Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

"The Hunting Ground" was very powerful and upsetting to my two friends and I.  These young women speaking out about their rape on campus was empowering for them, and hopefully there will be some changes in how rape is handled on campuses.  Right now it is a culture of blame the victim and protect the perpetrator, in order to keep rape statistics down at the campuses.  They don't protect and serve their students, they protect and serve the interest of football and alumni and fraternities.  Money does all the talking, and they shut their ears to the suffering of the women.  Right speech is calling attention to this horror, yet when women professors supported the women, they were denied tenure or fired.  Silencing seems to the the main objective of the college administrations.

I was aware and afraid when I was an undergraduate at Cal, Berkeley.  I knew better than to go to a fraternity party, or walk alone.  There was an escort service at night so we could get from the dorm to the library and back unharmed.  Yet, in my sophomore year, as I was living in a coop, I attended a coop party (coops were all male or all female in those days) and a boy pulled me in a nearby room and threw me on a bed.  Luckily, I didn't really drink and had only sipped a beer, so I fought him off and ran from the room.  I never went to a party on campus again.  Ever.  I'd trusted that there were no predators among my fellow students, and we were being fed the line that it was a stranger or crazed person sneaking on campus that was what we should fear.  Nobody spoke the truth.  It was so dark at many points on campus at night that I could not see my hand in front of my face, but I knew I'd be blamed if something happened to me.  So I stayed in a prison of the university's making.  Years later I marched with "Take Back the Night".  We were furious that we were not safe to go to a movie or take a walk and look at the stars or go to the library in the evening.  And now, many years after that, nothing has changed.

I hope this movie gets wide play and causes a conversation about colleges and their priorities.  I hope young women are warned they are in danger before they step on campus.  I hope the law changes and perpetrators are punished, not their victims.