Felony
Arrest
Restraining Order
Prosecution
Expulsion
Jail
Until those words are part of the school's educational conversation about rape, the school will fail to stop sexual assault and will fail to help the victims.
That is the address for the first page of the website for the University of Virginia's Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center.
At that page, there is a video featuring mainly Sharon Davie. A few other people speak in the video, including Claire Kaplan.
Some of the video is informational. Until I had seen it, I didn't know that it took a lawsuit at the end of the 1960s for the University of Virginia to admit female students. It's not surprising that rape has never stopped being a problem at that school, or that every effort is made to protect the male students who are rapists at the cost of the safety of the victims.
Also, the video mentions that there are going to be 4 full-time counselors at the Women's Center.
When I heard that part of the video, I did an Internet search about how many students are at the University of Virginia.
That's a picture that I took after I did that search.
These are pictures that I then took of my phone's calculator:
Are you thinking that I got the numbers wrong, because I divided 4 by the entire undergraduate population and not only by the number of female students?
Did I get the numbers wrong, because it won't be the male students whom the 4 counselors have to counsel?
It won't be the male students whom the counselors have to counsel. They won't be the ones sitting in those offices, talking and hearing about what it's like to be raped.
Claire Kaplan's discussion of her hopes for the future of how the school addresses the issue of sexual assault mentions "bystanders" and "people taking responsibility for others."
WHAT ABOUT THE PERPETRATORS?! WHEN IS THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA GOING TO DECIDE THAT MEN CANNOT RAPE AND CONTINUE TO BE STUDENTS AT THAT SCHOOL?! WHEN IS THE SCHOOL GOING TO INSIST THAT MALE STUDENTS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEMSELVES?!
It's important to have someone to talk to, someone who understands how you feel. Schools that don't provide that to their students, male and female, are negligent. However, the school could hire another 16,479 counselors, one counselor for every undergraduate student, and it would change nothing if the school continued to tolerate rape.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, October 14, 2016 @ 9:05 p.m.
