With the semester getting underway, University students are slowly adjusting to the weight of their academic workload. For the estimated one in four college women who are victims of rape, that load is a bit heavier than their peers.
Columbia University senior and rape survivor Emma Sulkowicz is currently protesting the Columbia administration who she says have mishandled the investigations and dismissed her case, allowing her alleged rapist back onto the campus.
Sulkowicz has vowed to carry her twin-sized dorm mattress, the setting of her alleged rape, with her to class and around the university until the student who she says sexually assaulted her is expelled.
It’s no secret that rape is a burden that the victim must bear. And it only feels heavier when your University’s actions tell your rapist that he isn’t a rapist. But that’s what happens when we dismiss rape allegations without seeing the case through.
There are three dangerous circumstances which occur quite frequently on college campuses, each of which allow a rapist to believe that they are not a rapist.
Rape prevention has been telling young women on college campuses for years that dressing a certain way, acting a certain way and avoiding certain places will lower their chances of being raped.
But dictating what women should and shouldn’t do in order to avoid rape only helps them not to be the one that gets raped. Taking these precautions isn’t going to end the campus rape epidemic, it’s going to put my name lower on the list of possible rape victims. It’s my chance to make sure that someone else is the one getting raped.
These “precautions” that are available for me to take are nothing more than a checklist for a rapist to justify their rape. After all, I knew someone might not be able to control themselves when I went to Tigerland dressed like that.
The second is the catchy slogans which attempt to get male college students to show that they are gentlemen who won’t stand for sexual assault because “real men don’t rape.”
Let me make myself perfectly clear — any individual of any gender or sexual orientation is capable of rape. Rapists do not dress a certain way, they aren’t from a specific race or socioeconomic class. And they are definitely real men and women.
Slogans like “real men don’t rape” make rapist allegations contingent on a quality that can’t be proven. And they offer handy dismissal for rapist allegations based on the personal testimonies of people who knew the alleged rapist and “can’t believe that he could be capable of such a thing.”
That saying allows a rapist to look in the mirror and say “Oh, good. I’m not a rapist.”
The third idea is that rape jokes are only harmful for rape victims. No one would want to look a rape victim in the eyes and tell them a rape joke. But what about telling rape jokes to rapists?
When you describe LSU’s victory over Sam Houston State last week in the same manner you would describe sexual assault, you don’t just make light of a victim’s suffering. You make light of a rapist’s crime. You’ve justified their actions, proven that rape is just another facet of life.
And all for a few laughs from your friends.
We have got to get to the point where rape on LSU’s campus is as taboo and outrageous as public cannibalism in the parade grounds would be. And that starts by changing the way we approach the conversation on campus rape.
Jana King is a 20-year-old communication studies junior from Ponchatoula, LA.