Tag Archives: Yale University

Wednesday Campus Activism: LINK OVERLOAD

Posted on by

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 Maryland found that in the past ten years, only four students were found responsible for sexual assault.

The Columbia Spectator has been running a lot of great material on campus sexual assault, but this piece on the disciplinary process is a must-read. This lengthy article from the Georgetown Hoya is also quite impressive.

I’ve been collecting stories for a week on the fantastic action being taken at the University of Oklahoma. Last week students were celebrating the results of their hard work, as the school’s president agreed to increase the statute of limitations for reporting a sexual assault from 30 days (!!!!! what???) to one year. He has also said he will work on implementing mandatory sexual assault education for incoming students. The student movement started when one survivor came forward with her story about coming up against that ridiculous statute.

I’m a little behind on this but: The USC Walk-Out for a Safer Campus? Yes.

Students at Boston University are saying that they don’t know how to access sexual assault services or what’s in the school’s policy, and they want better education on the issue.

In response to the Title IX investigation pending against the school, Yale has put together a committee to review sexual assault policies and procedures. There are no students on the committee, but the school has arranged strategy sessions between faculty, staff, and students to get student feedback.

With all of this momentum, major news outlets are paying attention, with both Time and CNN running stories on campus sexual assault, and the NY Times taking a position. What’s next?

Tuesday Campus Link Round-Up

Posted on by

I came to my computer today ready to write an incensed post about how the De Anza civil trial is playing out, to find that Cara at The Curvature had me covered. Please read her post for the full update on the trial, but beware the depressing amount of victim-blaming/”slut-shaming” involved in this case.

Last year, SAFER did a training at SUNY Geneseo, where a survey of students showed that “about 15% of women and 8% of men in [the sample] were severely sexual assaulted.” I was excited to read last week about their Sexual Assault Teach-In, which included a presentation from the awesome folks at Green Dot.

The National Union of Students in Australia is undertaking a large-scale survey of college students, and has so far found that “1 in 10 female students have experienced sexual violence while in university.”

A student at San Diego State University describes her frustrating experience with campus police after being raped and beaten by her then-boyfriend. She wanted to file for a restraining order, but the campus police would not release the report to her, which included the photographs of her injuries. Here’s something you never want to read: “I was at Staples taking pictures of my bruises, doing all of this on my own, paying out of pocket.”

Jessica Valenti called out university responses to sexual violence this weekend, mentioning the Yale frat chant, and the recently released recommendations of the task force that was subsequently formed at Yale. The recommendations focus on education, but the full report can be found here.

Finally, there is an interview with Heather Corinna of Scarleteen over at Where is Your Line? I really loved her answer to the question “How do you think we, as young activists and students can best make a difference?” and wanted to share it here:

Value your own voices and experiences where they are right now and get them out there, ideally to a larger audience that just the people who you’re working with. I often hear young people who feel that there’s no point in them speaking up and out because older people won’t care or some peers won’t care. However, even for those who won’t care — and whose adultism is their problem and bias — plenty do care, and more to the point, your peers do care and they need to see and hear you to help them feel and be more empowered.

Everyone also needs all of you to speak to where you have been and where you are, rather than trying to speak from a place that isn’t yours, or is a place you’re not at yet, but think you need to be at to have authority or earn respect. Not only do you not need to be anywhere but where you are, giving your own experiences and the you-of-right-now the weight they deserve, and YOU giving them authority is incredibly powerful. Not just for you, but for other people who, by virtue of age, gender, of having been victimized, who are of color, who are in any way oppressed and silenced by someone else. Doing that models that authenticity is more powerful than conformity and that oppression is something we have the capacity to change, even when we’re the ones oppressed, and we do that not by making ourselves people we aren’t and more like those who are oppressing us, but by refusing to be anything other than ourselves.

When Meaning Well Isn’t Enough (One more response to the Yale frat)

Posted on by

I’ve been reading about the Yale situation all week (you know, the one where the DKE fraternity pledges chanted “no means yes, yes means anal” among other things). Ashley mentioned it here on Monday, and I’ve read a lot of great responses, both from Yale students and from other writers.

But today I watched the video for the first time (or listened, it’s mostly audio) and was really disturbed. Reading about it is gross. Hearing a large group of men chant those words, loud and aggressively, over and over is actually really frightening. And it was right after I listened that I read this interview Tracy Clark-Flory did over at Salon with a DKE brother who wasn’t involved. And though he repeats over and over how the behavior wasn’t representative of DKE as a whole, and none of the members would “condone sexual violence”—in fact they are all respectful of women!—I couldn’t find it in me to be sympathetic. I appreciate his honesty and the clear remorse and embarrassment, but there is an inability to connect the dots that I find really frustrating.

The anonymous DKE brother refers to the chanting as an “unfortunate joke,” notes that it was “wrong” and inappropriate” and points out that the frat apologized (actually I thought it was a pretty good apology, as these things go) and has been taking steps to make sure some kind of productive dialogue comes out of all this. But he maintains that the vile language isn’t indicative of any real misogyny, either at an individual level or within the fraternity system in general. When asked about the general association between frats and misogyny, he says:

The first reason is that fraternities are one of the few remaining all-male institutions still in existence, and therefore have become associated with the misogyny more typical of a previous time.

Well, I actually think that chanting “no means no, yes means anal” and “fucking sluts” is actually pretty indicative of our time. I see this tendency, among many young men and women,  to separate words from action. We’ve all heard it before—just because I’m calling something “gay” doesn’t mean I have anything against gay people; now, just because I’m chanting about raping a woman doesn’t mean I’d really do it. And I’m sure that the vast majority of the DKE brothers chanting that stuff don’t condone violence against women. In fact I’m sure most of them are perfectly nice guys. But language can be violent too. And just because you didn’t intend it to sound that way, doesn’t mean it can’t sound that way.

So it’s not enough to say “we didn’t mean it, and it doesn’t reflect our values.” It’s not even enough to recognize it as violent in its own right. You need to stop and consider how language like this became a “joke,” how anyone thought it was a funny/acceptable pledge chant, and how none of the men refused to go along with the plan. This doesn’t happen by accident—it happens because even really well-meaning people don’t think about the role of language in structural oppression. Or to put it simply: they don’t think about how words matter, or about how the words and the actual physical/sexual violence are both part of a culture that downplays violence against women. The fact is that even if you can cite a lot of social changes that denote a move away from “misogyny of a previous time,” what happened at Yale didn’t happen in a vacuum. It has a history, and the men chanting have a place in that history that they should be able to recognize.

I dunno. I’ve had a long week and I’m not sure how articulate I’m being. I think what it comes down to is this: I’ll be really happy when I’m living in a world where no one could, with any sincereity, claim that they truly respect women and don’t condone violence while also engaging in shit like this. Because in this perfect world, everyone will understand the inherent conflict in those words and actions, as well as the connection between words and action on a much larger scale.