Date rape is more common at Duke than we would like to think. Most weekends, the Women's Center receives reports of at least one sexual assault of one student by another. These charges can't be shrugged off or explained away by debating what constitutes consent.
To say that there is a fine line between drunken hookups and sexual assault begs the larger question. Legalisms aside, are our actions consistent with the values we say we believe in? Student-on-student violence poisons our community, deeply distorting relationships among people who should be equal partners in campus life and learning.
Contributing factors almost always include the use of alcohol by one or both parties. Taking advantage of a drunken fellow student who has come to your dorm room may not seem as sordid as, say, jumping out of a bathroom stall at 5 a.m., but it can be just as damaging for the person assaulted.
The pervasiveness of the alcohol culture among Duke undergraduates, and the jaded cynicism that tends to accompany it, mask a larger underlying problem: With depressing frequency, Duke students regard fellow students as sexual prey.
Consequences for the victim are serious: shame, guilt, fear, anger and disrupted sleeping, eating and studying. Some women drop classes.
Some end up dropping out of college. There are no comparable consequences for the guy. Few incidents are reported, even though they are known to friends and family; almost no one is convicted. That leads some people to say, "Well, there must not be a problem." But those who have friends who have suffered sexual assault by a classmate know personally how wrong it is to draw such conclusions from silence or ambiguity.
To be sure, it's not all one way. Some Duke undergraduate women engage in aggressive sexual behavior that puts men in difficult situations as well. But the imbalance of power, and the prevailing cultural norms, mean that sexual predation is a particular problem for women.
At Duke, recent discussions about security have focused mainly on keeping the campus safe from outside intruders, as if we could draw a charmed circle and allow only nice people in. Yes, intruders are a concern, but in terms of residence hall safety from outsiders, our procedures are pretty sound. Evidence in the Wannamaker assault last semester, in which an undergraduate woman reported being physically and sexually assaulted in a second-floor dormitory bathroom, points ultimately to another Duke student.
If you agree that this problem is serious, help our community take it on. Both men and women can arrange their partying and social life to have fun while avoiding situations where assault is likely. Both men and women say that they find the present climate of "hooking up" ultimately unrewarding and wish for a broader range of social activity, but nobody seems able to do anything about it. Duke students can change that.
The first step in doing so is to end the uneasy silence. Be willing to talk openly about sexual violence and its pervasive implications for our community. Support those who have been assaulted, and as peers - friends, roommates, fraternity brothers and sorority sisters - be willing to speak the truth about this issue, and call those who engage in such behavior into account. Let them know that date rape is not something to boast about, not something to forget about or take lightly.
It's time to confront this issue openly, together, at Duke.
Nan Keohane is the president of Duke University.
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