To Whom It May Concern,

I tried to avoid being another teenage girl voicing her opinion on the Brock Turner situation. It’s repetitive and I know you’re all so sick of hearing his name wherever you look. I tolerated the internet’s hatred for him with a bitten tongue until he said that Party Culture was to blame for his actions, that just took the cake. The problem with that statement is that you can’t blame a culture that has been around for years for your inability to control yourself and mindset.

As a college freshman, someone who has been in college for not even six months, I have already been rapidly exposed to the Jacksonville party scene (a bit too fast, but I digress). The amount of nights I’ve been weaving through overly crowed backyards, both genders mixing together, clearly more than 90 percent of the students there are intoxicated, the Party Culture didn’t influence anyone to rape another human being. To sexually violate someone else in a way that is incompressible to anyone who it hasn’t happened to. It’s something that shouldn’t be happening and it’s something you can’t blame on just “drinking too much” and the “party” itself

Of course, this isn’t just about Brock Turner either, it’s about the justice system and how they treat cases like these. Brock Turner gets released early, despite taking something from someone, to the fact that I just typed “sexual assault” into my web browser and the three first hits were all different sexual assault cases which happened in the last 24 hours. I can promise that none of these will be a big deal come a week or so, in fact, by then there should be about 21 new cases that the court will sweep under the rug. A slap on the wrist, if we’re lucky to even see that happen to these kind of people.

Like I said though, as someone who frequents off campus every Friday to explore the party houses of Jacksonville, it’s a fear that I have to have instilled in me that someone could take advantage of me, if they so wanted. I stand at a solid 5’2 and .4^th of an inch, 5’3 if I wear my sneakers, no muscle mass, so yes, being scared of another Brock Tuner, another guy who’s going to use “Party Culture” as a scapegoat, is something that all girls are scared of in the end.

From, A Local Party Girl