Freedom, that is what is on every college freshman's mind when they step onto their campus, I certainly did. There is that moment of realization and you can taste what feels like the beginning of your life. You are promised opportunities and a guaranteed a better future, whether that means climbing up the economic ladder or enriching your knowledge, there is a clear understanding that these years will be your best. Although sometimes they are your worst, what colleges do not tell you, or even what they do.
The lies we are fed and the manipulation that we are unaware of being a growing matter among campuses.
What my college should be ashamed of is I am only in my second semester as a freshman. I have not been here for a year and I have seen the injustice beyond beliefs with victims.
Their stories all the same, they were raped, they lost the case, and now they have to share a campus, a building, a class, a hall with someone who violated them. Is this the best our campuses can do? To promise safety until we are vulnerable and then leave us to pick up the wreckage.
I have seen cases shut down and thrown away just so that the school can say it has low rape rates. I have seen numerous girls who once thought college to be their freedom, now enslaved as a rape victim. I have seen a girl so traumatized that without her PTSD medication to help keep her stable, there is nothing more than a hollowed shell of nothing. I watch this girl try to live, but I know on the inside she already feels like the hope is lost. You may be wondering what year I am in to have seen this? This girl does not know this, but I admire her. She is one of the strongest girls I have met, and also one of the kindest. For her to have went through something traumatic and have it swept under the rug to protect the offender is horrific.
That is what colleges are doing though, protecting the raper. I have heard about several cases where the victim was asked to rethink pressing charges because they have to think about the offenders future? Maybe the young man or woman is the star captain of the soccer team, they maybe had their whole life ahead of them. It was just one stupid mistake why should they have to pay for it with the rest of their lives?
It's a simple answer, because they are not the victim. They did not have their whole lives taken away from them by force, they were not violated and taken advantage of. They were not terrified or begging for the person to stop, they made a mistake, maybe, but it is a mistake they should take the consequences for; they deserve punishment not forgiveness just as the victim deserves closure not insecruites.
So maybe if we all learn to stand together, these girls will learn that they are not alone.
