Maybe add “women should be able to have 1st floor apartment and not worry about being raped.”
But then
When you get the call that the kidney you have been waiting for-- and praying for- is ready for you, you show up. 10 pm, midnight- 2 am. My friend waited years. And you can bet she showed up when she got the call without explaining to the transplant coordinator- “Can’t you ship the organ to Greenwich hospital so I don’t have to park in a bad neighborhood?”
Her new kidney was waiting for her in a renowned center which does kidney, pancreas, multi-organ, etc. transplants and has some of the most skilled transplant professionals in the world. I’m not sure “I don’t go in bad neighborhoods at night” is a message they are used to hearing. Organs become available when a donor dies. There is a protocol to who gets one. But NOT showing up is not an option.
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Thanks for the heads up. Please see my reply to my post. Couldn’t get a gift article, but this gives most.
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These examples are rare condition, which may force me to go.
But that does not contrast with what I said, or I should rephrase, “I don’t go in bad neighborhoods at night unless it is life threatening”. Hope we can move on this.
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This goes back to prevention. This girl didn’t have a sober buddy that night but someone became one. I’m sure many of us have walked drunk colleagues back to their hotel rooms to make sure they got in safe. Not to go in - just to make sure they went in and the door closed behind them.
I’m not sure a class is the answer. I take a lot of training at work but it’s CYA for the company. A lot of this is common sense and that night there was empathy from the person’s friend or acquaintance who mitigated almost all the risk.
No one should have to worry but we can’t cure that. We can act sensibly.
Change some laws - great. But guess what - if someone is assaulted, it doesn’t change that.
Hence the need to stop it from happening to begin with because of actions a potential victim takes. You can’t trust others.
That’s no different in many other facets of life. You don’t go to the restroom at Panera and leave your phone on the table (if alone). You look both ways when the light turns green b4 proceeding.
We all do lots of things we shouldn’t need to. I hope dorms give lessons to first year students -men and women. If they don’t, they should.
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Call me crazy but personally I have worked as a parent to instill empathy and making good decisions from early childhood for my kids and would hope most parents have as well. However while it seems to be “common sense” as you say it’s prevalent in our society and that needs to change. Education is a critical step and if it’s not coming at home then this professor is at least making a difference and speaks from her heart and expertise. Worth thinking about.
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It’s all good but this prof won’t be teaching and with required classes, like at work, people are required to be there. When forced, you’re less likely to take it seriously. We had DISC training yesterday. The texting during and after was of ridicule and time waste. I’d expect a similar response.
I don’t know what they are teaching 3 credits on. Certainly not this. If this can be incorporated great. But maybe it’s a one credit class or a chapter or two of a more substantial three credit course.
Personally I don’t see it as the answer. Could it help - why I mentioned mandatory dorm discussion - sure.
Might it make a guy or girl think twice about forcing a kiss on someone ? Maybe.
I appreciate the effort. I don’t see using one or three credits that take away from other elective areas as the solution. I don’t know why Cornell said no but I can see this as a reason. Plus it’s likely not good marketing which shouldn’t matter but it does. I’m guessing many students (and parents) -not mentioning gender because students come in both - don’t want to hear or read about an obligated class that would bring worry to them before they stepped foot on campus.
Just my opinion.
Unfortunately, most men with these attitudes have probably grown up in home environments with these attitudes and it’s likely deeply ingrained in them. Still, you can have - probably many - men who think like this and still would not rape someone. What’s the tipping point, I wonder?
More important for his frat brothers to think he’s “one of the boys” than to stop a woman being hurt - is that linked to the first quote I made, I wonder, or some kind of herd mentality thing? It’s hard not to conclude that, for the frats who seem to be hotbeds of sexual assault - clearly not all of them - there’s definitely a like attracts like kind of thing going on. Why is it some frats seem to be fine and others just have ongoing issues?
I don’t know that education at college level or to be honest even high school level is going to make a dent in men who grow up with these attitudes. I guess even if it makes a difference at the margin, it’s worth trying. Starfish theory.
