Sociological imagination project
By: Tyler Hopkins
A rape on campus
This article was about two college girls and there story about how they where sexually assaulted at West Virginia university. Both of them where excellent students that had a lot going for themselves. Jackie was a freshman at WVU and decided to go to a frat party and when she arrived she was sexually assaulted in an upstairs room by multiple frat members. After this situation accrued she immediately told her friends and after thinking they told her to keep it a secret. After this incident Jackie quit her job, began to fail classes and was scared to leave her dorm room. She went to the school for help and they didn't publicize it. It almost seemed they kept it a secret. This article deals with many issues and shows the complete ignorance that some people have.
Big issues
Ignorance of students and even her "friends"
Lack of help provided by the school
Ignorance of students
These kids had no empathy for these girls? They treated them as objects. While the assault took place they referred to the girl as "it". They ruined a persons life and college experience because it was fun to them. Something they had to do to be in, since "everyone did it". These kids thought nothing of it, and it is completely wrong and disgusting that something like this can occur without immediate punishment. It is beyond my belief that the "men" in our generation think it is ok to do this to girls. It is sickening and completely wrong. It blows my mind there is not a more extreme punishment. People get in more trouble for cheating on a test then they do sexually assaulting a girl, and that should not be the case.
Lack of action provided by UVA
UVA officials where aware of the issues that occurred and did very little. Jackie decided to get help and the school gave her three options. Go to counseling, file a report to the police, or have a meeting and confront her offenders. In my opinion these options are not good enough. Large schools like this need to do everything in there power to ensure the safety of its students, and in my opinion the university did not do a good job. They treated this case like it happens all the time (witch after reading the article it seems like it does). An institution this size needs a protocol for this, a system that solves this problem effectively. The worry shouldn't be about the rep of there fraternity's, it should be about the safety of its students. During an interview the president of the school said they keep this topic under the radar because "no one wants to go to a rape school". It seemed to me they where more worried about the school than the well being of its students, and to me that was one of the biggest problems with this whole situation.