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feminism, gender, higher education, men, rape, sexual assault, U.Va, university, UVA, willa hammitt brown, women
This is a guest post by Willa Hammitt Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, where she is finishing her dissertation, “Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth and the American Lumberjack, 1860-1920”. She is a teaching assistant in the Department of History and the Women’s and Gender Studies program. Content note: this article mentions sexual assault.
“I have worn the honors of Honor
I graduated from Virginia” – :The Honor Men”, James Hay Jr, 1903
“Nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school” – Rolling Stone, 2014
This morning I got an email from the President of my University, the University of Virginia. In it, she quotes Thomas Jefferson, and invokes tradition, honor and idealism. She harks back to the long history of a storied institution. “Honor and tradition inform our thinking,” she explains, but where “success is demanded as much as it is sought” we mustn’t let “idealism outweigh our reality.”
You’d almost forget she was talking about rape.
We have found ourselves, at my prestigious, sheltered, Southern university quite suddenly in the spotlight, and we are not handling it well. Not well at all.
U.Va is one of the oldest public universities in this country and currently ranked second in the nation. Our campus is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Thomas Jefferson founded it, Edgar Alan Poe, Woodrow Wilson and two Kennedys attended it. We claim, wrongly, to have the oldest written honor code of any American university. And we are, at this moment, ground zero in the debate over campus sexual assault.
None of this is unrelated. Our traditions, our reliance on honor, our language of quiet gentility are what reinforce toxic levels of privilege. We are a culture, and we are an institution, that protects rapists and promotes rape culture.
****
A quick primer on the state of sexual assault prevention on campuses in the United States: The Federal government has recently (in 2011 to be precise) begun to crack down on universities that do not adequately handle sexual assault cases under the provisions of Title IX. Title IX, a federal act passed in 1972, guarantees equal access to education for men and women, specifically banning discrimination based on sex. It’s under Title IX, for instance, that we are required to fund women’s sports at levels at least, in theory, on par with men’s.
In 2011 the Obama administration wrote what’s called a “Dear Colleague” letter, writing that sexual harassment and assault create an environment hostile to women, and that if they are not properly addressed it will be considered a Title IX violation and result in institutions losing their federal funding. The Department of Education has since made it very clear they intend to follow through. Eighty-six universities and colleges are under investigation for mishandling complaints. But only eleven are under a full, Federal noncompliance review. We are among those lucky few.
Three days ago, Rolling Stone published a scathing article criticizing U.Va, detailing the case of a gang rape that happened two years ago, and the relatively little that’s been done about it since. I won’t quote the article much here for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s more than a little sensationalist and I don’t want to get into the mire of journalistic integrity. Secondly, while I agree with the author in most of her portrayal of the University, her emphasis on pushing survivors to report, rather than on creating an environment in which reporting feels safe, troubles me. And finally, it honestly could not come with a trigger warning big enough. Please feel free to go ahead and google it, but do it when you have an hour to quietly process what you will find there.
Right now I’m not interested in talking about the article. I’m interested in talking about what happened after: what happened when the veil was lifted and we saw ourselves as we really are. As my friend Rachel said about the article, I say too about the response, “the most shocking thing is that everyone seems so shocked.”
In the wake of the article, we all began a quick scramble to be victims, too. There was outrage from the relatively small cadre of on campus feminists that the article claimed there were no feminists here. There were outcries that we’re not all privileged, and we are more progressive than portrayed. Most of all, there was outrage from the fraternities that they were getting too much blame (on Yik Yak, a social network that allows anonymous messaging, a post reading “I became a victim when last night after exiting my fraternity house someone yelled out rapist, I’ve worked hard my 4 years here to address sexual assault and now I’m viewed as the problem” was up-voted 172 times in two hours) Everyone rushed to be the victim, because a victim cannot be part of the problem. But none of that is really the point. Of course there are feminists, and of course there are progressives. No one truly believes every Fraternity brother is a rapist. But when we coddle bruised egos and tell each other that you and I are not the problem, we are hiding from the truth.
