Sarah

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By Sarah • 12 years ago

Disgusting UVM Fraternity Questionnaire Sparks Outrage

Today finds me crawling out of blog hibernation to point ya’ll to the latest installment of “College Boys Just Want to Have Fun…By Demeaning Women and Making Jokes About Rape.” Today’s episode takes place at the University of Vermont, where a puzzling and revolting survey was recently distributed to the brothers of Sigma Phi Epsilon. We were sent a copy of the questionnaire, which mostly consists of benign questions like name, birthday, major, amount of time with SigEp and favorite SigEp memories, hobbies, future goals, etc. It’s actually kind of nerdy and cute, until you get to the final three “personal questions.”

1. Where in public would I want to have sex?

2. Who’s my favorite artist?

3. If I could rape someone, who would it be?

We come across a lot of gross stuff at SAFER, but the contrast here makes this particularly jarring and offensive. It’s not the usual litany of purposefully offensive garbage; it’s a seemingly legit, “normal” survey with this one horrifying nuggets thrown in at the end. The normalization of the question—the nonchalance—is so…disturbing.

As often happens with these kind of “frat shenanigans,” the survey made it into the hands of other folks on campus, who were understandably upset and are taking action. This petition was started last night by “Feminists from UVM” and is already up to 375 signatures. This is what they have to say:

This egregious expression of rape culture is only the most recent example of systemic sexism at UVM. The ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

Don’t Tell Women They’re Responsible for Rape and Then Wonder Why They Call It “Unwanted Sex”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sexual assault statistics, and so has Sandy Hingston—she recently wrote an article in Philadelphia Magazine that is a lengthy attack on Title IX protection for campus assault survivors, explored through the lens of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM). I’d have to write a novella if I wanted to respond to all of it, so for the moment let’s focus on Hingston’s discussion of stats:

What’s interesting about the 2007 Justice Department report is that its researchers didn’t ask the 5,446 female students who took their online survey if they’d been sexually assaulted. They decided for the young women, who despite their on-campus training and ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

Media Coverage of Campus Rape: What’s Wrong With This Picture

Obviously, we at SAFER appreciate that with the increased federal attention to the issue of campus sexual violence, increased media attention has followed. More stories heard—and more survivors given the opportunity to speak out—means that more assaults will be reported, more activists will be driven to action, more schools will feel the pressure to respond, and more policymakers and other stakeholders will take note. But the media has this funny way of not getting things quite right.

Over on our blog, Twe, one of our Board members, has been taking the media to task for the lack of representation of survivors of color and the focus on black male perpetrators. Check out her posts, and think about representation ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

Cal Poly and the University of Hawaii Petition for Better Policies

Petitions can be a great tool to show the strength (in numbers!) behind your campaign. During SAAM, I highlighted a couple of Change.org petitions that were focused on campus sexual assault policies. This week I was alerted to another, this time from the community at California Polytechnic, where three rapes have been reported just this May. Two of the rapes were reported in the same dorm, and one at a frat party.

The Cal Poly petition has a lot of great stuff in it (and we were so thrilled to see that they cited our Change Happens Manual as a resource).The writers are calling for ten main improvements to how the ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

Take Note Universities: UVA is Paving the Way

A little behind on this, but it’s still noteworthy and extremely important. Although a number of schools have started to make minor changes to their sexual misconduct policies in light of the OCR’s Dear Colleague Letter, the University of Virginia is the first to really do a full re-vamp (because they had started the process a few months before). On May 4th they released their revisions, and are having a public comment period that lasts until May 20. SAFER recently held a training down at UVA thanks to our former ED, Margaret, and we know those students are hard at work getting their comments together.

But a lot of these changes seem ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

Campus Sexual Assault Activism: Link Overload

I can’t even wrap my head around everything that’s going on right now. So many students doing awesome work, and in the midst of it all SAFER has endorsed the Campus SaVE Act (more on that soon). It looks like Sexual Assault Activism Month is going to end on a number of high notes. Just look at all of this:

Washington University, Stanford University, Brandeis, and Swarthmore all made policy changes in light of the OCR “Dear Colleague” letter, sparking some campus dialogue on the issue. UMass and the University of Vermont are making some important changes as well.

After three years of investigating, student journalists at the University of ...

I can’t even wrap my head around everything that’s going on right now. So many students doing awesome work, and in the midst of it all SAFER has endorsed the Campus SaVE Act (more on ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

De Anza Civil Trial Comes to a Close

This was originally posted at Change Happens. Background on this case can be found here.

And no one was found liable. I can’t say I’m surprised, given how the case played-out in court, with all the “look at this party girl acting all slutty, how could she be raped?” garbage. And guess what? That tactic works. Let’s hear from some of the jurors:

But other jurors believed the men and other witnesses, who testified that the girl brought beer to the party, performed a public lap dance and invited them in explicit terms to have group sex.

“She came there kind of looking for it,” said one male juror, a ...

This was originally posted at Change Happens. Background on this case can be found here.

And no one was found liable. I can’t say I’m surprised, given how the case played-out in court, ...

By Sarah • 13 years ago

Campus News Round-Up: SAAM Week One

Let’s Start with the good stuff this week:

How great is this? The USC Walkout for a Safer Campus. At least 100 USC students staged a demonstration around that disgusting frat email we were all alerted to a few weeks ago. Key to their protest was the lack of a substantive administrative response.

Hey Canadian students—I am loving SlutWalk.

If you were wondering whether or not schools were actually going to respond to the new OCR guidance, check out the speedy response from the University of Iowa. Other schools, take note!

And now, the week takes a turn for the frustrating:

Discussion and student unrest with the school’s policy continues at Reed. Reed’s policy is currently in ...

Let’s Start with the good stuff this week:

How great is this? The USC Walkout for a Safer Campus. At least 100 USC students staged a demonstration around that disgusting frat email we were all ...