43 CommentsColumbia is on CNN again, and this time, it’s not for something funny. Remember when we spotted CNN setting up for an interview in front of Philosophy Hall? As it turns out, they were interviewing three Columbia sexual assault victims. Hear their stories:
CNN filming near philosophy pic.twitter.com/bqwYrdiqls
— Bwog (@bwog) May 12, 2014
More CNN on campus pic.twitter.com/aB4hbMuEKP
— Bwog (@bwog) May 12, 2014
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43 Comments
@Anonymous why is everyone’s first instinct to belittle the women who come forward as sexual assault victims?
@Chad Cummingsworth Wanna play a game called just the tip?
@howl I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked
@Thank You Thank you for having the courage to share your stories.
@Roar Publicity Stunt
@what the fuck i can’t believe a staff member suggested going and talking to her assaulter in his room after the incident. how fucking insensitive and unhelpful.
@Anonymous Because there is generally no evidence, no witnesses, he said she said situations. With no evidence, the case is dropped. The police would not do anything in most of these cases. They would go get a lawyer or go tell your dean. The university is ironically the only place to seek justice because there is a much lower standard of justice and evidence than in a court of law.
@BwogKing And you think that’s a good thing? There should be a lower standard of evidence? Why not just go get mob justice? That has the lowest standard of evidence-absolutely none!
We MUST uphold innocence until proven guilty.
@An honest question Why aren’t more survivors going to the police instead of university bureaucrats?
@cc 2014 this is a question i have had as well, and i think it might have something to do with a sense of security
when you come to columbia, the school sort of takes on a parental role. it feeds you, houses you, educates you, gets you into museums for free, excuses your misdemeanors (public intoxication/drug possession/open containers are much more permissible at 116th and bway than they are at 137th and bway, go figure), gives you access to resources, etc. columbia feels like a safe place that has your back and your best interests in mind.
dealing with police is a scary prospect for anyone, especially the [generally] sheltered nice smart pretty young people who attend columbia. also, lawyers and court dates cost time and money and don’t take into consideration the fact that you really have to work on this problem set or that essay.
so you’re left facing a choice between a university that has taken you under its wing and will cater to your student-ness or a justice system with which you’ve [likely] never interacted and which will treat you as any other adult in NYC
if i were in this situation (and was unaware of the poor reputation of Columbia’s response to such matters), I would probably put my faith in the school before taking anything to the police. it’s a matter of trust in and familiarity with the school. you believe that Columbia wants to take care of you, and it is crushing to realize that they are just an institution trying to cover their own asses and retain their money and reputation.
i would encourage anyone to go directly to proper authorities (NYPD) if you have been assaulted. clearly Columbia has interests in mind other than justice or the well-being of survivors.
@BC '16 I’m so incredibly thankful to these women for coming forward and speaking about their experiences. They’re amazing.
@have you been paying attention at all? First, I can’t really believe you’re trying to undermine these survivors by putting “assault” in quotations. Seriously? Get it together.
Second, it’s not a “handful” it’s a lot of people. Just because you don’t go on CNN doesn’t mean you were sexually assaulted. We don’t have the numbers on the people at Columbia, it the US Gov’t approximates 1/5 women on college campuses will be assaulted. so not a “handful”
Also if you had even WATCHED THE VIDEO you would see that the rapists have not been removed. That was almost the point of the video. To emphasize that their assailants were still on campus.
u r the kind of person who fell for NPR’s april fools joke. Try reading / watching something before you comment.
