Sociological Imagination Project
By: Alexia Garvin
A Rape on Campus:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119
The article is about the rape case that happened at the University of Virginia to a woman named Jackie during a party at a fraternity house. It talks about how the University had failed to respond to the assault, which inst the first time they've done this. After telling her story and trying to make what happened apparent to the public or anyone that could help her she failed to do so because the school refused to make notice of what happened. That is when Rolling Stone published her story which led to people, outside of the people she has already tried contacting, to help her.
Broader Issues
This kind of thing leads to bigger topics in the world. It takes us back to our society being known as having a "rape culture." When something like this event takes place and a school or organization doesn't do anything about it, it causes even more conflict than the story itself. For instance, if the University of Virginia would have done something to help Jackie in the first place it probably wouldn't have led to Rolling Stone writing an article about it. Our rape culture society all depends on peoples actions. If people wouldn't do things like that to others in the first place then we wouldn't have that rep in our society.
Sociological Imagination & Empathy
Sociological Imagination is basically the relationship between experience and society. And with that, the perceptions of the actions of others is examined by many different perspectives. Some look at it as something that just happens all the time, hence the "rape culture." So it's basically looked at as something normal. But there's also the view that this is wrong and that something needs to be done more to prevent more cases like this to happen. People that are more empathetic are the ones that can either relate or just would choose rather to help than to ignore it. The authors of Rolling Stone and Teresa Sullivan, the university president, are more so empathetic because they made moves in order to bring justice to the situation.