Because we are all the problem. Only thirty-eight assaults were reported at UVA last year, out of hundreds we know to have happened. Of those, only a few went to arbitration, fewer still to any guilty verdict. A university that has expelled over a hundred people in the last twenty years for cheating has never, not once, expelled a rapist. A university that insists that every faculty member read a forty page booklet on the Honor Code and then pass a fairly asinine quiz on it to be allowed access to our email accounts provides no training on sexual misconduct whatsoever. Even if a rape were reported to most of us, we wouldn’t know what to do.
Rapes are perpetuated by a relatively small number of people – these are not, for the most part, he-said/she-said situations. For one in four women to be sexually assaulted does not mean one in four men are sexually assaulting them. So we need to take action, we need to seek justice – we need to remove criminals, serial criminals, from our midst. But there is a reason that people don’t report.
And that reason is us.
A gang rape is reported in horrific detail, and the administration responds first by addressing its reputation. Their next move was to hire (and then swiftly un-hire) a lawyer to investigate who had been a member of the very fraternity where the rape happened. When finally they took action to shut down greek life, students responded like they had been personally attacked. There is, in this reaction, a deep-seated contempt for those who don’t conform. If you cannot take our traditions, if you cannot live with our honor, perhaps you don’t belong here.
Honor, it seems to me, has become an empty word at the University. Or, rather, it has become a word loaded with meaning, but meaning we all steadfastly refuse to acknowledge. It has become a word we all use to get around discussing or thinking about “understanding”, “tolerance” and “responsibility.” Because in our vaunted language, it is meant to encompass all three. In reality, it serves to suppress all three.
When we talk about honor we do so in a culture steeped in the history of white supremacy, class privilege and gender privilege. The traditions and concept of “honor” we harken back to are those of Southern gentility – a gentility built off the exclusion and oppression of others. Anytime that privilege is unthroned, even a little, the rallying cry in response is “tradition.” When we were the last public university to accept women, it was because of tradition. When we attend football games in pearls and ties, the uniform of the privileged, it’s because its tradition.
A call to tradition is a call to protect our fun at the expense of another person’s comfort. I saw it, and participated in it, while at Oxford as an undergraduate. When balls, black tie, sub fusc, and formal halls would come under attack as practices that made the University an uncomfortable and even hostile space for people who did not come from a white middle- or upper-class background, I, too, would join in the cry that these traditions were what made Oxford so wonderful, so special. It is only in retrospect that I wonder to what extent what I really meant was, “if you can’t conform to this special place, then you don’t really belong here. It’s not on me to make room for you.”
That was hard to see as a student, as someone who enjoyed those traditions. But from the vantage point I now have, as an outsider looking in at the undergraduate life of another University whose calling card is also old-fashioned tradition and gentility, I can see more clearly that when we say we live in a “community of honor” we mean, “to question our community is to question our honor.” When we say we prize tradition, we must admit that that tradition is built of slavery, and racial, class, and gender privilege.
This all came starkly to light the day the Rolling Stone article went live. President Sullivan sent an email within the day, which opened by addressing, before any solidarity with the student who spoke up, before any responsibility for the botched investigation, and certainly before any responsibility for the crime happening on our campus in the first place, the “negative portrayal” of the University.
In a desperate attempt to preserve and increase our reputations, we rest on concepts like honor and tradition to shut down debates about privilege and diversity. I am not the first to point out that it’s hard to have your privilege questioned. And I do not pretend that this is the only problem. There are nation- wide networks that perpetuate rape culture (such as the fact that most sororities are banned by their national chapters from serving alcohol, which means men control access to parties), and there are frameworks within the university as well – we are a business, and powerful, wealthy donors cling tightly to tradition.
But there is also the way we talk about ourselves, and the words we use. When your traditions are built on a history of white supremacy, perhaps it’s time to criticize them. When Honor is a word we use to make ourselves feel better, it is merely an empty construct. Coming forward to speak through your pain and terror about assault is honorable. And there is only one honorable thing we can do in return: listen.
(This article was emended, to clarify that most sororities are banned from serving alcohol not by antiquated brothel laws, but by their national organisations, at 18:47 GMT on 24th November 2014)
quiteirregular 
Thank you for this response to the issues at your university. Unfortunately it is all too common across the nation. I encourage people to view the documentary Brave Miss World, which is available on Netflix. http://www.bravemissworld.com Perhaps hold viewings on campuses to raise awareness. Invite a male friend to see it and have a minor glimpse into the reality women face still in 2014.