@NOOOOOO this was supposed to be in reply to the person who said the press was blowing this “way out of proportion.”
the captcha was really hard okay guys
@survivor i don’t know. i definitely wish my sexual assaulter had been taken off campus (so many triggers), but i also believe in second chances, and realize that immediately expelling sexual assaulters creates a stigma for those students that will quite possibly haunt them for the rest of their lives. that’s unfair too, right? similar to how pre-emptive incarceration starts a cycle of crime that freed inmates can’t get out of.
i do believe that they should be taken out of school, but to specifically undergo treatment and therapy to help them realize/understand what they did, and ensure that it doesn’t happen again. (if it does, yes, they will be expelled.). sure, you can kick a student off campus — but isn’t that just making it somebody else’s problem? punishment over prevention?
i know this is an unpopular opinion but i had to get it out there. i used to have so much anger and hate towards my assaulter, but i’m beginning to realize that what i want more than anything else is a strong culture of prevention. i don’t want to ruin lives. i want understanding. survivors face many stigmas, sure, but they can transcend that. but once you’re branded a rapist, there’s very little chance you’ll be able to rid yourself of that label… and once you’re a criminal, you might as well commit more crimes eh?
@YES THANK YOU FINALLY A VOICE OF REASON
@from one survivor to another i completely agree, but columbia is beyond horrible at all things re: mental health.
@Anonymous i agree with you. you’re not retarded like the rest of the student body. that’s rare.
@Anonymous Are you saying it’s harder to be a rapist than it is to be raped? I’m sorry, I’d think rapists would factor in how much it sucks to be found out BEFORE they rape someone, maybe that would defer them from doing so in the first place. I have no pity whatsoever for someone who is despised for doing a despicable thing.
@proud alum you 3 ladies are fucking incredible. thank you. thank you thank you thank you
@X Columbia is a disgusting institution. To think that these places have so much influence over the American power structure – it explains why America continues to decline. These are the “brightest minds” of America.
@Anonymous kep
@Anonymous Sarah Yee is amazing and so strong. I hope you know how much impact sharing your story can have!
@anon I admire your courage for sharing your experience with us. Without this information, I wouldn’t have realized how close sexual assault is to us.
@Lion They were drinking
@CC '14 Correct, they were drinking. I’ve seen one of these girls in particular out at a Frat party and she was drinking heavily and falling over all of the guys, myself included. I imagine that her behavior is why her claims have not been supported by the school or the police.
@Were you drinking? Lucky for you no one raped you.
@CC '14 Yes I was, but I wasn’t out of control wasted like this particular girl. Actually, her behavior was incredibly off putting and I thought she was emotionally disturbed, which may explain a lot. I’ve seen her at other parties and she always seems to be out of control, so maybe a little substance abuse counseling should be administered, as well. Maybe to topic of underage drinking should be brought up along with the topic of sexual assault? I know the girl I’m referring to is still underage and she drinks more vodka than a forty-year old Park Avenue divorcee.
@Anonymous yeah, everyone knows that it’s ok to rape drunk people….
except, wait, no. What the fuck is your point? she should have been raped? fucking creep
@girl on campus I love Zoe. She is so amazing and inspiring.
Proud to know her. <3
@Anonymous The publicity of this is really getting out of hand now. Isn’t there any other news going on in the world. Women are raped and multilated everyday in Africa and no one cares.
@anon I sort of agree, but we have to start somewhere. Hopefully the national attention this has been getting will not only inspire change here at colleges in America, but hopefully it will influence change in places like India where rape has almost become an epidemic. We have to solve the problem here first and all be on the same page before we consider helping else where
@anon This is becoming extremely blurred, the results will never be good enough, and people are taking an internal educational policy based on the “preponderance of evidence” as something that is as legitimate as a legal court of law, especially when people call others “rapists” off thse internal policies. If the rape was truly so violent, and the evidence so clear, why were they not arrested and taken to court?
And with regards to solving problems here so we can inspire other places like India, I would bet that at least 90% of these cases (though two of the above three cases in the video seemed quite powerful) don’t come anywhere near as close as to the issues people face in Africa, Latin America, or India. It’s disgraceful to even compare the situation at Columbia to the horrible experiences women are getting put through in those regions, where children are kidnapped, women are taken on to busses and gang raped, and genital mutilation occurs to girls at birth.
And that leads to the final point, this whole controversy is blending with others’ person activist agendas. Columbia is now, as activists promote, a hotbed for “violent” rape and some articles are even mentioning a “rape epidemic”. The problem is so much more complex than just the “old” days of black and white. People don’t seem to want to acknowledge this though, so anyone in these proceedings at a university is immediately a rapist. it’s a slippery slope and is just the beginning to an environment of paranoia.