I do think her analysis is insightful.
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This is extremely disturbing. Are they waiting to see if “someone else” will intervene, or if others simply look the other way, or of they fear will be ridiculed or ratted out by their frat brothers (for example) or will critique them (“speak up” in that way) for ruining their fun.
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So we tell women to what exactly?
Don’t drink too much, don’t drink alone, don’t walk alone, don’t exercise outside alone, don’t dress too provocatively, don’t accept a drink or leave a drink unattended, don’t be alone with a guy or guys plural( even if you know them)…I could go on and on.
For me the main issue with this Cornell case is that these men sexually assaulted a woman for 10 hours and no one helped. No one spoke up and said “This is disgusting and inhumane “. I don’t care if she was high or drunk. It doesn’t matter. This is basic humanity 101. There is no excuse for this. Because one woman in a room with all these men for all these hours is 
an assault.
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We tell men and women these predators are out there. Watch your surroundings. Be alert. Be aware. Travel in groups if possible.
When you’re in a downtown or in another country, you are told that. If your kids are out, you likely tell them that.
So why are you offended if a female is told that?
Relying on laws to solve the issue is unlikely to work. People still murder. People smuggle drugs into death penalty countries.
You all keep acting like I’m saying a victim is at fault. Haven’t said it once. Haven’t inferred or implied it. And those calling people out don’t seem open to ideas or discussion.
I’ve said let’s do our best to minimize the chance of being a victim. I brought up other examples - not in equal but to show other examples.
The comment is the same. We can control ourselves. Sadly we can’t control others.
Back to the boys said nothing - if they were aware it’s horrible. And I hope it pains them for the rest of their years. I have a few things that pain me from when I was young - not related to SA or remotely close but still things that bother me that I did or others did or said to me. And I reflect on them often. I these boys experience similarly if they were aware of an assault and stood idly by.
But I do think age and peer pressure play in. They’re in the frat, maybe new, and they don’t want to blow that or their new friends. I mean these guys voluntarily go through initiation of getting dangerously drunk or beaten or whatever - so they’ve already proven they may look another way. When I was in college, kids had to carry a brick everywhere and couldn’t respond / talk to a prof. If a prof questioned them in class, there was silence. The professors knew - so in a way they were complicit. The crazy may have happened but I don’t recall it happening.
So at 19-20, gross or not, it’s a reality. I’m late 50s. I couldn’t give two craps what someone thinks. I can’t remember at 19 but who knows - who is to say I wouldn’t have acted as these boys. I’ve never been in the position that I’m aware of but as a non drinker, I’m very protective of drunk colleagues, especially in the big hotels like in Vegas. But even the Alofts of the world. Guys and girls, not just girls. I coordinate partners that are sober ro ensure people get back.
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I have an outsider’s perspective on this matter, even though I have been in the country for 35 years. So let me relate two things that I found to be bizarre. Just to be careful, this is not about rape, but the country’s opinions about sexuality.
When we were transitioning from elementary school to middle school, a new section was being added, and the school took in a bunch of new kids . Some of the existing parents and kids were asked to come to a welcome party for the new families. A whole bunch of parents and kids went, and the parents (mothers) of the boys said they went to check out the new incoming girls to see if their kids had good dating material — this is going from 5th grade to 6th grade. I’ll come back to this thread.
Separately, when my kid was in 12th grade random people at work were worried that he was not dating. They thought this was unhealthy.
And then over the years, I wanted to understand what people understood dating to be. Where I grew up, it often meant something very platonic, and you had sex only after marriage. I was told that here, when you said kids were dating, it was understood that they were making out to some extent or other.
So this last observation together with the two incidents I mentioned above suggest that parents are eager, or keen to see their kids involved sexually, from a very young age. Perhaps more so on the boys’ side. Given this state of affairs from a very young age, how will kids who get to college have anything other than an unhealthy relationship with the other gender? This is a serious societal issue. I don’t know if I am overinterpreting what I saw — I clearly couldn’t go and ask another parent when they said they were checking out girls for their sons, in middle school. It didn’t sound like a joke to me.
