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2014 was the year college sexual assault became impossible to ignore
College sexual assault isn’t a new problem. But this year, it suddenly started to seem urgent. This came about in part due to increased scrutiny and reporting on individual cases, and in part because the White House and Congress got involved.
Much of the credit, though, goes to a group of committed activists: victims of sexual assault who blamed not just their assailants, but also their colleges. They haven’t solved the problem. We still don’t even know how common campus sexual assault really is. But one thing is clear: it’s no longer something colleges can sweep under the rug.
This is an incredible success. Few groups of women in their early 20s have been able to get society at large to sit up and take notice of their issues. But these activists did — and here’s how it happened.
1) Title IX became a secret weapon against sexual assault
(David Sherman/NBA)
Title IX, the landmark law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, turned 40 in 2013. But it’s looking like its first four decades were just the prologue. It’s now been reinvented as a powerful weapon in the fight against campus sexual assault.
“People think it just had to do with girls and basketball,” says Lisa Maatz, the top policy adviser for the American Association of University Women. “It’s much, much broader than that.”
Since 1980, colleges have been required to protect students from sexual assault as part of their Title IX responsibilities. But that was a little-known and rarely enforced feature of the law until the Obama administration sent a strongly worded letter to colleges in 2011 to remind them of their responsibilities. Among other things, they directed colleges to use a lower standard — “preponderance of the evidence,” or a 50.1 percent likelihood of guilt — when adjudicating sexual assault complaints.
The Obama administration’s focus, which later widened to a White House Task Force on Sexual Assault, is part of how the issue became so widely discussed this year. Congress got involved as well, including new rules for colleges that passed as part of the Violence Against Women Act renewal and a study by Sen. Claire McCaskill on the prevalence of sexual assault. “You’ve got new rules, you’ve got White House interest, you’ve got stronger enforcement,” Maatz said.
But policy conversations don’t explain the groundswell of complaints on campuses. When the Obama administration sent the “Dear Colleague” letter on sexual assault, just 19 complaints were filed that year to the Education Department alleging that colleges had violated students’ rights. It In 2012, there were even fewer: just 17.
But then the numbers started climbing. In the 2013 fiscal year, 32 Title IX complaints were filed. And between October 2013 and October 2014, fiscal year 2014, there were 96.
Title IX gave victims “a legal framework for what otherwise could have been easily dismissed individual narratives,” says Alexandra Brodsky, one of the founders of Know Your IX, an activist group on campus sexual assault.
2) Smart organizing made people sit up and take notice
Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia senior, carries a mattress in protest of Columbia’s sexual assault policy. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
A handful of women, all recent college graduates, have organized survivors of campus sexual violence and their allies to put the issue front and center. And proposed legislation in Congress and recommendations in a White House task force report were taken directly from student survivors, Brodsky says.
Annie Clark and Andrea Pino, who filed a Title IX complaint against the University of North Carolina, were willing to use their real names and put the issue in the spotlight in 2013; they’ve now formed End Rape on Campus. It’s staffed by other sexual violence survivors who have filed well-publicized complaints, including at Occidental, Swarthmore, and Columbia. Know Your IX has a similar purpose and structure.
Both groups made it clear that campus sexual assault was part of a national problem. And they managed to get policymakers to listen not just to their issues, but to their proposed solutions.
“We didn’t all come from policy backgrounds, but experiencing a problem firsthand provides a certain kind of expertise and a freedom to think about creative solutions,” Brodsky says.
And while some students who went through sexual violence choose to remain anonymous, the new national groups have also given a broader platform to those willing to put their names to their stories.
3) Media reports of badly handled sexual assaults became more and more common
Part of the reason campus sexual assault went on the agenda was the media. At Florida State, the New York Times reported, an allegation of rape against the football team’s star quarterback was barely investigated, let alone punished. At Occidental College in California, a lawsuit from a student expelled for sexual assault led to accusations that the administration was punishing students who speak up. At Columbia, Emma Sulkowicz is carrying her mattress with her in protest until the man she said raped her (who says he is innocent of the charge and was not found guilty by a campus panel) is no longer enrolled there.
And before the Rolling Stone story on an alleged gang rape at UVA unraveled, it started a national discussion about fraternities and sexual violence.
News stories like this don’t happen on their own. Many of these stories required alleged victims who were willing enough to speak to reporters — in many cases using their real names, part of their real names, or their photos — about what had happened to them.
