Washington Post Article Urging Schools to Stop Keeping Quiet about Rape
Jaclyn Friedman - a writer and activist well known for being the editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape - wrote an article for the Washington Post titled, “To combat rape on campus, schools should stop keeping it quiet.” She shared her experience of being sexually assaulted in college in 1992. Her attacker returned to campus sooner than her school promised, which triggered a final semester “haze of fear, hiding and post-traumatic stress. While Friedman was able to finish school, she pointed out that most survivors aren’t so lucky - most drop out of school altogether.
Friedman brings up some great questions that many who are new to the world of sexual violence advocacy - whether this should just be left to the police to handle, rather than the grossly inadequate systems of the school. One paragraph that sums up the sentiment as to WHY schools should care about expelling rapists just as much as (even more than?) they care to expel cheaters:
Even if our legal system handled rape cases brilliantly, schools would still have a responsibility to maintain a safe and equal learning environment for everyone - and that means doing everything in their power to ensure that female students don’t find their studies interrupted by the kinds of fear or trauma that male students rarely are forced to imagine, let alone confront. That’s not just my opinion - that’s the legal standard set by Title IX, the same federal regulation that has been so successful in ensuring that girls have a fair shake at athletic opportunities. The Supreme Court held in 1992 that Title IX - which broadly prohibits sex discrimination in education - specifically obligates schools to prevent and remedy sexual harassment and assault.
It is extremely hard to deal with living on the same campus as someone who has hurt you. It is even worse when you’re on the campus governed by the people who, threw their inaction, have sent the message that a survivor’s safety (and the rest of the campus’) is not a priority.
Allowing rapists to go unpunished does not maintain a safe and equal learning environment that Friedman writes schools should be striving to achieve. Our society already has huge discrepancies in access to education - and that access gap is even larger when it comes to attending Tufts University. I am just one of many victims of not just rape - but by the injustices committed against me by Tufts who refused to do its job to 1) make the campus a safe space for me and 2) make sure I still get my equal access to education.
If you haven’t already, I urge you to read Friedman’s article. Unfortunately not a l0t has changes since 1992, but I hope that this year will be the beginning of a long period of change - where schools aren’t afraid of the truth and that they want to help rape victims not just because it is the law, but because it’s the right thing to do.
Originally published at Tufts University Survivors of Sexual Violence. You can comment here or there.