Male Privilege In It Happened Here

Despite having hundreds of sexual assault cases each year, most colleges take little action to resolve these cases. In fact, only 20% of female sexual assault survivors report cases, the rest believing that it was too personal to share, or that if they did, the police wouldn’t listen to them. If they did report, often times it was to the local police rather than the campus police in fear that they would be shamed or turned away by the universities.

The alarming increase in sexual assault among male and female students is a source of concern. Despite improvements in the general statistics on rape cases, the college setting remains to be the hot bed of sexual assault, especially among the female counterparts (Allen, 2007). A victim, regardless being a male or a female, never feel safe in their life as something precious was taken from them once. Statistics show that 17.6% of women are likely to be victims of rape in their entire lifetime while only 0.3% of males are estimated to be the victims of sexual assault. According to the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS), the most critical ages men and females are likely to be engaged in sexual abuse is when they are children or adolescents (Gonzales, Schofield & Schmitt, 2006).

“One in five women are sexually assaulted while in college” (Not Alone, 2014). In our class of twenty women that means that possibly five women have been sexually assaulted. Out of the five women that I stated could have been sexually assaulted they may have known the perpetrator and often will not report what has happened. According to the spring count of students completed by West Chester University, 9,211 of those students were females (“Headcount Enrollment”, 2014). If I go by the statistic mentioned earlier that one in five women is assaulted that would mean that 1,842 women have been sexually assaulted while enrolled at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Out of 1,842 possible assaults only four were reported last year. Two of which the victims knew prior to the assault. Rankin and Associates consulting conducted a Climate Assessment on West Chester University in September of 2010, a section of the results focused on sexual assault on students. According to the report seven people who reported a sexual assault to the university described their reactions to the universities response. Two students shared the way they felt the response was inappropriate or poor. One described that they felt the suspension for one semester was not an appropriate response to an admitted rape, that public safety lost the victims statement, judicial affairs painted the victim offender as innocent, and that the registrar protected the offender putting the victim in harm’s way and everyone

University of Tennessee Knoxville was recently involved in a lawsuit for enabling athletes to sexually assault women by silencing the victims and failing to provide disciplinary actions or even investigation onto the accused. While this is a recent case, this is not the first time this sort of behavior involving a school has been brought into light. One in four women will be sexually assaulted by the end of their undergraduate career (Posluszny). Sexual assault happens throughout society no matter what the gender or age, seeming to be in increasing epidemic over the last few years. While the idea of sexual assault is largely met with public hostility in theory, actions often contradict this. This contradiction lies heavily in a culture that is unwelcoming to the victims and often leads to the perpetrators being tolerated. The existence of rape culture in western society occurs due to the preservation of violent media, patriarchal standards, and the state of the criminal justice system. This culture cannot be improved until we confront each of these problems to their roots.

Sexual Assault on college campuses is a national epidemic. Most colleges aren’t doing anything about it. Brown University finally stood up and is in the process of doing something. They are setting an example for what other schools should be doing, especially being an ivy league. Education is a powerful tool and it should be used to educate students on what consent is and how to be an appropriate bystander. Sexual assault on college campuses is a problem that will take a long time to solve, but the ending must start

False reporting does occur, but it is pretty rare “--estimated between 2% and 10%”(Drexler). Although that is not the statistics we want to see, there becomes a bigger concern when we see the number of females that have been victims of sexual assault. “One in five women are sexually assaulted while in college (some reports even out the figures at more than one in four)” (Drexler). On top of that, 63% of sexual assaults, including being on and off campus, are never reported to authority (Drexler). 63% is a large percentage of sexual assaults to not be reported so if a female were to file a report against a male for sexual violence or abuse, it is highly likely that the truth is being told. Situations like these happen and are to be taken seriously. A victim needs support, not ridicule. College campuses should not be a place where victims of sexual assault should be shamed or blamed for what has happened to them,

The film I watched was called The Hunting Ground this film started off very interesting. It showed clips of students finding out for the first time they got accepted to the university of their choice. Most of the students screamed of shock and it was obvious they were thrilled. Then a couple girls get interviewed about their experience their first months at that school, almost all of them had the perfect grades and perfect lives. However, these interviews take a twist when many girls getting interviewed start telling the story of when they got raped, there was also about three guys that were victims of this too. The weird part of it all was that more than half of them got raped by a friend or someone they knew for a while. Many of the victims didn’t know how to handle what had happened to them. If they spoke to friends they could be judged, and speaking to their parents was even worse. After a while of keeping that secret in many decided to go talk to someone in their university office. In almost all of these cases, the person in the office starts questioning them about what they could of changed to avoid it etc. instead of helping them and taking care of this horrible problem. The people in the office ultimately say they will help, but several days pass and the victims don’t hear anything about them. The universities do it on purpose, the statistics show almost all universities never expel students for such thing. They do this to make their campus look safe and to not keep

