There's a Brock Turner in All O(UR) Lives
The University of Richmond faced public scrutiny after a student, Cecilia Carreras, published an essay recounting her experience with reporting her sexual assault to the administration. The University responded poorly to Cecilia’s critique. She depicted the administration as one who does not justly investigate rapes nor punish offenders. After reading her article, the audience can clearly see why she wrote about the administration in the tone she did.
Cecilias’ article was published by the Huffington post early September of 2016. The article reveals the sickening truth about rape on college campuses. One in five women will be sexually assaulted during their years spent at a University and very rarely are the offenders rightfully held accountable for their actions. Women are afraid to come forward about their rape, because there is a high likelihood that the University will cover its tracks and sweep the issue under the rug.
The way administrations deal with this very prominent issue impeding on the lives of college students has a great impact on this issue. Far too often rape cases are dismissed at the administrative level. Why is this? Universities are trying to preserve their good name, or what is left of it, because no college wants to be known for having a high number of reported rapes.
With the lack of attention and care payed to rape victims on college campuses, the majority of offenders get off without so much as even a warning. Cecilia touches on these very important issues that threaten the safety of men and women on college campuses. She calls into question the way administrators deal with the issue of rape. Rape is a severely unattended issue on college campuses and is far too often hidden from the public eye.
Cecilia titled the article, “There’s a Brock Turner in all o(UR) lives,” following the recently exposed case of a young woman raped by an athlete attending Stanford. Her reference to this case revealed a serious issue on college campuses: the lack of justice for rape victims, especially when the accused is a student athlete. Over the past two decades, people have begun to investigate instances of college rape cases, a large portion of which involves college athletes. There is a great issue facing college campuses and the safety of their student population, as the instances of rape accusations rise while the number of convictions stay strikingly low.
She provides shocking statistics from a survey on campus sexual violence conducted by the Collegian. In 2015, half of the women surveyed at the University of Richmond had experienced a form of unwanted sexual contact from a peer. As she investigated more and more into sexual assault on her campus, she was more disgusted by what she found. Cecilia makes an analogy that I believe to be very impactful:
As I learn more and more about other women who have been sexually assaulted, I realize that at Richmond sexual assault is like our meal plans. Except for the part that we don’t want them (but one in four of us experience them anyway). Except for the part where they don’t cost $3000 (but they do leave us with long-term emotional trauma). Except for the part where you’re not sitting around a table laughing with your friends (because for some of us going to the dining hall is something we’re terrified to do).
Cecelia includes her own story to share from firsthand experience what it is like to report a rape on a college campus and the response given by school administrators and her peers. In Cecilia’s case, she was raped by a student athlete. When she reported her assault to the administration, she had already prepared herself for endless questions and some hint of doubt in her story. What she did not expect was the lack of empathy and offensive responses she received from the administration. Shockingly, one administrator even said “I thought it was reasonable for him to penetrate you for a few more minutes if he was going to finish.” An offensive and disgusting comment such as this should never come out of the mouth of anyone, let alone a school administrator.
There is a tendency for college administrators to mishandle rape cases and mistreat the women that come forward with their stories of sexual assault. When college athletes are the accused rapists, the University does what it can to keep them on the roster, even at the expense of the rape victims’ safety.
Cecilia publicly calls into question the entire University of Richmond administration and athletic department. The administration, meant to protect all students attending the University, justifies reported rapes and creates an unsafe environment. Cecilia’s hope, in sharing this essay, was to call attention to the lack of justice for rape victims at the University level. More than that, she states that the entire rape culture in Universities needs to be changed. The treatment of rape victims by fellow students makes the process of reporting a rape even more difficult. With the mistreatment from administrators and fellow students, it is no wonder there is a higher likelihood that rape victims will not report their case.
What people seem to forget is the prevalence of rape among college campuses. Anyone could be a rapist: the guy that sits next to you in class, your friend on the football team, the guy that sits across from you in the cafeteria. The statistics are so high that you never know if you are safe. Cecilia puts it best, “There’s a Brock Turner in all o(UR) lives.”
Carreras, C. (2016, September 6). There’s a Brock Turner in all o(UR) lives. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/theres-a-brock-turner-in-all-our-lives_us_57ceca16e4b0b9c5b73a3c65