Willa Hammitt Brown has written a great piece: thoughtful, well-informed, and cogent.
EXCEPT: She writes: “Secondly, while I agree with the author in most of her portrayal of the University, her emphasis on pushing survivors to report, rather than on creating an environment in which reporting feels safe, troubles me.”
Excuse me? It is very important to report, and PROSECUTE. Sexual assault and rape are illegal offenses, and when they are treated as the real, light-of-day crimes they are, the offenses will abate. “Talk” and programs and “creating an environment”, which have been in place at UVA, have not been effective enough.
Thank you Twist. It seems as though most people are glossing over that sentence. Surreal.
what I believe Willa meant by the sentence was not that people SHOULDN’T take action and report, but rather we should primarily work on making the environment at UVa be a place where reporting is encouraged and seen as the natural response/immediate thing to do, rather than just letting the currently more indifferent, even hostile environment surrounding “telling on the rapist” keep on existing. We can report now, yes, but is it seen as OK? NO this whole damn article makes that clear. Props to you Willa. As a first year student here… this semester has been shocking, and this article has revealed many disconcerting truths that are often not paid mind to. Well written response, captures a well-rounded viewpoint that addresses more than just simply “rape culture” here.
due to still extant Virginia brothel laws, only frats can serve alcohol, all sororities are dry
Holy crap.
Anytime that privilege is unthroned, even a little, the rallying cry in response is “tradition.” . . . President Sullivan sent an email within the day, which opened by addressing, before any solidarity with the student who spoke up, before any responsibility for the botched investigation, and certainly before any responsibility for the crime happening on our campus in the first place, the “negative portrayal” of the University.
These passages, in particular, made me think about similar dynamics at work in the Roman Catholic Church, in regard to the sex abuse scandal.
Thank you for a great analysis.
I’m at Ohio State, and my school has come under fire recently as well for mishandling rape investigations and possibly fostering a toxic atmosphere. It’s really disturbing to me that this has happened, and that there may have been people who’ve protected the university above the victims. We really need to address not only the crimes, but the people and the beliefs and traditions that are allowing these crimes to continue.
Good analysis.
This is a very thought-provoking post, and your deconstruction of a widely-accepted cultural belief/practice reminds me of the writer Eula Biss.
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On point article regarding the recent events at UVA.
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I believe that rape is not treated as the serious crime it is worldwide. Too often there are those who think it is okay. Every report of rape must be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought before the court.
Look, part of the reason people feel defensive is because articles like this put them on the defensive. You imply that wearing a tie to a football game is tantamount to condoning sexual assault. You act like it’s not *that* bad a thing when innocent people are called ‘rapist’ because they’re in a fraternity. Now, obviously, this pales in comparison to the trauma faced by victims of sexual assault–but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.
Let us be on the same side in this discussion. We can disagree on many things else–ties, Thomas Jefferson, whatever– but let’s unite together against the depraved cowards who commit acts of sexual assault. I can wear a tie to a football game (I never did, for what that’s worth) and not accept any form of sexual violence.
You really couldn’t have missed the point more if you were consciously trying.
Agree, agree, agree…
Really? How so?
“When your traditions are built on a history of white supremacy, perhaps it’s time to criticize them.”
There is so much conflation here it makes my head spin. What traditions do we need to criticize? Is rape culture really a product of white supremacy? Is it inexorably linked with dressing preppy to football games? Or is it its own separate evil, that finds itself in many cultures of many people.
And look how most of the students at UVA are responding. They’re listening. They’re supporting. Maybe they are white and privileged–that’s a different issue. Debate it on its own merits. The point is, on sexual assault, they’re on your side. They talk about honor because they understand rape is dishonorable. That the word–along with ‘tradition’–has been used for evil in the past doesn’t mean it’s not applicable here.
They’ll only accept you if you’re against rape for the right reasons.
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Great article. One point though – I don’t know about Virginia brothel laws, but I think sororities are dry at UVA because their national organizations require it, as part of their general risk management. The effect is the same though, in terms of ceding a good amount of control of the social scene to the fraternities.
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Rape is a Federal crime…period. Protecting rapists should be considered aiding and abetting criminals.