It’s possible that society is moving toward greater openness about sexual assault in general. More than a dozen women have publicly put their names to allegations that Bill Cosby had raped them, for example. But the organizing work created a network for sexual assault victims and a way to talk about the issue as a nationwide problem.
“It’s only in the last couple of years that people have started to feel comfortable coming forward and putting a real face to the issue,” Brodsky says.
That visibility is a big reason for why the issue made it all the way to the Oval Office this year.
Campus sexual assault reports a complicated tally
Parents hoping to get a grasp on reports of sexual assault at the University of Virginia will have to look beyond statistics, according to experts.
Although much of the narrative of a Rolling Stone article describing an alleged gang rape at UVa has fallen apart, the university is still under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for the way it handles reports of assault. It also is being sued by an anonymous student who claims she was raped in 2012 and administrators mishandled evidence in her case.
There were 14 “forcible sex offenses” on Grounds and 11 in the surrounding area in 2013, according to information gathered under the Clery Act. The numbers represent an increase from 2012, when there were six on-Grounds assaults and five off-Grounds.
University administrators and experts agree that it’s an underreported problem. Allison Kiss, director of the Clery Center in Pennsylvania, said higher numbers might be a good sign because it means victims feel safe reporting sexual assaults.
“That leads me to believe they’re doing programming on this,” Kiss said. “I think we’re breaking down that myth that higher numbers is a bad thing.”
Adding to the confusion, it’s not totally clear when an incident must be counted as “sexual assault.” One parent quoted in the Rolling Stone article complained that her daughter’s case had been marked down in a university police report as “suspicious circumstances.”
Dana G. Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said colleges are required to report a very broad range of conduct as “sexual assault,” including uninvited touching. But cases that are reported to university administrators — people designated by the university to counsel rape victims — would not show up in police reports.
“This is one of the reasons why many of our campus chiefs would like to ensure that Title IX investigations and complaints are always reported to the campus police,” Schrad said.
Frank LoMonte, an attorney for the Student Press Law Center, said law enforcement does not have much wiggle room in reporting, but they can count a report as “unfounded” if they determine the victim’s story wasn’t credible, he said.
“If after the passage of time, they conclude there are credibility problems with the story, that is a gray area,” LoMonte said.
University officials are working on an anonymous survey on sexual assault that is expected to help them gauge the problem. The idea is to get a handle on how many assaults take place, how much the problem is underreported and what’s keeping certain victims from coming forward. The survey is expected to go out in the spring and continued annually.
In the meantime, the lack of concrete numbers could be confusing for many parents. Kiss said families should be looking at substantive policies, rather than sheer numbers.
It’s important for a university to make the reporting process clear, give victims a variety of options in writing and allow victims the option of keeping the incident confidential, if they so choose, Kiss said.
A university that talks about the problem — through outreach campaigns, for example — and conducts yearly surveys is one that’s working on addressing sexual assault, rather than sweeping it under the rug, she said.
“The more you talk about it, the more people will come forward. It kind of gives you a sense of how to approach the problem,” Kiss said.
Officials from UVa administration and the UVa Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Harvard Law Agrees To Sex Harassment Resolution
Harvard Law in violation of Title IX
Christmas wishes and rape
Wishing for the same things.
In the wake of the controversy over Rolling Stone’s story about campus rape, and the response from The Washington Post, I have a few wishes:
I wish solid reporting on sexual abuse on campus received the attention it deserved.
I wish that rape victims always were treated with the respect, seriousness and care for the truth that Kristen Lombardi so well exemplifies. Her nine-month investigation in 2009 won her several national journalism awards. But it didn’t prompt to the media attention that Rolling Stone’s story did last month. (And praise to Post blogger Alyssa Rosenberg for reminding us that telling the stories of rape victims demands special skills from journalists.)
I wish Rolling Stone’s sensational rape story had held up and that the reporter had done a better job checking her facts before questions about the veracity of her explosive central anecdote undermined in some people’s minds the fundamental premise…
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Columbia Rape Protesters Pay Fine With Giant Check Written On Mattress
Article below found on Jezebel.
Student anti-rape activists at Columbia University issued an extra-long Fuck You to the school’s administration today by dumping a mock-check written on a mattress in the University President’s office. The delivery featured the same kind of mattress the students were fined for damaging when they used them to protest their school’s atrocious record on handling complaints of sexual assault.
