PRETENSIONS UNLIMITED

Unidentified men raped a woman at the Sigma Chi fraternity house at UW-Madison five months ago. Fraternity members bought drinks for her, the woman blacked out. She woke up on October 5th bleeding and bruised. She remembered nothing.

Technicians at a local hospital collected a rape kit. The woman’s injuries indicated a gang rape, an especially violent case. The police began an investigation, the university attempted their own, and the woman worked to heal and assert control over her life.

Months go by. No charges filed, no actions taken in the scholastic arena, and no news – beyond whispers among the Greek clique on the campus – reaches the public of the horrendous offense.

Following this expanse of widespread institutional impotence, the Badger Herald broke the story two weeks ago, after an intense and brave interview with the woman.

Police and University officials reacted in disappointingly trite fashion. Police issued statements to the press, blustering about ongoing investigations, confirming – as everyone has come to expect of our vaunted police – that there are currently no suspects. The Greek Community and their governing body (the IFC) expressed their disappointment and noted an ongoing investigation. The university, among other futile gestures, jumped to defend itself from accusations of inaction. Lori Berquam, the current Dean of Students, made non-specific statements about sexual assault and organized apoorly advertised and attended forum the week after the story broke.

The Sigma Chis, for their part, offered a deafening “no comment.”

The reaction from the campus population proved apathetic at best, sexist at worst. There were no protests, no marches, and no loud denunciations. No one walked out of their classes and gathered at Library Mall. The students answered, if one can suffer anecdote, the story in the paper with a shrug and the turn of a page, sometimes featuring a shake of a head and a whisper to another student in a nearby seat which elicited a snort of laughter.

Listen in: “Drunk chicks, bro. Am I right?”

The online analogue to the student body’s reaction to the news that a fellow student endured a brutal assault troubles me more. Mere indifference did not suffice as a reaction online. Spurred by lucky anonymity provided by the Badger Herald’s commenting system, community members spewed bigoted speech in the direction of the woman reporting her rape. The responses to the story follow a few disgusting templates.

1. She’s Making it Up
From the first comment on the story:

Sorry for the girl if this is true, but the whole thing seems a little fishy. Story comes out 5 months later? Not 1 name? Not 1 charge? The hospital wasn’t contacted? The hospital didn’t contact police after seeing the girl? Random girl comes out of the blue and claims to have seen a pill in her drink a year ago, but didn’t tell anyone?
This just seems like hearsay and some real facts would be nice…. -Anonymous (March 4, 2009 @ 3:15am)

With a brief understanding of what the woman – she’s old enough to be a university student, she’s not a girl – went through, this commenter discards her story as a lie. Never mind that rape is incredibly damaging, something that many people don’t want to talk about years after it’s happened let alone days. Never mind that investigations of rape take a long time under ideal circumstances. Never mind that there’s scientific evidence that a rape occurred. Never mind the fact that the fraternities involved would want to cover this up.

Nope. No one heard about this before, so it must be a lie. Some woman just wanted attention.

2. She was Totally Asking for It/She Banged some Dudes and got Embarrassed
I considered breaking these two down. They seem, however, to occur hand in hand in the responses to the article, per:

…Apparently using the word “like” every other word and just making shit up counts as intelligence?… Yeah rape is a big deal, but this story has no evidence and should not have ever been printed. It’s 100% hearsay.
And by the way, roofies are in your system for 72 hours and can be discovered in hair within a month. Her comment that the nurse said you have to be tested with 1 hour shows the nurse, and her, true “intelligence”.
She admits in the transcript to getting wasted and “black out” and her test came up negative. No reason to think she didn’t black out, banged some dudes, and is now embarrassed. -Anonymous (March 4, 2009 @ 8:43pm)

(When first responding to this comment, all that came out was: “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.” I’ve toned it down.)
The individual here decides, despite “rape being a big deal” (understatement of the year goes to…), that the woman made the whole story up because she’s embarrassed. She went out, got drunk, had icky sex and now wants to punish people because her feelings are hurt. She’s also stupid.

This argument seems to miss the gravity of the situation. Medical evidence suggests that the woman was gang raped. She had bruises. She was bleeding. She was beat up. Sure, people get drunk and have sex. Sure, people are sometimes embarrassed about it. No, no, NO, people don’t often get beat up and then willingly get gang-banged by their assailants.

Comments like this often try to place blame on the person who was raped. They try to note that the person got drunk, so somehow it makes sense that they were assaulted. This kind of sexist thinking permeates our culture and encourages and accepts rape.

3. This Story Hurts the Good Reputation of the Greek System at UW-Madison and Shouldn’t have been Published
A pretty prevalent sentiment. Someone comes right out and says it in the comment section:

i am disappointed in the herald for publishing such an aged yet un-detailed story. this is not a “top news story,” it is a scandal that lacks the facts needed to make a legitimate accusation. of course the victim has her right to animosity, but until further investigated, why not keep the fraternity anonymous too? why destroy their reputation instantly, while hiding hers? sigma chi is a fraternity of outstanding men – one of the strongest chapters on our campus – and it would be a shame if this accusation is the end to their fraternity. -Anonymous (March 4, 2009 @ 8:13am)

There seems to be a strain of thought here that places more importance on group/individual reputation than the mental and physical wellbeing of human beings. This thinking leads to an emphasis on silence when something goes wrong. This kind of thinking leads to widespread corruption. This kind of thinking leads to the Iraq War.

I find it revolting that a person actually thinks that damage to reputation hurts more than rape. Especially considering the stature of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. In their own words, Sigma Chi possesses the “…largest endowment funds and operating budget of all fraternity foundations…” That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of influence.

There isn’t just implied encouragement of silence about rape in the campus response to this incident, there is overt encouragement of silence. That our society tolerates this kind of thinking, even incentivises it, causes unfathomable destruction in the lives of millions of people.

One might want to discourage me from taking any of these online responses seriously. “It’s the internet,” they would say. “Everyone’s a jerk on the internet.” If we accept, however, the argument advanced by bloggers like Will Leitch that comment sections are valuable as they allow valid discussion of news and world happenings, we must accept these toxic utterances as having some real world counterpart. We can not continue dismissing the blatant bigotry and ignorance found in comment sections of newspapers and blogs. That reaction seems irresponsible and does a disservice to a valuable format for human interaction.

Once we accept the fact that these templates of response have real-world sentiments backing them up, we must admit that we need to do better. People need to organize, people need to speak out, people need to scream and shout and get angry and require accountability for sexual assault against women and all other humans. Our culture discourages discussion about rape. It’s not pleasant, so it’s hidden. This cultural trait prevents justice to those who have their license taken away from them by others, like the woman in this story, and must be changed.

We have to do better as a people, as a city, as a nation.
*****
Sigma Chi’s fraternity house was vandalized the weekend after the story of the rape broke. The University issued a statement condemning acts of vandalism in far more specific terms than their statement about sexual assault. The Greek Community and the IFC reacted with indignation and outrage.

Where was this quick, energized, and specific reaction from all parties when the rape happened, when the news of the rape broke?

The disparity speaks volumes on the priorities of our community and culture.