Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Sexual Assaults on Campus



Last week UND student Josh Brorby wrote a horrible op-ed piece for the online Dakota Student in which he described how to rape a woman. It was printed and responses have been extreme. It was horrible and disgusting but what also bothered me is the number of negative responses to the article about equal the positive ones.

There was a great piece by Kristen Lombardi yesterday describing how sexual assaults on campuses are always shrouded in secrecy. She reports on one student’s efforts to pursue her rape complaint via the college judicial system.

Roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. A recent study found that more than 95 percent of students who are sexually victimized do not report to police or campus officials.

Rape culture abounds on the UND campus, on college campuses across the US and the world. Rape culture is writing about how to rape a woman, getting it published and applauded.

Guerrilla Girls On Tour’s past three performances have been of our show “Silence Is Violence” that addresses date rape and violence against women. There are women and men on college campuses who realize the need to address a problem they face and bring it to the forefront. Let’s hope UND is next on our tour list.

Link to Sexual Assault on Campus Shrouded in Secrecy by Kristin Lombardi http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/campus_assault/articles/entry/1838/

Link to One-night standing: the Method by Josh Brorby
http://tinyurl.com/UNDrape

-Aphra Behn
December 2, 2009
New York City

2 comments:

Heather said...

Thank you for posting this. I am a student at UND, as well as a columnist for the Dakota Student. I am also a single mother and a sexual assault survivor. It appaled me to see this article published. I wrote a response to it, please look in Friday's edition. Again, thank you for getting the word out.

Guerrilla Girls On Tour said...

Heather, Guerrilla Girls On Tour posted a response as well. I think a good idea would be to have Josh Brorby help to organize the next "Take Back The Night" event and/or form a men against violence group on campus.