‘5 Uncomfortable Truths About Rape on College Campuses.’

Today one of our members shared this article with me. I found it pretty eye opening in a few aspects so I thought I’d share. His points are powerful and though crude, they hammer the issue home in several ways.

Here’s the quick version of ‘5 Uncomfortable Truths About Rape on College Campuses.’

#5. Doing the Right Thing Will Hurt the Colleges

“Colleges with higher reports of rape see a drop in enrollment, despite the fact that they may not actually be the worst places to be.”

#4. College Administrators Are Experts at Shutting Down Activism

"They keep tenured faculty in control using similar means: They treat them as personal equals, they encourage them to form committees, study problems, provide the administration with advisory reports, and by the time the administration has unambiguously ignored the faculty's advice, so much time has passed that the faculty has forgotten the problems or is just too tired to fight for the solution. It's even easier with students because they're gone in four years, and over the summers."

#3. Rape Prevention Training Is a Massive Undertaking

“Studies have found that men will admit to rape if you don't describe it as rape. This doesn't mean that all men are rapists, or that men are evil or stupid or anything; it means that they're not educated about sex, what it means, and how to go about it. And we're going to stay that way if left to our own devices, because there's an inherent terror in discovering that something you thought was OK is actually hurting people, because no one wants to think of themselves as assholes. It'll take way more than a half-hour seminar to get over that kind of mental block, but gosh, I'd argue it's worth the time.”

#2. We Are Terrible at Thinking About Sex

“Nothing I'm saying should be taken as an attempt to take pressure off of criminals. Rapists should be punished. I seriously can't stress that enough. But I'm not content to merely punish people after a crime is committed -- I want to prevent that crime from ever happening at all. And I think making people feel more comfortable with themselves, their urges, and their junk might be a good way to accomplish that.”

#1. This Isn't a "College" Problem

Besides, if you finish school and go into graduate school, you're still going to have to deal with rape. If you go join the Peace Corps, you're still going to have to deal with rape. Hell, if you Google "rape [your profession]," odds are you're going to get some hits that depress you. Everywhere is terrible. Everywhere.”

What does this mean? I think these points are worth bringing to a discuss on how to help improve rape conversations in general, not just colleges.

#5 – Yes I would be leary of attending a place with a high crime rate, such as rape, but I might be more convinced if they had a high conviction rate to go with it.

#4 – After being in college myself, I can definitely say it is a fact colleges will wait for personal fuses to fizzle out.

#3 – One of my ex’s was a virgin and to be honest the first time we had sex it was awful. Not in that it sucked, but he did things that borderlined rape feelings and I was too scared of screwing up our relationship to tell him. I think if we increased education and understanding on sex and rape it could have helped prevent that.

#2 – Though this one is hard to serperate from point #3, I think it basically follows the lines of educating yourself better. Basically not just punish, but prevent by keeping it from happening to start with.

#1 – Rape IS everywhere, we shouldn’t just limit this to a college issue.

On a side note he made a very important point as to why no one reports rape:

“And why is rape underreported? Because doing so changes the way other people see you. You become part of a national controversy. If your friends and family find out, they might start condescending to you by warning you off of certain movies or TV shows, assuming that you're suddenly a fragile piece of china that must be constantly protected. Reporting an assault isn't just one difficult conversation, it's thousands. And in every single one, there's the risk that that person won't believe you.”

That fear is one of the most important driving factors in preventing healing. Not only get justice and convict, but actually start to heal from a victim to a survivor.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-uncomfortable-truths-about-rape-college-campuses_p2/#ixzz39HJJ3bDY

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