Summer+AS’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Title of Speech= Sexual Violence

=Text of Speech=

The other night I was watching Democracy Now and came upon this interview with a student from Brown University that was raped by another student. The rapist was only given a punishment of a semester suspension. Although he decided to not continue to attend Brown, it became clear that this campuses administration was OK with allowing an assaulter back onto campus keeping in mind that nearly two of every three college rapists is a repeat offender. They decided to not protect the victim or the other potential victims on campus in exchange of giving the offender admission.

But this case at Brown is not a rarity whatsoever. Sexual assaults are happening all over our country at the most prestigious schools from Columbia to Berkeley to Harvard to Yale; 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted on campuses.  And there is a recurring theme of the administration not doing anything about these assaults and even attempting to silence them so they can save their reputation. It has reached the point that the institution is more concerned with protecting itself than protecting the people in it. And as that continues, more and more women are leaving their schools because their assaulters are not expelled.

And I see this culture of silence towards violence and acceptance of sexual harassment occurring on Foothill’s campus as well. Maybe a few months ago, I was in class and I got in an argument with four other guys sitting at my table. They were arguing that thinking about raping people was okay and basically, that I had no authority over the conversation because, I’m a girl, and I don’t have any understanding of what goes on in supposedly “every man’s head.” This conversation was already going nowhere because these guys were completely discrediting me and dominating the discussion. So what happened next was that one of the guys said, and I quote, “I could rape you right now.” None of the other guys, although they heard it, said anything.

The conversation was pretty loud since the rest of the class was quiet, and so the teacher came over, clearly knowing the nature of the conversation, and instead of condemning those students, the teacher told us to move on with our work.

I couldn’t help but think that if I had said “I’m going to shoot you tomorrow” the entire table would have made a huge scene and I probably would be suspended. But I guess gun threats aren’t as serious as sexual violence and sexual threats.

The teacher’s refusal to acknowledge what was being said, is to me, indicative of a structural problem within our schools in which we ignore sexual assault or discuss it in a very limited way. And when it is talked about, we talk about it in the context of “personal experiences,” or “women’s issues” when the issue is bigger than personal experiences, and should be treated as such. When we call it a woman’s issue, I think the only thing we are doing is delegitimizing it and telling men that they shouldn’t be concerned or willing to stand up when something bad happens...It’s a woman’s burden. The silence and complicity of the three other boys at my table is definitely expressive of that type of thinking.

I know a lot of people will think I’m crazy when I say this, but I think that the dress code (or at least the way it’s implemented) is another aspect of the school system that fosters the “blame the victim” and “ignore the real issue” type of mentality which spreads even more in college life. Personally, I have never been dress coded but I know plenty of people who have, and for the most ridiculous reasons, like showing an inch of their stomach. These rules are implemented with the weak justifications that they have to monitor women’s bodies so that the male students aren’t distracted. The defense for these arbitrary rules is definitely catering to the belief that women need to change themselves rather than changing the real rooted issues, which is a constant acceptance of violence in our country. The argument that what she’s wearing is too distracting is literally an argument people make when a woman was raped to delegitimize the fact that she was raped and it really doesn’t matter what she wearing, or even if she was wearing anything. I think it should really freak us out that the justifications used for controlling what women wear is the same justifications that are used for defending rape.

Earlier this year I wrote an opinion article on the Dragon Press about the dress code. I used an anonymous source that claimed an administrator had grabbed this student by her see-through-ish shirt thinking she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. The source claimed that after the administrator realized that she had a nude tank top underneath, the anonymous source carried on with her day and wasn’t dress coded. I sort of got in trouble for writing this though. An administrator complained and the end result was that I had to take that portion out of my article. The explanation for having to remove it was because it was an anonymous source and the claim was pretty serious so there were some liability issues, which, don’t get me wrong, I completely understand. But what I was taken aback by, is that there was, at least to my knowledge, no further investigation in that claim. The administrators were not comfortable with it, so I had to take it down. They said that “no administrator has done that” and that was that. No decency or feeling of responsibility for the student who was grabbed by an administrator. No effort made to investigate this event.

These instances at Foothill obviously are not the same degree as what’s happening on college campuses, but it definitely is the starting point for violence in college. The way that teachers and administrators and the institution as a whole deals with these problems, on high school and college campuses, is uncomfortably similar. Instead of having concern for students and addressing serious issues in a mature way, they are ignored and silenced.

I want to live in an America where when a woman is sexually assaulted, she is not shamed and outcasted, but rather, her offender is. I want to live in an America where people in power address the structural reasons for sexual violence in highschool, so that when we reach college, we aren’t completely blindsided. I want to grow old in a place where I can go on a run without worrying about creepy old men yelling crude comments from their car windows; where I can go to a college and feel safe that if something ever happened to me, I would have a strong support system, not just from friends, but from the institution itself.

I want to live in an America where these physical and verbal assaults emerging as comments and jokes are not taken lightly; where in fact, they make people angry--women and men alike.

I want to live in a world where when a boy makes a rape comment to a girl, the rest of the table doesn’t pretend they didn’t hear it.

=Cite Your Sources=