Lastly, I would say most universities try to err on the side of finding someone in trouble rather than not, because the voice is so much louder on the alleged victim’s side than the alleged perpetrator (don’t believe me – just think – how many accused were interviewed or volunteered to interview in this video? whether out of shame or because they weren’t asked, you won’t find many).
@Anonymous I agree. The press is blowing this way out of proportion. Out of the over 29,000 students who attend Columbia on a daily basis, as well as over 50,000 other professors, staff, administrators, works, employees, etc, a handfull of people that have been “assaulted” over a five year period is not very impressive, and probably way below most companies or government agencies numbers. Not to belittle this, but facts are facts. Therer are probably more problems and discrimination at CNN or the Times on a daily basis than Columbia. Decribing this as “rape culture” will ultimately cause this issue harm. Real rapists have been removed, the rest is all blurred.
@Anonymous I’m really proud of the courage these women expressed by speaking about their attacks publicly. It is a true testament to their strength–I’m honored to be a part of the same community as them.
@Anonymous Yes, you do: http://news.columbia.edu/pressroom/825
But it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
@Anonymous don’t you need permission from admin to film on campus?
@Anonymous Yes they do need permisssion. This is a private school. I wonder if CNN obtained it?
@anhr Of course CNN only interviews women #discrimination #mensRights
@Stop with the sexism Im pretty sure they interviewed everyone who volunteered to talk. Honestly with the media attention this is getting right now anyone who wants to tell their story has more than enough space to do so.
Really proud of Zoe and everyone else involved in the fight to make Columbia a safer place.
@Anonymous I’m fairly sure that it’s just a troll/lame sarcasm. I don’t think anyone has seriously said “men’s rights” in awhile (outside of dark corners of the internet) and the hashtags just highlight the absurdity.
@Also None of the “counterarguments” to what the women interviewed are saying depend on a man’s perspective, unless anyone seriously wants to consider what professed rapists have to say.
@Roland I’d hit it.
@Anonymous Rape culture engages in crude stereotyping that relies upon buzzwords, bad statistics, and surface level analysis to reach wildly fantastic conclusions unsupported by scientific evidence. In dangerously hints at further erosions of due process rights for allegedly accused students, who already have severely restricted rights, including a special jury panel and no right to cross-examine their accuser under our system.
College is a confusing time with many new adaptations, including parties with large amounts of alcohol involved. Not all sex that occurs after these parties is rape. In fact, the extremely vast majority are consensual encounters between consenting adults. To introduce the administration’s bumbling bureaucracy, especially in a gender-biased fashion, is certainly not the answer.
I am very deeply sorry for experience of the author of the piece. But her prescriptions for the problem, to correct gender discrimination with even further gender discrimination, would be far worse than the disease.
Let’s begin with the myth of the “rape epidemic.” According to Princeton’s Cleary Act Crime Reports and Student Disciplinary Summaries from the past decade, there have been less than ten charges of sexual assault over the past eight years. Current FBI statistics put the rate of sexual assault at significantly less than 1% nationally, about 25% of which are proven false and 36% are retracted at some point.
The math militates against the author’s claims that this is an “epidemic,” and utterly belies the claim that there is some sort of permissive “rape culture.”
The author writes:
“Within this culture, we view men’s aggressive behavior as an acceptable norm.”
Let’s examine this crude generalization when adapted to other groups :
“Within this culture, we view black male aggressive behavior as an acceptable norm.”
“Within this culture, we view female submission and passivity as an acceptable norm.”
These statement are offensive, as they should be, because they broadly stereotype a group based purely upon physical characteristics that have nothing to do with moral or behavioral character.
This article villainizes men, portrays women as helpless damsels in need of protection, invents a supposed epidemic that is not supported by the mathematics, dangerously miscasts an important issue, and, most importantly, plays into the very same crude gender stereotypes it claims to fight.
Labeling a small number of highly tragic sexual assault incidents to the result of a widespread “culture” is false, facile, and dangerous.