I was absent-mindedly scrolling through social media the other day, probably during my simpler-than-high-school BIO 133 class, when I stumbled upon this comical but hard-hitting tweet:
At first I laughed, because way back in the day this is actually exactly what happened to me and my secret Facebook account. But then it sunk in that a convicted rapist spent less time in jail than I did without a phone or social life at the beginning of middle school. So if you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months and don’t know what’s going on, this is the simplest way to exemplify just how ridiculous this situation is.
Here are thirteen of the many, many things that are longer than Brock Turner’s prison time:
1. Election season
This has been going on for far too long and it may be September now, but the end is still not in sight.
2. Any sports season
Turner is an athlete, right? Well whether it’s a swim season, football season, or soccer season, they’re all longer than the amount of time he spent in jail.
3. Weed possession charges
The minimum federal sentence for being found in possession of marijuana is an entire year, but actual convictions can be much longer, especially for people of color.
4. Peanut butter's shelf life
This food of the gods is good for about a year…if you don’t finish it first.
5. Summer break
For college students, break starts at the beginning of May and lasts through mid-August, making it summer vacation about half a month longer than Turner’s jail time.
6. Nelson Mandela’s sentence
The civil rights pioneer unjustly and peacefully spent an entire 27 years in prison.
7. Purvi Patel’s sentence
A largely unknown case, Patel was sentenced to 20 years of jail time for feticide after taking abortion-inducing pills in Indiana in 2013.
8. Mahatma Gandhi’s sentence
Gandhi actually went to jail multiple times for his peaceful protests and was once sentenced to six years.
9. Martha Stewart’s sentence
The queen of homemaking spent a whole five months in jail for lying to the feds about stocks.
10. My seasonal allergies
Named “seasonal,” my allergies are technically year-round, but you get the point.
11. Making Parmesan cheese
The good stuff takes at least nine months to age before it's ready to be eaten.
12. Hiddleswift
Yep, the couple everyone was talking about but no one really cared about lasted even longer with their relationship that was just over three months.
13. The actual case
It took over an entire YEAR AND A HALF from the time of the attack up in January 2015 until Turner’s conviction in June 2016.
Brock Turner is not the “Stanford swimmer,” he is convicted rapist who has evaded fair judgment and been given the upper hand at every stage of his life, and while this case has been given a huge amount of public exposure, he’s far from being the only one. He blames his actions on drinking and the party culture of college instead of accepting responsibility for his heinous crime.
Something needs to be done.
Our system is broken.
An 11-year-old girl shouldn’t be grounded for having a social media account for longer than a criminal goes to jail for raping an unconscious woman. That unconscious woman should not have to bear the scars of this violation of her body and mind for the rest of her life while her attacker walks free and returns to his prestigious university after three short months.
But do you want to know the real kicker? His maximum sentence was 10 years, he only did 3 months, and yet Brock Turner spent more time in prison than a staggering 97 percent of rapists.
