American University, Assault & Activism
It has been a long time since students at my college were organized, cooperative, and angry. But I go to American University, and our school paper, The Eagle, is infamous for publishing inflammatory and often antagonistic opinion pieces by a staff columnist- and last week, the columnist chose to write about sexual assault and date rape.
I’ve been working with Women’s Initiative, a campus group, and have regularly had to respond to pieces published by The Eagle and mobilize others to do so. At the beginning of September, the paper published the first of a regular series on sex and dating that told women at AU not to worry about drunk hookups: to think of situations where you couldn’t decipher where you were and what was happening as a growing experience, and not as assault. The column was chilling. In response I launched (con)sensual, a campaign based in artwork and social media that spreads knowledge of and encourages the practice of verbal consent in any and all sexual interactions. I’ve worked closely with THE LINE Campaign since last summer, and wanted to use my experience to begin an open dialogue on campus. I worked with campus organizers on getting the posters in residence halls and bathrooms and further mobilized and collaborated with other groups on speakers and events.
For this reason, words could not explain the frustration I felt when I discovered “Dealing with AU’s anti-sex brigade.” The article proposed a number of claims: that date rape was not a valid crime, that straight women deserved rape for going to parties, and that rape was an innate action and an unimportant issue. The Eagle was at it again! The author stated:
Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.
“Date rape” is an incoherent concept. There’s rape and there’s not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation. It’s not clear enough to merely speak of consent, because the lines of consent in sex — especially anonymous sex — can become very blurry. If that bothers you, then stick with Pat Robertson and his brigade of anti-sex cavemen! Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!
I was horrified by the piece and its publication. I immediately worked on a letter for the editors, and submitted a rewrite of the entire piece that was focused on the importance of consent:
Let’s get this straight: any person who heads to a party and drinks five cups of the jungle juice is unable to provide consent. To justify manipulating someone who is inebriated, taking advantage of someone with physical threats, date-rape drugs, and coercion, and/or disregarding someone’s ability to enjoy or consent to sex is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s back and shooting it in the dark.
I drafted a petition and form letters for others to send to the editorial board. I met with a collective of activists on campus and organized a multitude of efforts to spread awareness of the article’s false and harmful claims. The petition went out later that week, and began gathering signatures. I spent the week in meetings, collaborating and spearheading efforts to work on messaging, make the activists on campus a more productive and cohesive unit, talking to the press, and even being featured on the CBS Early Show. I re-launched (con)sensual, and the new hostile environment that emerged from this article rendered a destructive welcome for the newest shipment of artwork.
We are still working, however, in the aftermath of the piece. We have used the incident to push for a full-time, professionally-staffed Women’s Resource Center, and for the university to hire a full-time sexual assault counselor. I pledged as the WI Rape Awareness & Eradication Dept. Director to stop telling women how to not get raped, and instead educate my campus about the inequalities that create violence and urge them to be a part of a progressive cultural shift to eradicate that violence.
The impact sexual harassment has on the lives of all people, and especially women, is impossible to ignore. Rape is one of the most underreported crimes, and sexual assault is likely to occur to over 25 percent of women on every college campus. Sexual assault happens every day, and every second. For The Eagle to hold up rape excuses and justifications as journalism is revolting. The overwhelming fear of shame most women feel after being sexually assaulted is real and painful, and the memories of their rapes should not be used as tools to combat an oppressive publication. The Eagle, for too long, sold rape controversy to its readers, using it as an impetus for readership and a method to grab the attention of students. They have since apologized- but this entire incident made me aware how fleeting the tenants of respect, consent, mutuality, and communication have become on my own campus.
Tags: activism, assault, college, communication, consent, Media, respect, work
This entire incident has made me aware how fleeting are the tenants of free speech rights on college campuses, where overprivileged suburbanites arrive with the mistaken belief that: A) because they hold it as an ideal, it must invariably be true; and B) that they are entitled to an educational experience that never once challenges these dogmatically held convictions. Just admit it: you are, in principle and in practice, opposed to the tenants outlines in the First Amendment. The least you could do is endorse your totalitarian rhetoric openly.
This isn’t an issue of free speech and it would be nice if libertarian trolls would stop trying to make it one. No one is censoring Knepper, respond to the article itself rather than tangential issues surrounding it.
I strongly oppose the values of this piece, yes. However, the free speech you hold so dear is not what was threatened here. This article threatened the safety of students here on our campus. I would also like to point out the following in regards to the “free speech” argument people have been hurling out (and yes, it is bullshit, and yes, I will call you on it):
1. I go to AU. This is a private university that put a limitation on free speech in the Student Conduct Code. This piece violated that limitation by causing emotional harm to countless survivors on campus, many of whom came forward about it as well.
