Brock Turner. All you have to do is type the letter B into Google for his name to pop up. There at your fingertips are articles upon articles about the former Stanford swimmer who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Within a matter of seconds, we have access to all of the gruesome details of the case and even the letter that the victim wrote to Brock. (If you have not read it, I highly suggest doing so.) My heart goes out to her and all of the pain that he has caused her, both physically and emotionally.

However I am not going to focus on the effects of this horrible incident. Instead, I want to focus on what lead up to it, and I don't just mean that night. I'm sure that Brock Turner grew up with similar goals and dreams that many other kids have. He wanted to excel in his sport and attend college. Imagine asking a five year old, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I sure as hell would not expect them to reply with "a rapist." So, what is it? What flipped the switch in Brock Turner's head that night to make him rape this unconscious, vulnerable woman? Maybe he was aware that this act was completely wrong but he decided to abandon all moral instinct at that point. But, what if there really was a switch that was flipped in his brain? Mental disorders can make people do some crazy things.

Before I dive in to this, I would first like to explain that I am in no way, shape, or form defending anything that Brock Turner has said or done. However, I can't help but to critically think about this situation, especially with how common campus sexual assault is. According to the CDC, "In a study of undergraduate women, 19 percent experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college." That is almost one fifth of all college girls. In other words, this is way too common of an occurrence to keep quiet about anymore. If anything, I am trying to think of ways to prevent these situations from happening. The root of the problem is what is going on in the rapist's mind, not what the girl is wearing, or how she is dancing, or what she is drinking.

The key to preventing this from happening is understanding how the brain could possibly let a person commit a crime like this and preventing the brain from thinking that it is okay. Unfortunately, with all of the bologna that Turner's lawyers are feeding him, I don't think that we will ever get a straight answer as to why he did it. I am just a soon to be junior in college majoring in Exercise Science. I would not know the first way to pick apart the brain and the psyche of a rapist. I did decide to do some of my own research in order to understand the motivation to rape another person. I found a very interesting study which explained that power is a major motivating factor. By being able to control what happens to the victim, the rapist feels more powerful as a result.

Now that we know that power can be a major motivation in this type of crime, how do we apply that to the Brock Turner case? He should feel powerful enough considering the fact that he is a white, privileged male athlete attending one of the best universities in the nation, right? Most people would not expect a person like him to commit this crime, but it is not uncommon for male athletes to do this. This is something that should be considered when researching ways to prevent rape in the future. Obviously, programs that help students to understand what to do in that situation are extremely beneficial and could promote willingness to intervene. Although, I believe that this issue needs to be faced at the root of the problem. Understanding how a need for power motivates someone to result to committing rape needs to be focused on. It's time to stop dancing around the issue and blaming the victim. Something needs to be done to stop excusing this type of behavior. Nobody, not even Brock Turner, should be excused for displaying this type of behavior.