In September, Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz, who says she was raped by a classmate who has been accused of sexually assaulting two other female students, began carrying her mattress around in protest of the school’s ineptitude, a project she called Carry That Weight. By October, the movement had spread; later that month, students participating protested by carrying 28 mattresses—one for every Columbia student who signed on to a Title IX complaint against the university over its mishandling of sexual assault. The movement brought national attention to Sulkowicz and embarrassment to Columbia. Exactly the sort of attention that one would think an image-minded institution would be keen to avoid.
Until they responded to the protests by slapping its participants with a $471 fine for damaging their mattresses.The nonprofit group Ultraviolet offered to pay the fine, but Carry That Weight wasn’t done rubbing the Columbia administration’s nose in it.
This morning at 10 o’clock, students from the group carried the giant novelty check/mattress across campus, until they arrived at University President Lee Bollinger’s office. Once they were there, they read the following letter aloud:
Dear President Bollinger,
On October 29th, hundreds of students gathered in the pouring rain to protest Columbia University’s treatment of survivors of sexual and dating violence. Student activists and survivors organized the rally with Carry That Weight, an organization committed to ending violence on campuses. We marched with mattresses to your house, chanting “Rape culture is contagious, come on Prezbo, be courageous!” We left 28 mattresses on your doorstep, representing the 28 students who filed a Title IX complaint against Columbia, and delivered a list of 10 demands. After months of inaction, we hoped you would take this opportunity to finally step up and address our urgent concerns.
Instead, you threw our mattresses in a dumpster and slapped us with a fine for $471. The mattresses are a symbol of the burdens that survivors struggle to carry with them each day on this campus. This response makes your priorities abundantly clear: You value the reputation of this institution over the safety of your students, and would rather throw out survivors’ pain than acknowledge the harm your administration has caused. President Bollinger, you are making us pay for the trauma that we have endured. This is reprehensible.
Survivors and activists in our community have been calling on you to effectively prevent and respond to sexual and domestic violence for over a year. On April 24th, 2014, 23 students filed a Title IX complaint against this University. In August, 5 more student survivors joined the complaint. Also in August, you released a new GenderBased Misconduct policy without any student input and ignored the policy proposals we wrote at your request. Since then, Emma Sulkowicz’s senior thesis Mattress Project: Carry That Weight has called national attention to the injustices survivors have been forced to carry alone for too long. You have not responded once to this piece, and her serial rapist remains on campus today.
Your administration is still punishing students who commit rape and abuse with merely a slap on the wrist, and failing to provide survivors with the protections and support we need. Our goal is and always has been to work with your office to address these critical concerns. However, if you continue to ignore our needs and retaliate against us for speaking out, students on this campus will remain unsafe, and this conflict will continue to escalate.
Today, we will pay the fine your administration has tried to minimize as a “clean up charge.” But let’s be clear: If this fine went to support the maintenance workers who, under your instruction, did have to carry the 28 mattresses to a dumpster, we would readily pay them. This money will not go to those individuals. (And this is not the first time you have tried to hide behind University workers for your administration’s mishandling of sexual assault.) This is not a cleanup fee, but a punishment for speaking out and it will go into the bank account of a University that has silenced us.
We dragged our mattresses to your home in an act of desperation: We do not feel safe on this campus, and we fear for the students that come after us. There are rapists in our dorms, our dining halls, our libraries. There are survivors dropping out of school because no one is there to support them. We call on you to take immediate action: engage directly and meaningfully with students, and take our demands seriously. When students on this campus are unsafe, we need a President who will take action. When students demand to be heard, we need a President who responds. When the community is in crisis, we need a President who leads. It is time you listen to us and help us make this community safe for everyone. Be courageous President Bollinger, your students need you.
Sincerely,
The Columbia students of the Carry That Weight campaign
At press time (blog time?), a spokesperson for Carry That Weight tells Jezebel that they have yet to receive a response from President Bollinger’s office.
We reached out to Columbia University’s office of the President for comment on the protest and received the following email:
As we’ve said before, given our longstanding commitment to robust free speech, there is never such thing as a fine for any group because of its views and we support students in peaceful protest. These are entirely typical matters in apportioning direct costs for facilitating student events which student sponsors understood and acknowledged in advance. And, in fact, the University chose to underwrite the costs of the main campus cleanup.
Best regards,
Robert Hornsby
K.
