Sexual assault: sketchy guy at a party starts grinding on a random drunk girl, brings her more drinks and leads her back to his dorm. This is the picture we use to protect ourselves when we go out on Friday nights. But it is a false image. Sexual predators don’t grow out of the heavy beats of Madonna or the spilled beer on the floor of KDR, only to dissolve again in the morning. Approximately 78 percent of rapes nationally are committed by a person the victim knows, and this percentage is even higher at small schools like ours. “The sketchy guys” are us. We coerce, we manipulate and we take advantage of each other’s drunkenness or uncertainty, because we’ve never learned how to choose not to. Sexual assault is never as black and white as we want it to be, and frequently the difference between harassment and an awkward encounter is communication and understanding. Between two acquaintances there is space to exchange narrative — space that must be used to learn about one another and understand each other’s stories. From this understanding we can perceive how our actions will affect our peers and partners, negatively or positively.
These are difficult conversations to have, and we need the support of the administration to create the space. Middlebury’s current policy operates based on the image of the sketchy guy at a party and the drunk girl, and therefore it deals with sexual assault and harassment the same way one deals with the flu: get the shot, wash your hands and hope you don’t get sick. Have a buddy system, don’t drink too much and hope you don’t get sexually assaulted. This message tells the victims of sexual assault how to act, making it their responsibility to protect themselves instead of making it the predator’s responsibility to not assault his or her peers. When we make it the victim’s responsibility to protect him or herself from sexual assault, we also make it the victim’s fault if he or she is assaulted. We’ve all heard of this before — it’s called blaming the victim, and it is one of the most damaging and least effective ways to tackle issues of rape and harassment. It suggests that sexual predators cannot prevent themselves from raping. This is simply not true. The flu virus doesn’t get to choose whether or not it will spread from person to person, but we as Middlebury students can, if given the tools, choose not to assault and harass our classmates. We can do this by looking at sexual predators and asking the question, “why?” Through the answers to this question we can learn how not to be “that sketchy guy.”
We need the administration’s aid to answer these questions. The current “sexual assault and harassment training” should be replaced with an in-depth training that incorporates seminars and panels led by students, professors and outsiders who understand the complexities of college life and can help us have open conversations throughout our college career. The training must focus on ending the oversimplification of consent. Consent is not simple: students have to learn how to give and understand it. They have to learn how to make it work for their relationships. If we can illuminate what consent means, we will hopefully lessen the frequency of these stories: “She didn’t say no. They were both really drunk. They didn’t even have sex. And now he’s been suspended for two weeks. Isn’t that kind of extreme?” Everyone takes a different side to this, and open discussions about different interpretations of consent and the histories behind this single story will prevent us from naming the victim manipulative, flaky or mean-spirited, or from naming the perpetrator horny, sexist or simply evil.
The training can provide the space to talk about social pressures that cause us to hurt ourselves and others. We need to reconcile the mixed messages from the media, our parents, religion and peers that have led us to a very complicated, contradictory and problematic relationship with sex by naming these messages and recognizing where they have influenced our behaviors. We need to talk about the pressure to “score.” We need to resolve the tension between practicing sexual freedom and objectifying our own bodies. We need to come to terms with the contradictory stigmas of being a virgin or a slut/player. These conversations can help us understand what our sexuality means to us and what others’ sexuality means to them, and thereby help us illuminate our and our partner’s sexual desires and needs. This communication will lessen the frequency of misunderstandings that lead to sexual assault or harassment.
I’ve been a Midd Kid for six weeks, and already I’ve heard stories about Delta, the Bunker, Battell; about terrible nights and awkward days; and I’ve heard guys and girls chatting freely about whether or not they think that kid is a virgin or how they “got lucky” the night before. This doesn’t have to be just the way things are. Let’s be honest to each other and to ourselves about what we really want. Let’s question the social norms and pressures that cause our destructive behaviors to reccur. Let’s find a place and a time and together, let’s really talk about sex.
Written by REBECCA COATES-FINKE '16.5 of Northampton, Mass.
