On Aug. 6, Mary Jo Layton and Stephanie Akin, two reporters for NorthJersey.com, broke the story that Ramapo College will be updating security and calling for a harsher ban on liquor after a sexual assault was reported on one of the campus’ dorms last school year.
Since the report was posted, many students vocalized their anger and frustration at the policy changes, and now, with this article, I count myself among the number.
I’m more than frustrated. I’m angry. It took me a few days to be able to sit down and compose myself so I would be able to write these words out. I have many problems with the new policies, but my main concern here is that the school seems to correlate drinking with sexual assault.
Let me make this clear: Drinking does not cause sexual assault. People do. What happened on Ramapo’s campus is obviously horrible, but it has very little to do with the school’s alcohol problem and everything to do with a something that is so much bigger than our campus and is ingrained in us long before we ever step foot on campus for the first time.
Rape culture is pervasive and aggressive. It’s the same culture that teaches women not to go out alone at night or wear short skirts or dresses. It's the same culture that cultivates an environment where women don’t feel safe and, if they are assaulted, they are told that it’s their fault, or that they were "asking for it." It’s the culture that tells men that they can’t be raped and, if they are, they are considered weak or unmanly. It’s the culture that made me wear jeans throughout my entire high school career, even in 100 degree heat because, as my principal put it, “Short shorts distract the male students and faculty"; this was instead of asking the question: “Why are our male students and faculty -- the men in charge of these girls’ education -- sexualizing the female students like this?” It’s the reason why, on my first tour to Ramapo’s campus when I was still in high school, a father asked one of the guides how well-lit the school was at night because he was afraid his daughter might be attacked at night while walking alone.
When the stories about Colombia’s rape mishandling were released and the subsequent protests followed, I legitimately thought, “This would never happen here.” But the truth is that is does happen here -- it has happened here -- and it will continue to happen unless we, as a student body, speak up and make ourselves heard. This gross mishandling of rape culture on this college campus cannot go on. Simply blaming our sexual assault problem on alcohol is scapegoating and offensive to anyone who has experienced this culture firsthand on our campus. Again, alcohol does not cause rape. Rapists do, and the society that accepts this culture as the norm causes rape. Not alcohol. Not partying on Tuesday nights or the weekends.
I love Ramapo with all my heart, which is why these new policies make me so angry. This was the first and only school I applied to. I knew I wanted to go here from the moment I stepped foot on campus. This school has been my dream for years, which is why it can do better. Which is why instead of creating new alcohol policies, we need to tackle this problem head-on as a community. We should be supporting the victims and facing this culture that is not only affecting Ramapo, but other colleges across the country. It may not magically solve rape culture everywhere, but it’s a start. And what a better place to unlearn such an awful societal standard than here at a place of higher learning?