While I agree that it was a sexual assault and inhumane experience, it’s also important to list accurate details. When details are exaggerated, those exaggerated details often are repeated and more exaggerated until we are discussing events that did not happen.
It was far less than 10 hours. It also wasn’t all 7 men for all of those hours, although the specific timeline is unclear. The large number of men arrived in the room following the Groupchat message and were only in the room together what appears to be for a very small portion of that period during which they snorted drugs (not sex). 5 left soon after someone walked in the room saying, “Ok we’re shutting down whatever the f*** this is” (someone did attempt to help). The remaining 2 later moved/led Doe to a different room.
I also don’t think being in a room with multiple men for multiple hours means it is “100% an assault”. Plenty of people have consensual threesomes with 2 males that continue for hours. In my opinion what makes it an assault instead involves the lack of consent. In my opinion, this is particularly clear during the latter encounter in 2nd room, in which Doe was more severely impaired than during first threesome. I do not think Doe saying she was tired, rather than explicitly that she wanted to stop excludes this. I realize this is not the NYS legal definition, which is why I said in my opinion.
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Related to this case:
Jane Doe’s attorneys screwed up in court papers, resulting in an innocent person (who never attended Cornell) being identified as one of her attackers, leading to that family being bombarded with abuse:
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I agree there needs to be more awareness about the risks of binge drinking and the need for both women and men to have designated sober friends if they do choose to drink. Someone posted above about a male Dartmouth student who drowned while drunk. This seems to happen on a semi-regular basis to college students where I am. Maybe it’s because we have so many lakes and rivers, but it seems like just about every couple of years there is a male student who disappears from campus during a night of partying and a few days later his body is found in a body of water within walking distance of the party. The families often think their son was murdered, but the BAL is often so high that anybody would be very disoriented and at risk of drowning.
I agree that’s true, yet I still think attitudes can be changed, even by force, if the campaign is kept up long enough. The examples I think of are drunk driving, smoking, and seat belt wearing. Up until MADD (mothers against drunk driving), the cultural norm was that drinking and driving was ok unless you were so drunk you couldn’t walk straight (and even then there was sort of a boys will be boys type of attitude toward it.) And it’s been a long slow change, but drunk driving is no longer cool. And I remember when the first indoor smoking bans came into effect and how UP IN ARMS so many people were. And yet a few decades later almost everyone agrees it’s nice to be able to go to restaurants and fly on planes without being in a cloud of smoke. And remember when being required to even just buckle your kids up was seen as government overreach and was bemoaned as a “nanny state” requirement? Does anybody feel this way anymore? So I believe that cultural norms surrounding sexual assault can be changed from the current narrative of “She shouldn’t have taken those risks” to “He is the one responsible for sexual assault.”
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Why can’t both things be true? He is responsible for the sexual assault, and she shouldn’t have taken those risks. Why is it either/or?
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One of those things is a crime.
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Fraternity Gang Rape - Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus by P. R. Sanday (2007)
sure. obviously. still.. It doesn’t make the non-crime thing untrue.
Because “should” is a word that carries with it judgments about responsibility, fault, ethics. So when we say “Men should not rape and women should not leave themselves open to rape” it becomes a judgement of culpability, and the conclusion becomes that “They both did something wrong.” This is unfair already, and from there it only gets worse, because the next thing people always say is something along the lines of “You can’t control all the rapists, you can only control one person–yourself.” And on the surface this seems to make sense-- sure only control one person not try to control multiple people. Yet think of this in the collective; it means that ALL women must curtail their freedoms ALL the time. And then whenever a woman is sexually assaulted, the conversation always devolves into how she should have protected herself better if she didn’t want to be sexually assaulted.
Should I have to dodge drunk drivers when I drive? Or maybe I should just stay off the roads entirely in the evenings? Maybe I should stay out of restaurants and off of airplanes if I don’t like smoke? Maybe if those kids didn’t want to fly through the windshield they should have picked parents who bought car seats? I mean where does it end with placing personal responsibility on the victim?
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