Great post, though as far as I can tell the “brothel law” is a myth. C-ville did a cover story almost a month ago about the tradition of fraternities hosting parties (and sororities not doing so) at UVa: http://www.c-ville.com/different-rules-fraternities-sororities-make-campus-life-dangerous/#.VHNQTlf0ghc
(Snopes article about brothel laws here: http://www.snopes.com/college/halls/brothel.asp)
I agree w/ everything in this article (honestly, I’m not just saying that, and I went to UVA) but then I googled “brothel laws” and I came up with a number of sites that were skeptical of their existence, such as this:
http://www.lasisblog.com/2012/09/27/the-brothel-law-fact-or-fiction/
Snopes also says that these laws don’t exist:
http://www.snopes.com/college/halls/brothel.asp
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This is an interesting thought piece, obviously written by someone who is studying English. It’s an interesting deconstruction of the issue, but in the end, it’s as pointless as the verbiage of President Sullivan’s email and the whole din of language being thrown at the problem.
I’m a humanities alum of UVA (PhD, 2014), an ardent support of this type of analytical thinking, and a militant advocate of women’s, LGBTQ, and minority rights. But the conclusion presented here, that we need to “listen” in order to change the heinous culture of Greek life across the US University System, is garbage.
I mean no disrespect to Ms. Hammitt Brown in saying this, but this is just another bit of re-bloggable noise in an already deafening polyphony.
Lest people read this and take issue, let me be clear:
Yes, we need to listen.
Yes, we need to make changes to the campus culture so that people feel safe to report and, more importantly, so that people do not feel like they have access to the bodies of others in this violent and terrible way.
Yes, we need to change the way young men view and think about young women (and we also need to translate that message into LGBTQ contexts because sexual assault among queers at UVA is a reality that also goes unmentioned).
But what we really need are actual solutions, not think pieces. We need action not more words.
Abolishing the Greek system sounds like a great idea, but that just moves the party culture off campus where it’s more difficult to control. Banning alcohol at such events will similarly drive them underground of off Grounds.
President Sullivan: Your decision to suspend Greek orgs at UVA over the last few weeks of the semester is a limp, symbolic gesture. It makes good PR, but it changes nothing. Students return in January, and the boys club is pieced back together. Big deal.
Where is the President Sullivan we rallied to reinstate following the Board of Regents ouster? Where is the leader that our students and faculty put such faith in? Where is the actual leadership at the helm of this institution? UVA is a special place for the bullshit of bureaucracy, but our school–a university I love like no other I’ve attended–must act. At every level, the University of Virginia is failing the members of its community.
Change the policies regarding all on-campus events that involve students and alcohol. Groups hosting such events should have to pay for extra security (1 campus safety officer for every 30 people in attendance), and these officers should have free access to monitor all areas of a house or building in which such an even is held. No closed doors; no locked rooms; no access to the upstairs. Failure to pay for this added security results in a one-sanction punishment: a life-long ban from the University.
Require annual drug, alcohol, sexual assault, and sensitivity training for Greek orgs. Create a course that all Greek Life participants (and any other members of the University Community) must take focuses on these issues–make it interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and pin to it a required community service project in which they must volunteer at a sexual abuse center, staff a crisis call center, or contribute in some way to an actual working solution to these kinds of issues.
Change the culture of the university with direct action, not committee meetings, endless chains of email, and interesting but ultimately useless thought pieces about honor.
There is no honor in allowing this to persist.
There is no honor in delaying action through senseless bureaucracy.
There is no honor in ignoring the way students, faculty, and staff replicate these behaviors at all levels of the University culture.
From where I stand, there seems to be little honor left at UVA.
Leaders of The University of Virginia, members of the UVA community and family, I beseech you to actually DO something.
If you haven’t already, please send that to President Sullivan. You are right, there need to be actual changes in order for any school to attempt to confront a problem as significant as this one. Most frat members have houses off campus, and will surely be moving parties there. A ban, especially a temporary one, does no good. Neither do niceties nor statements made for good PR. The only thing that would make UVA a safer place is to actually change the way the school prevents and handles these cases. Sexual assault and rape cases at my school were handled much differently. Student and parents received emails from the school alerting them when there was any crime committed against another student or reported. That included rapes, sexual assaults (of which we have very few), violent crimes, drug crimes, any deaths, etc. We knew when, where, and how things happened in our school and I am thankful for the administrations transparency. UVA could learn a thing or two about transparency.
