quietly left school shortly thereafter.
My guess is that the perpetrator (or perpetrators) graduated on time.
I don’t want to damn every man who has ever been a member of a fraternity. I am sure that the vast majority of fraternity brothers grow up to be kind, goodhearted, upstanding citizens. Some probably are even good guys during their heyday of belonging while in still in school. One of my favorite men belonged to a Union fraternity (they called themselves a “society” precisely to differentiate themselves from this kind of behavior) although he himself has publicly condemned the conception of brotherhood as an adult.
And not every campus rape is a function of drinking from a keg at a frat party. But when you see and read about campus drinking, it is often fraternity-driven. Kegs run wild and free at frat houses, usually the only source of alcohol available to underage drinkers on campus. Boys and girls both see drinking as a way to loosen their inhibitions, to let loose and free after a hard week of studying, and ultimately, perhaps, lead to hookups. Hookups, while having the potential to lead to misunderstandings in the harsh light of the next morning, are fine, I guess, so long as both parties understand what they’re doing. That’s a different story.
What is not fine is when boys take pleasure in watching girls become incoherently drunk, and decide that now is the time to pounce. Or to bring in a few friends to join in the fun. Or to succeed in overpowering a girl to fulfill a hazing requirement for membership.
That is rape. And it is hideous. And it is scarring. And it is morally, ethically, and universally wrong. And the boys who are the perpetrators deserve having the book thrown at them, and having their bright and entitled lives derailed, for they certainly have done damage to the girl whose body and mind they have so cavalierly violated.
I don’t suppose Greek life is going away. But maybe the consciousness being raised now, thanks to Rolling Stone and other recent media attention, will cause college administrators to act a little more forcefully and transparently around the issue of campus rape. Even the idiotic and hackle-raising piece by conservative columnist George Will last spring, in which he decried what he believes to be a so-called "epidemic" of campus rape as an indication that colleges are coddling their students through unchecked, rampant progressivism, raised awareness. Maybe this will actually reduce the numbers of rapes, by percentages. Maybe it will offer a safe space for young women to report their rapes, to take charge of their lives, and to make sure their rapists get what they deserve.
And maybe, just maybe, it will change the nature of our society just enough to allow young women and men to conduct the dance of growing up together without the violence, degradation, humiliation, pain and damage that has been inflicted by the scourge of campus rape.
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