Dear ResLife and members of the Wesleyan community,
We are Students for Consent and Communication, an on-campus group that strives to promote healthy and consensual relationships throughout the Wesleyan community. Naturally, our goal is to protect and support all survivors of sexual assault and to take swift action in any situation that puts them at risk. We are writing today to express our deep concern about ResLife’s recent action (or rather, inaction) in regard to sexual assault.
In choosing to give alleged perpetrators the “benefit of the doubt” rather than actively taking any and every precaution necessary to protect those asserting themselves as survivors of a violent, traumatizing crime, ResLife is establishing itself as a rape-enabling, perpetrator-protecting, victim-disempowering, and sexual violence-supporting institution.
ResLife’s job is to protect students, yet based on its history of employee management and punishment allotment, it seems that there is a frightening prioritization of minor drug and alcohol violations over violent assault. When student staff have been dismissed for suspicion of intoxication, it seems absurd that students with histories of misconduct concerning women would not be dismissed for allegations of sexual assault.
ResLife has continually struggled with supporting staff members who were assaulted while working and survivors who had to further deal with perpetrators. Staff should not have to petition for adequate support and protection from harassment, assault, and abuse: it should be a given. When multiple ResLife student staff members, especially women of color (who already bear the heaviest burden in the neoliberal university), come forth and express discomfort at the patriarchal safeguarding of perpetrators, it is ResLife’s job to make a stand. When economically disadvantaged RAs, especially those who are also survivors, are forced to choose between continuing to work for an institution that supports assault or striking and potentially losing the job that’s just barely keeping them financially afloat, it is ResLife’s job to make a stand.
When RAs are tasked with keeping their residents safe yet feel unsafe themselves, it is ResLife’s job to make a stand. ResLife has the power to help push a culture shift that prioritizes believing and protecting survivors over catering to “potentially innocent” perpetrators. It is necessary that institutions stop operating with the overly cautious, overtly misogynistic and entirely baseless mindset that those who report are potentially vengeful liars, willing to falsely accuse innocent people of rape to destroy their lives, reputations, and futures. The fact is that rape is already a grossly underreported crime, which has undoubtedly been even more true on Wesleyan’s campus recently as a result of the news that a former administrator who handled Title IX cases was, in fact, a perpetrator himself.
Considering the historical institutional inclination to silence survivors in avoidance of lawsuits and public defamation, it is all the more vital to act in the interest of those few survivors who bravely choose to officially report and risk further trauma, shame, and misogyny. There is a baseless stereotype that campus sexual assault is more often than not the accidental result of miscommunication. However, sexual assault is a crime, perpetrated through the use of force, threat of force, intimidation, or coercion. By failing time and time again to support survivors, ResLife is blindly choosing the side of the oppressor and essentially endorsing violent crime. Furthermore, ResLife is undermining the debilitating trauma of sexual assault, ignoring the bravery it takes to report, and, most importantly, contributing to the campus culture of fear that hushes survivors and encourages perpetrators every day. We write in hopes that this behavior is recognized and counteracted.
2 Comments
Jeffrey Deutsch
In choosing to give alleged perpetrators the “benefit of the doubt” rather than actively taking any and every precaution necessary to protect those asserting themselves as survivors of a violent, traumatizing crime, ResLife is establishing itself as a rape-enabling, perpetrator-protecting, victim-disempowering, and sexual violence-supporting institution.
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[I]t seems absurd that students with histories of misconduct concerning women would not be dismissed for allegations of sexual assault.
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It is necessary that institutions stop operating with the overly cautious, overtly misogynistic and entirely baseless mindset that those who report are potentially vengeful liars, willing to falsely accuse innocent people of rape to destroy their lives, reputations, and futures.
Hopefully one day you will understand that presuming someone innocent until he — or she — is proven guilty is one of the things that separates us from places like North Korea.
PS: I also agree that in general, people should not be fired simply on suspicion of anything — including intoxication.
Ralphiec88
Can anyone at Wesleyan write in English? Seriously, read the opinions of top pundits and supreme court justices. You’ll find none of the histrionic purple prose that so many wallow in on these pages. If you can’t make clear points, it may just be that your points aren’t all that supportable. And SJW genuflections like “women of color who already bear the heaviest burden in the neoliberal university” are utterly irrelevant to what little thesis you have.
Now on to what nuggets can be extracted from the muck. You can’t equate suspension for the fact of drug use with suspension for the allegation of any wrongdoing. Nobody’s getting kicked out on the “suspicion of intoxication” alone. Your thesis boils down to the dubious notion that sexual assault is really, really bad and it’s underreported, so therefore due process should not apply. Ironically, your remedy to “blindly choosing the side of the oppressor” is blindly choosing the side of the accuser.