A couple of problems with your post:
1. None of the fraternities have on-Grounds housing. Their houses are all off of University property. All (or vast majority) of their houses are owned by independent, alumni run housing corporations with no relationship to the University. So the party culture is already “off-campus”, and the University is limited in its ability to regulate student life off Grounds.
2. Fraternities and sororities are already required to attend annual presentations on drugs/alcohol, hazing, sexual violence, diversity, etc. Whether they are effectively implemented or not is a different question.
Thanks for the correction re: Greeks on university property. I suppose, however, that the Honor code does extend to life beyond grounds, so perhaps the solution is to make sexual assault an honor violation, as a number of groups are already suggesting.
And I assumed there was some kind of “presentation,” but I’m an advocate of paring such presentations with some actual work. Having sat through dozens of similar events before, I can only imagine that most of it goes in one ear and out the other…
As a statement of values, perhaps single sanction for sexual assault would mean something, but there’s no evidence the single sanction reduces cheating at UVA to levels lower than comparable schools. Would likely have similarly little effect on incidents of sexual assault.
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Well, damn. I was under the impression that they were on university property, but I didn’t actually look it up. An unfortunate situation then. That certainly complicates that suggestion, but I offered it only as part of a plea for some kind of action. Guess I’ve just added my own regrettable noise to the conversation….
Please, please~ properly spell Edgar Allan Poe. I can’t get any further into your piece until you do, and I only have a mere B.A. from J.M.U. way back in ’92.
Dude… Shut up.
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nice
Willa’s thoughts on this subject should definitely be a follow up to the Rolling Stone’s article. Her words are thought provoking on many levels. With eloquence, mocking the response from UVa’s female president and bringing the reader’s attention to meaning of honor and the reality of a long history that redefined this word as an adjective versus a noun. Nearly 200 years of tradition unmarred by progress.
This is a well-written post, but one sentence has given me something to think about: “Everyone rushed to be the victim, because a victim cannot be part of the problem.”
This is endemic to our current culture and to dialogue/unfettered monologues in this country. It’s meant to stop conversation, introspection and empathy for others. It is truly an obstacle to practical solutions. But you are absolutely right, it’s mostly intended to deflect blame.
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Personally as a survivor or rape and incest and so much more sexual violence I believe that breaking the silence is key in prevention. I appreciate the post because at the very least it raises awareness. However this is not a new issue. Rape has been occurring since biblical times. We just choose to act oblivious thereby allowing the tragedy to continue disrupting lives and endangering the welfare of our society as a whole.
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Rape is serious and needs to be taken more seriously by the law. It destroys lives, changes the person for the rest of their lives never quite getting back all they were. Forever changed!
“When we were the last public university to accept women, it was because of tradition.”
U.Va. wasn’t even the last public university in Virginia to accept women.
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Sexual assalt is the same as a lie. A big lie is not different than a little lie. It’s lying.
In my book, sexual assault is worst than murder. The victim has to live and deal with it the rest of their lives, often with no one to help or understand what the offense significantly means to them. Perhaps, the Universities in this country should man up and prosecute within the system, then turn the offender or offenders over to the local or state system. After this, simply be aggressive in follow ups to make sure someone is being prosecuted. If not, the only way to start getting the message out and getting answers is with the end of a 2 x 4 in the hands of a dad whose daughter or son has been assaulted. Universities want understand the seriousness of this challenge until they know how serious people are about no tolerating it and alone, seeking out the offenders themselves. People should stop being nice in discussing this topic. I believe we have a forgiving God and we all have the capacity to be forgiving. Perhaps, there is also is a special place in hell for people who commit such crimes and out of total disregard for their victims, seek to protect and defend their kind instead of being responsible for their wrong doing.
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This was a well-written and intelligent article. Unfortunately the recent revelation that the story reported by Rolling Stone was a hoax, or at least that it accused the wrong men of the crime, is likely to set back the cause considerably.
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Thank you for a thought provoking post.