Dear Editor,
I am writing to follow up to my Jan. 31 letter to the editor where I described one of my students sharing with me her story of rape. Since that letter was published, I've spoken with many students about sexual assault. I was surprised how many told me things like “Yeah, I've had several of my friends share these kinds of stories with me, and it's really too bad.” This confirmed, anecdotally at least, how significant the problem of sexual assault is on our campus.
But after hearing several comments like the one above, I became quite upset by the apparent complacency involved, especially among many of my male students. Hearing one story of sexual assault caused me so much anguish that I wanted to scream and shout and work my butt off toward a solution. If my male students had several female friends share these kinds of stories, I wondered how they were able to handle and process all of this. What kinds of actions were they taking to address the problem of sexual assault? Were they organizing demonstrations, sit ins, and other events on campus against sexual violence that I wasn't aware of? Were they raising hell at chapter meetings, athletic team meetings, floor meetings, and DSG meetings? Were they working to change the culture to lessen the prevalence of sexual assault? Were they writing letters to the editor that I just didn't see? Or is sexual assault so prevalent in our culture that students are complacent, and sexual assault is just background noise that takes a back seat to other problems?
I do know that students are aware of sexual assault at some level, having gone through mandatory training during orientation, and I know students (including men) are involved with organizations such as Code TEAL and Green Dot. I wonder, though, why everyone isn't involved with addressing the problem of sexual violence.
At the time I'm writing this letter, my earlier letter to the editor has been viewed online over 1,500 times and apparently shared by many students, but from what I can tell, the vast majority of the shares have been from women students, not men. I want to encourage and challenge everyone at DePauw (students, staff, faculty, alums, administration), especially DePauw men, to get involved by acknowledging that sexual assault is our problem, and then work tirelessly to find solutions. This is primarily a man's problem, and until we men accept this, the problem cannot be solved.
Sincerely,
Douglas Harms
Professor of Computer Science
Bonner Scholar Faculty Advisor