Images via Carry That Weight. Used with permission.
We didn’t start the fire.
We support MSU survivors and allies.
Last Wednesday, I posted about the George-Will-at-MSU debacle, in which 70,000 signatures, letters of support from over a dozen on-campus organizations, statements from faculty (including the entire history department), U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow’s support, and 30+ students/faculty/community members gathering outside of MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon’s office to deliver said signatures and read heartbreaking stories about how rape is a huge problem on campus, was not enough to even get our concern acknowledged by the administration. We didn’t want George Will to be awarded an honorary doctorate degree because his rape apologist views go against everything our university needs to do in order to make students feel safe, supported, and respected.
So we reserved a 12-minute block of time at the MSU Board of Trustees meeting on Friday to make sure the administration did, in fact, hear our voices. We split the time slot between four speakers who…
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I Was Gang Raped at a U-VA Frat 30 Years Ago, and No One Did Anything
Article by Liz Seccuro, UVA rape survivor.
I was gang-raped at the University of Virginia. I was gang raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house.
We are all left with questions and opinions in the exhausting wake of the now-infamous Rolling Stone article about campus sexual assault, and how victims are treated at the University of Virginia.
This is my story.
In August 1984, I arrived at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, eager to jump into college life. As a sheltered, shy, but ambitious child growing up in suburban Westchester County, New York, my choice struck some as very far away, very “Southern.” Most of my contemporaries from my all-girls high school in Rye, New York, were headed north to Boston or other parts of New England, to so many of the liberal arts colleges in much colder climes. My parents were thrilled with my choice, even though I had never even paid the campus a visit during the application process. I knew I wanted to go to UVA for one major reason: It had the country’s most highly ranked English department, my major of choice.
I had graduated as valedictorian, and as I packed my belongings for the trip the Charlottesville, I was prepared to make my mark at the wonderful institution founded by Thomas Jefferson. But, those hopes were to be dashed about five weeks into my college career. I was 17 years old.
A dorm friend, Jim*, who desperately wanting to join a fraternity, begged me to accompany him as his date to a rush party at the Phi Kappa Psi house on Oct. 5, 1984. We lived in a coed dorm, with the first and third floors housing the young men, and the second floor housing the girls. Jim had to cajole me, as it was already late, and I was lounging around in sweats, book in hand. Reluctantly but with good humor, I changed into a Guess denim miniskirt, a colorful sweater, navy leather flats, earrings, and, yes, a string of pearls. A quick check of hair and makeup, and we were out the door, accompanied by about five other dorm friends—some rushing the fraternity, some as dates.
We arrived to the din of a party in full swing: a band, multiple kegs of beer, dancing, foosball, and mantle diving. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but for the fact that Jim was gay. In 1984, gay men were not openly accepted in Southern Greek culture. I’m certain they still are not. Jim needed to “pass,” so I stuck by his side as we toured the massive Georgian property, listening to the brothers bloviate about traditions, academia, and the honor that was bestowed upon the lucky few who would be chosen as Phi Kappa Psi brothers. I was bored, but I grabbed a red Solo cup, filled it with beer, and stayed with my group, chatting with the brothers about Jim.
Jim and I got separated after we climbed the grand staircase to the second floor, where we were invited to smoke pot with a few of the brothers. I never had, so I declined, and told Jim I’d be waiting in the large living area on the second floor. The party was full and I found a sofa near a makeshift bar in the corner. Waiting there, I thought, was safer than walking home alone. Two men, who identified themselves as brothers, were tending the bar. Would I like a drink? Not wanting to seem like an outsider, or worse, a first year girl, I accepted a green drink in a clear tumbler with a straw that the taller of two young men offered me. He called it the “house special.” I thanked him, sat down on the sofa, and sipped it through the straw. People milled about in various stages of inebriation, dancing, and shouting.
I asked a few people when my date would be returning. I was told not to worry, that he’d only be a few minutes, to relax. Suddenly, after a few sips of the green drink, I noticed something wrong. Extraordinarily wrong. I could not feel my hands or feet. My arms and legs began to feel numb. I started to panic, breathing shallowly and rapidly. At that point, a tall, brown-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses came over to me, sat down, and peppered me with questions. Where was I from? What was my major? Where did I live? I answered his questions perfunctorily, begging off that I was soon to return to my dorm, as I was tired. I had no idea what time it was or how long I had been on the second floor. I felt dizzy and disconnected.