In the article “Athletic club weekend turns into a nightmare for college freshman” by Carol smith and Lee Van Der Voo, Emily Lorenzen shares her story of being a rape victim. Emily shares her account because she wants to help to prevent rape from happening to anyone else. After interviewing Emily the authors shared a statement expressing that “Emily lorenzen believes that if people hear her story, they will be more comfortable confronting the issue of sexual assault on campus. She wants more conversation, so that men get a clearer definition of rape, face stiffer penalties if they ignore it and administrators learn to reach out to women like her and show compassion. She especially wants bystanders to step up and protect people who are vulnerable.” Rape victims need support to not feel guilty or ashamed, and that is exactly what Emily and her father desire. On this topic, Shipman an influential contributor of the Spokane sexual assault

Despite federal laws issued to combat sexual violence, each year 4,000 college women report to school officials that they've been sexually assaulted. What happens after they file those reports has stirred debate on campuses across the country, leaving parents and students fearful that colleges may not be the ivory towers of security and integrity that appear on their recruitment pamphlets.

Before watching this film, I did not aware of the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses. It surprised me how the school administrations suspected the victims are the wrong people.

In 1988, Peggy McIntosh wrote an article in the book Things Are Not What They Seem: Readings in Sociology entitled “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies”. Such a long title seems humorously unnecessary, is spite of the serious nature of its subject matter. In short, when McIntosh refers to “white privilege” she means that being of white decent allows her a set of assets at birth that people of color are not afforded, simply due to the light color of her skin. McIntosh proposes that white privilege is invisible to most Caucasians because they are not taught by their parents, teachers, or society that they are any better than other people. This is a double-edged sword because, while it allows some individuals to remain humble and socially compassionate, it blinds them to the fact the being white allows to a myriad of benefits not given to those of a darker skin tone. Of the unconscious benefits of being Caucasian that McIntosh listed, the two that I found most interesting were number seventeen (“I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color”) and number forty-six (“I can choose blemish cover or bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them more or less match my skin”). The former interested me the most because I do not associate basic table manners with someone’s racial background. If a person eats sloppily I normally put it down to them simply lacking essential etiquette

To begin with, The College at Brockport tries to prevent all forms of sexual discrimination by hosting mandatory discussion meetings that give advice on how females can prevent themselves from becoming a victim. Usually in these meetings, females are given tips and steps that they can undergo to prevent themselves from being sexually assaulted or harassed. For example, the school tells women to wear more clothing when going out and to control the amount they 're drinking due to the fact that it will have a greater affect on them than it would on a male. The school also emphasizes that males must obtain consent to avoid them from being charged with sexual assault. The biggest mistake that the college makes when addressing the issue of sexual discrimination to students is convincing them that women are

This article deals with the seen and also the unseen aspects of white privilege. The article discusses how male privilege and white privilege are connected to one another. Additionally, this article give 46 examples of how an individual white woman is able to navigate her day with the unseen privileges of her being the part of the dominant group. The dominant group is taught not to see their privilege and most of the time do not even realize they benefit from such a phenomenon.

The Hunting Ground was a very emotional video that highlights a very important issue in our country that most people are not aware of. When it comes to sexual violence, college campuses are more focused on protecting the attacker rather than the victim. What shocked me the most in this film was that most of the faculty members the victims went to seek help from were females, yet the victims were still blamed for their rape. One administrator from UNC at Chapel Hill told a victim “rape is like a football game” meaning that if you look back to that day, what would you have done differently to prevent the rape. Victims who report rapes to university faculties are often questioned about the clothes they wore that day, how much alcohol they had to drink if they said no to the perpetrator, how many times did they said no, etc. Ryan Clifford, a male victim at the University of California, Davis rather than being helped, he was suggested by a faculty member to drop out of school until the situation “blows over.”

A major perpetuating factor in misinformation regarding sexual assault and rape culture is the media. Confusion about what constitutes rape leads many students to question whether or not they were a "real victim". Rape isn't always a violent crime committed by a stranger down some dark alley. It can