In an intense conversation last week with a group of my students about issues surrounding rape and sexual assault, one of the young women in the group shared her experience with having been
roofied at an off-campus frat house party. She was one of the the lucky ones—she wasn't raped—a friend got her out of there. She was made violently ill by what had been slipped into her drink. She could have died. Her disclosures gave other young people listening to her story permission to share their own.
Too many had stories to tell.
We talked about what they do at parties, safety measures they take to protect themselves, and what they can do to take action. Every year we hold these discussions, and every year too many young women, and some of the young men, have had personal experiences with being raped and violated. All of my students know someone who has been attacked.
I walked out of there angry—as I am every semester. Before I left I asked if they were aware of the new White House initiative around campus rape and sexual assault?
Few were. Now they all are.
It's on us to spread the word about It's On Us and other initiatives across the nation and around the world. Last week here in the U.S. there was a National Week of Action:
...an effort to mobilize students to take action to prevent sexual assault. This week, colleges and universities will host more than 130 events and over 40 schools have created their own It's On Us PSAs, including GW, MIT, Northwestern and UCLA.
It's On Us:
Jon Hamm, Kerry Washington, Rose Byrne, Questlove and others join President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in support of the It’s On Us campaign, imploring all of us to stand up, step in, and stop sexual assault.
Follow me below the fold for more.
It's On Us:
To recognize that non-consensual sex is sexual assault.
To identify situations in which sexual assault may occur.
To intervene in situations where consent has not or cannot be given.
To create an environment in which sexual assault is unacceptable and survivors are supported.
Here's the contribution to the campaign from students at the University of Oregon:
University of Oregon student leaders talk about bystander intervention and a culture of respect. Ducks Say Something. Ducks Do Something. "It’s On Us" More info: respect.uoregon.edu
None of this is new. Rape has been a fact of life, a tool of war and domination, since the beginnings of humankind.
When I was in my early 20s and had a job working as a bartender in a club, I was shocked when I went to pick up a drink a customer I knew pretty well had bought for me—which I had left sitting on the bar while I walked away to the cash register—and my boss knocked the drink out of my hand. He snapped at me, and said, "Never turn your back on your drink, never leave it unprotected. Dump it if you do and get a fresh one. Someone could easily slip you a mickey." That was my introduction to the term "Mickey Finn," and I became very cautious after that. But caution didn't prevent me from waking up one day, with no memory, in Roosevelt Hospital in New York City with three whole days missing from my life and only stitches to tell the tale of what had happened. Months later I tracked down the perp. He was someone I knew.
Times change as does street jargon, but the meanings, methods, and motivations are the same.
What You Might Not Know About ‘Getting Roofied’:
Most twenty- and thirtysomethings in New York grew up in the age of the “date rape drug” and “roofies.” The practice of surreptitiously dosing people at parties or bars hit national headlines roughly 15 years ago and was framed as a “pandemic,” so we heard on the news as often as we heard from our guidance counselors about girls who went out, took a drink from a stranger, and then woke up with no memory and no underwear. Many of us, especially if we were young women, sat through lectures in which we were directed never to go out alone or leave a glass vulnerable to tampering. These were the simple measures of insurance we should take to avoid becoming one of the unlucky — so simple, actually, that the subtext of those lectures tended to sound like “Don’t be stupid.” (There was also the suggestion, sometimes subtextual and sometimes explicit, that the best and smartest of us would just avoid “getting ourselves” in “these situations” altogether.)
Public understanding of illicit, nonconsensual drugging hasn’t changed meaningfully in more than a decade. To start, the terminology is the same: Roofie as a noun and verb (as in, “I got roofied last night,” or “He slipped her a roofie”) is a slangy riff on the name of the most popular “date rape drug” circa 1999, rohypnol. But as it happens, no one actually gets dosed with an actual roofie anymore. Only 1 in 100 victims who go for blood work test positive for rohypnol. These days, the drugs slipping out of pockets and into highball glasses all over New York are primarily GHB (or “liquid Ecstasy”), Zolpidem (also known as Ambien), scopolamine, and a few lesser-known benzodiazepines, like temazepam or midazolam. It is probably no longer accurate to say “She was roofied” — but then “She was midazolamed” lacks a certain something.
I don't like the term "date rape." The addition of the term
date somehow diminishes the impact of the violence and short- and long-term effects of being poisoned and assaulted. I feel the same way about classifying some violent crimes as "domestic abuse." If a stranger walks up to me and punches me in the face, and is busted, he is charged with assault. If my sexual partner, or spouse does the same thing, he will more than likely never get charged with a violent crime. And I'll get a ton of the blame. If I defend myself, guess who'll wind up doing time?
Jordan Kisner, the author of the piece above on roofies, uses the term "drug assault." I prefer that to the use of date, which implies hearts and flowers and romance. There is nothing romantic about being plied with potentially lethal substances and attacked.
I'm focusing on campus rape today, but all of this applies to what can and does happen to women in the workplace, the military, and in their neighborhoods, but since I'm currently on teaching on a campus, most of my day-to-day interactions are with college students. For most of them, it's their first time living away from home.
This is a sobering read about what happens to students charged with assault: Fewer Than One-Third Of Campus Sexual Assault Cases Result In Expulsion:
Students found guilty of sexual assault by their universities can rest assured there's a good chance they won’t be kicked out of school. If they want someone to thank, they might send their praise to the Association for Student Conduct Administration for telling universities across the nation not to be "punitive" when handling campus rape. Intense focus on sexual assault by college activists, members of Congress and the Obama administration was a catalyst this year to prompt multiple pieces of federal legislation and a White House task force to address how universities deal with campus rape.
But who should be punishing students found guilty of sex assault, and how they should be punished, remains a grey area. Since lawmakers haven’t stepped up to offer definitive guidance, trade groups and consultants have filled the void. The result: Not even a third of college students found guilty of sexual assault are kicked out of school, according to a new Huffington Post analysis.
Do a simple Google search for "roofies and frats," and you'll find quite a few
recent headlines and
cases. The problem becomes more complicated when the frats are not on campus, and whether or not they are supported by and currently affiliated with the schools where these assaults take place.
Back in July, the New York Times took an in-depth look at the other side of the coin—what happened to a student who reported her rape, in Reporting Rape and Wishing She Hadn't:
GENEVA, N.Y. — She was 18 years old, a freshman, and had been on campus for just two weeks when one Saturday night last September her friends grew worried because she had been drinking and suddenly disappeared.
Around midnight, the missing girl texted a friend, saying she was frightened by a student she had met that evening. “Idk what to do,” she wrote. “I’m scared.” When she did not answer a call, the friend began searching for her.
(The article has graphic descriptions of her assault by more than one assailant)
More and more women and men on campuses across the nation are speaking out and taking action. If your school isn't connected, get involved by starting a group and hooking up with already established networks:
EROC: End Rape on Campus
Men Can Stop Rape
Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER)
Please join me in comments to add more names of groups to the connect list.