Say more about sexual assault

A column written by an anonymous source went live on the Harvard Crimson’s website March 31. And it’s changing how we talk about sexual assault on college campuses.

“Dear Harvard: You Win” is an extremely powerful first-person account of woman’s experience through the long and excessively difficult process after being sexually
assaulted.

The crux of the letter written to the university is the idea that, due to Harvard’s inefficiency, the student will be dropping out in order to save her life. She claims that the university’s inactivity has caused her to develop a mental illness.

She went to the proper outlets and told her story, but nobody truly listened. All of the appropriate people were in place by the university — the house master, the administrative board, sexual assault and harassment tutors — yet the woman was still never really helped.

And something tells me that this case isn’t solely limited to Harvard University, although the idea of it happening at such a prestigious university does help level the playing field for the larger issue at hand.

We suppress sex and are so overwhelmingly sex-negative that we end up always thinking about sex. Ever since philosopher Michel Foucault pointed it out, it seems that we can’t get away from the idea.

But I feel that rape and sexual assault are the opposite. We spend so much time talking about sexual assault and generally knowing it’s out there that we don’t actually delve into the topic.

True, talking about the issue is better than not talking about it at all. But more and more, I’ve realized that we expose these sexual assault stories to no real avail.
This Monday, the Indiana Daily Student reported about a rape. As I walk past newsstands, I saw the article on the front cover, thought about how it was sad and moved on with my day.

True, part of this is my flaw. But we’re so inundated with these tales and half-followed reports that end up going nowhere that sexual assault seems to become nonchalant, a topic brought up in a recent column by Jordan Riley.

Everyone’s talking, but no one is really saying anything.

It’s hard to see who we are actually helping. We need to be more thorough with sexual assault training at IU.

I don’t actively seek out information about rape and sexual assault. What I see around campus is nothing more than blanket statements about consensual sex, but I already learned that during the Welcome to College musical at orientation.

We could all do more to start real conversations about sexual assault. Let’s stop creating after-school specials and delve into meaningful, nuanced conversation more often.

I fear that we, like Harvard, have all the cards in place, but we won’t know what to do when we actually need to play them.

sjostrow@indiana.edu
@ostrowski_s_j