He grabbed my arm aggressively. “I have something to show you.”
I shouted “no!” but he dragged me off the sofa like a rag doll, down a long hallway. He pulled me into a room at the end, sat me on his lap, and began reading to me from a volume of poetry bound in green cloth—it could have been Yeats. I squirmed, trying to set myself free. He stuck his tongue in my ear and told me to settle down.
Adrenaline kicked in, and I freed myself from the strange man, ran into the hallway, and began banging on the door where I had earlier set my handbag for safekeeping. The door was padlocked from the outside. I began to scream and kick the door with the pointed toes of my shoes. At that moment, the music cranked up loudly and one of the guys from the bar in the corner of the living room—the tall one who had given me the drink—walked calmly over to me, picked me up like a sack of ashes, and deposited me back into the arms of the bespectacled stranger.
He dismissed me and told me I had “had sex with a young man and didn’t want my parents to know I wasn’t a good girl.”
What happened next was unspeakably horrible. After pinning me down with his arms and legs, he raped me repeatedly. He beat me, despite my screams and my begging. I passed out from the fear and pain.
Waking briefly a few times throughout the night, I heard sounds, voices, slamming doors. I felt hands on me. I could not move. Suddenly, light flooded the room, and I found myself lying on a filthy orange sofa across the room from where my rape occurred. I was covered in nothing but a filthy sheet. The sheet was covered with large spots of blood. As I tried to get upright, I realized with horror that the blood was my own.
After cleaning up the copious amount of blood on my body in a bathroom, I found my clothing and got dressed. The padlocked door down the hall was now open, and I found my purse. I gingerly walked down the center staircase and out into what was a chilly, sunny October morning. The house was eerily silent on a Friday morning after a huge party. There are two sets of steps leading from the front doors of Phi Kappa Psi house. I began walking right, towards my dorm, when I realized I needed to go to the hospital. I turned left, and began the long, painful walk to the emergency room at the University of Virginia medical center.
At the hospital, I was told to wait, and was given some tea by a nurse. No one gave me any paperwork to fill out. There were stares, gestures, and quiet conversations at the desk. I assumed that far more serious cases had come into the E.R. Finally, after waiting for a few hours, the nurse approached me and told me that they could not help me, that I had to travel to Richmond or Washington, D.C. for what I needed. Apparently, I needed “tests.”
I bailed before she even finished her sentence, and began the long, sad walk back to my dorm, where I told my hall mates what had happened to me. Some sympathized, some rolled their eyes, and many simply walked away. I was bruised from head to toe—my head, my cheekbone, my toe, my ribs, my legs, and of course, my genitals. By nightfall, I had showered, eaten some soup that a friend brought me, and I slept in my room for 12 solid hours.
On the following Monday, it was arranged by my Resident Adviser that I would meet with the dean of students, Robert Canevari. Still fearful and smarting from the pain, I arrived on time and was led to chair in his office.
In great detail, I told him what had happened to me. I was covered in visible bruises as I sat before him. He dismissed me and told me I had “had sex with a young man and didn’t want my parents to know I wasn’t a good girl.” He suggested I needed mental help, and offered to help me transfer to another college.
What?
Dean Canevari would not call the Charlottesville Police for me, because, he said, Phi Kappa Psi fell under “University jurisdiction,” so I was allowed to report the attack internally. Canevari passed me off to Dean Sybil Todd, who accompanied me to the University Police Department. I gave statements to then-Captain Michael Sheffield on several different occasions.
Nothing ever came of the “investigation.” I called Sheffield’s office regularly, and I was routinely told someone would get back to me. There was snow on the ground when I made my last trip to see Sheffield. The Christmas holiday was quickly approaching.
No one ever called me back.
Dean Todd, a motherly figure, took me under her wing. We ate lunch together. I had dinner at her home. She arranged for me to meet a student journalist, so that I could tell one of the student newspapers my story. I did. Dean Todd arranged for me to sit behind a screen and talk about my rape for a group of student leaders and activists. I wanted to be anonymous, as some of these people were friends of mine. Dean Todd remained my friend until I graduated in 1988, with my degree in English literature.
Thinking there was another way, I met a few times with the president of the Interfraternity Council. He was a fourth year, from Atlanta, and very kind to me. But he couldn’t do anything for me.
I made as much noise as I could have, but no one heard me. Until 2005.
