Feminist Issues on Campus

I took a few months off from posting here on Feministing mostly because there are a lot of issues on campus that I know about but haven’t named or even begun to address. The difficulty lies not with being able to recognize that there are problems on campus. There certainly are enough of those to go around. Instead, the problem that I have with the problems is that there are very few feminist groups on campus where I can go and discuss these problems so we can figure out what we want to do about it. For me, a problem isn’t named until a potential solution is named as well.

I am sure I am not the only person who has discovered these difficulties, but for what it’s worth, here they are.

The first and most obvious problem I see is that the overall concept of feminism on campus — at least at Shippensburg University — still remains something of an unknown entity that people don’t want to mess with a lot. This not only includes students, but faculty and staff as well. Without the Women’s Center and the talented people who work there, feminism as a concept could easily disappear into the aether like so many other ideas that college administrators don’t spend time thinking about for various reasons. Fortunately, we do have a Women’s Center and feminism remains strong for the people to whom it matters.

Unfortunately, to those who aren’t familiar with what feminists work towards or what we stand for, the pitch is always difficult. I imagine myself as a guide leading people into unfamiliar territory that is supposed to be populated with angry territorial natives who don’t hesitate to skewer the first hapless traveler who wanders into the new country. In reality, the country of feminism is a place filled with hopeful ideas and strong people. Feminism is a place like any other place where people simply want to be treated the same as any other person would be treated- no more and no less. The stigma around feminism seems to have arisen largely because of people who haven’t explored the country.

The solution, then, is to relentlessly introduce feminism to everyone on campus. Feminism cannot afford to hide itself because equal treatment of women is not going to arrive of its own accord. While the Women’s Center is an important part of every college, it will take an effort on the part of all the students and faculty to change the culture of misunderstandings in which feminism exists today. It will take more than holding meetings that most people don’t attend; it will take events offered as extra credit in just about every class that’s being held that semester. It will take interactions with groups outside campus, speakers being brought in, visitations to Student Senate sessions, and an inordinate amount of elbow grease. To help others redefine the word feminism as positive term — rather than negative — it will take a stubborn attitude and a refusal to quit.

The other issue that I’ve noticed on campus is the somewhat anachronistic attitude of campus police that involves the issue of rape. Since it’s assumed that all college students drink to excess — a stereotype that isn’t disproven very often — it is also assumed that violence towards women attending college and the consumption of alcohol are inextricably linked. Unfortunately, this disregards the underlying issues that inspire violence and/or allow it to become socially permissible. As people, we naturally assume that our ideas are the best ones and that our actions are infallible. Only through self-reflection can the fallacies of these attitudes be understood. Regrettably, people who are in the middle of imposing their violence on someone else are not likely to stop and consider the implications of their actions. The heat of the moment is red-hot and whatever happens, whether it be the result of pre-determination or impulsive behavior, is going to be carried through towards whatever conclusion. The nagging voice of conscience has already been ignored when things have come that far.

Had the voice of conscience been given a fair hearing, it would have declared that forcing oneself upon another when that person would choose otherwise is wrong. It’s wrong because women are people just like everyone else (this includes men and people who do not identify with either gender). Just because women might be less physically strong than their male counterparts does not entitle men to treat them as though they are weaker in other respects as well. Women are just as intelligent, just as enterprising, just as worried about the future and just hopeful of success as men are. A culture that doesn’t take sexual harassment lawsuits seriously (just look at the comments if you don’t believe me) can hardly be expected to view rape as a concern worthy of attention.

The truth is that sexual harassment and rape are not that removed from one another. It’s just a difference in degrees on how much a man (or a woman) wants to impose their will and their desires on a woman (or a man). On a college campus, where students living in dorms are largely unsupervised for the majority of each day, anything can (and usually does) happen. Stopping rape from happening on campus isn’t a matter of increasing supervision or increasing the police presence on campus; instead, it’s a matter of changing the attitudes the genders have towards one another. Rather than assuming that men and women are vastly different, it would be better to illustrate the ways in which we’re all similar. After all, isn’t the perceived difference — in this case, perceived inferiority — the one thing that promotes rape above all else? Isn’t the reason why we never hear about women raping men is that women have been socialized to believe that men are their social superiors?

If the playing field were leveled, I believe there would a decrease in violence. Colleges everywhere are in a unique position to do something about it because the amount of educational opportunities is literally endless. With paid staff and student activist groups, it is definitely possible to make positive strides on campuses towards solving this (and other) problems.

At Shippensburg University, we are making our own strides. Every fall, we hold a tulip planting ceremony to raise awareness for domestic violence. We have a group called REACT that helps with fraternity and sorority programming and assists victims of violence on campus. Our counseling center, though understaffed and overworked, is always available for people who need it. Every spring, we hold a “Take Back the Night” event in which people come and speak about their experiences of being molested or otherwise abused. Our student feminist group of which I am a part, FMLA continually advocates for women’s rights everywhere.

When it’s all added up, we’re doing a lot despite the fact that in everyday life, it sometimes seems like a raindrop fighting a mountain. With enough raindrops and enough time, the mountain can fall. All it takes is absolutely persistence persisting absolutely.