2. The Eagle is not funded by my campus and is independently funded by advertising. They have the right to censor and refuse to publish any piece.
3. The Eagle came forward saying the piece violated the ethics code for the Society of Professional Journalists.
4. It is illegal to have sex with someone when they are drunk, especially if they are beyond the point of consent. A drunk person cannot consent to anything, not legally. Therefore, the argument of the article does not merit publication based on the journalistic standard that papers do not publish pieces encouraging people to break the law or disregarding its stipulations.
5. The Eagle markets itself as a student voice, and it was not articulating the views of its body when it published this piece. They received nothing but freedom of speech in return, and had to publish the letters to the editor early because of the sheer mass quantity of angry responses.
I am not a totalitarian. I am not opposed to free speech. I love expression, I blog about very controversial issues, and I am open about my opinions. You also enjoy this right, and we both practiced it just now. We disagreed, politely and without inciting rape or shaming survivors of date rape out of coming forward with their stories. See how easy it is to be respectful? Freedom of speech is not freedom to publish or be published. Alex Knepper has no such entitlement or inherit right. Nobody needs to publish an argument that is badly written and without factual basis.
I’m a feminist and a communications student. I have written for various publications and websites. Don’t challenge me on “free speech.”
Also, you do not know me or know anything of my life outside of my staff bio on this website. All you should know, then, is how hard I work for what I love. If you want to throw out words and attacks related to privilege and the suburbs, you should probably get to know me before you make a fool of yourself again.
Well, personally speaking, you have inspired the shit out of me. Here am I, all depressed and anxious in front of my computer screen, until I got word of all the organizing bubbling up at AU. Awesome, fucking awesome.
Obviously Matt and Chris don’t have any other claims to back up their argument other than to dig up “dirt” that has nothing to do with the initial incident.
I am so tired of the free speech argument.
Newspapers, whether on campus or not, do not 1) act as a platform for all voices and opinions, nor do they 2) exist in a vacuum.
1–Editors edit. That’s what they do. A good editor will look at the work they have compiled for publication, and then choose what to publish based on what they think contributes to a given issue of their publication, what they think is an important addition to a given dialogue…there are a long list of reasons of how an editor’s work should be formed. Publishing a piece simply because “free speech exists,” is not how journalism works. People obviously have the right to express their opinions, but they aren’t guaranteed that right by EVERY publication. Editors have the right to choose what they want to publish, to choose what work reflects the kind of publication they want to produce.
Which brings us to point 2–a campus newspaper has a particular role in the community. It is a publication that is meant to inform students, to create dialogue about various relevant issues, and probably also to entertain. But it also operates within a system that has established codes of conduct—one that presumably focuses on the safety and respect of all students. As Carmen rightly points out, this piece doesn’t follow that code. But aside from that, if the editors of the Eagle looked at the piece in question and thought: “this is really valuable. It really adds to the conversation about sexual assault on this campus, it’s an important minority position that deserves to be heard, and is put forth in a thoughtful, mature way” then I would call them severely misguided but say—OK, publish the piece and face the consequences. I don’t think that’s what happened though. I think the staff of the Eagle thought it would be “provocative” and isn’t that neat and just published it without thinking about their role in the campus community. And they pretty much admit as much in their apology:
“However, we should have demanded that Knepper’s column be written in a tone befitting such a serious issue. With a topic as controversial and emotionally charged as date rape, we should have ensured that the column was written in a manner that would have engendered constructive conversation. Instead, it inflamed an already sensitive issue and emotionally harmed many.
We have heard back from editors of newspapers, past editors of college publications and many have said similar things: it should have been more thoroughly edited. It should have been improved. This is true, and we regret confusing better editing for censorship. We apologize for our mistake and will do our best to ensure that it will never happen again.
The basic problem with what we published, and the impetus for our reforms, is that we violated the Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. There is a provision in there that says simply, “Minimize harm.” By publishing this column we caused undue and unnecessary harm by allowing more bombast than reason, more insults than debate.”
ps: Carmen, I don’t know if there is any movement to do policy work at American, but if there is check us out over at SAFER: http://www.safercampus.org. And hats off to you for the amazing work done thus far.
Sarah– Thanks so much! We actually just won the sexual assault policy battle in the wake of this debacle. This is pretty much a summary thus far: http://www.theeagleonline.com/news/story/campus-community-rallies-against-acts-of-sexual-violence/
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