That young man in the glasses had a name: William Beebe. I knew because I rifled through his mail that terrible October morning. In September 2005, Beebe wrote a letter to my home to apologize. It became a firestorm of inexplicable proportions.
From September through November 2005, I corresponded with him via email to find out what had happened to me that night. How many attackers? He wrote that he was the only one. What was in my drink? He didn’t know. Why did he rape me? He thought it was a “romantic” encounter. Why was he apologizing? It was part of Steps 8 and 9 in his Alcoholics Anonymous program.
I brought the correspondence to the Charlottesville Police, thinking they should know about it in the event that other victims were to come forward. I had no idea I was actually building a case against Beebe. I was shocked to find out from Chief Timothy Longo that Canevari had given me the wrong information. The Charlottesville Police did indeed have jurisdiction over the Phi Kappa Psi house. Another bombshell: There is no statute of limitations on rape in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Beebe was arrested in January 2006 and charged with two counts of felony rape. I testified merely eight feet from this monster at a preliminary hearing. Beebe was indicted by a grand jury, and, as the investigation continued, it was revealed to me through my prosecutor, Claude Worrell, that just as I had suspected, I had been the victim of a gang rape.
Beebe’s defense team, Rhonda Quagliana and Francis Lawrence, had hired a private investigator. The investigator uncovered the identities of the other two rapists and the details of that night. It was shocking to find out that the rape by Beebe was actually the last one of the night. I had no memory of the other two, and that information was used to discredit my recollection of what had happened to me. The other two rapists hired an attorney and appeared before a grand jury, each pleading the Fifth Amendment to each of the questions asked. When my husband and I asked to see the report, we were told we could purchase the report for $30,000 from the defense. We declined.
Police contacted dozens of witnesses from that night. Many were interviewed. Many declined to be interviewed. The bonds of Phi Kappa Psi brotherhood were too strong to break. There were witnesses who are sons of powerful men; congressmen, senators, captains of industry. It was—and is—heartbreaking.
Two weeks before trial, Beebe pleaded guilty to a single charge of aggravated sexual battery. His defense attorneys said that he was innocent, that he was only guilty of “a thoughtless college sex encounter during which he acted ungentlemanly.” He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but two and a half years suspended. He served less than six months.
Is that justice?
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but two and a half years suspended. He served less than six months.
I say yes. When I think of the many rape victims who never come forward, who have been silenced in the same fashion, I am saddened. When colleges and universities systematically lie to victims and shuttle them toward administrators whose jobs depend upon protecting the good names of their employers, all of us lose. But I fought, and I fought hard, so that others after me have hope, and a chance. I received justice in many ways. Someone finally believed me. It took a letter from a rapist—an admission of sorts—to make that happen, but it happened.
The funny thing about the concept of forgiveness is that it does not begin to change what happened that night, or erase the memories I have. The human heart, in order to grow, needs to forgive. I forgave William Beebe decades ago. I don’t forgive people who send hate mail and death threats. Those people have no soul and are not important. I do not forgive those who saw the attacks and have refused to cooperate with law enforcement. These are men who now have wives and children, and their silence so many years later shows how morally bankrupt they remain. I cannot begin to understand it.
But they know.
Dean Canevari claims to have no memory of meeting with me. Dean Sybil Todd passed away from pancreatic cancer before she could testify. The IFC president denied meeting with me. I received an email from a friend some days ago after the Rolling Stone article was published, who, without prompting, wrote that he knew something terrible had happened to me when he saw me meeting with the IFC president in the lounge of my dorm. Leonard Sandridge of the University of Virginia wrote to me that records of my meetings with University Police and Captain Sheffield “could not be located.” The current administration has refused to speak with me about making change. They have refused to apologize, which is all I have ever wanted. I have not sued Phi Kappa Psi, the University of Virginia, or any of the individuals involved.
As survivors, we can punch the sky and howl at the moon for so long, but we all die alone, and we all live alone with our fears and lingering trauma. But we also live with healing, with love, with activism, with a voice. Accepting the good is how we get by. I was touched by something divine that night. I did not die. I may be missing some time and there are memories that will never be retrieved. Does that make me lost? No. I am whole, lucky, blessed—the whole nine yards. It is not a pity party when you can stand up and say, “I am,” to be counted, reaffirmed, human. Rape does not diminish that. And I am. I am.
UVA Sexual Assault Coalition 