If you've been online, watched the news or have talked to pretty much anyone recently, then you've likely heard about the rape case concerning Brock Turner, a Stanford swimmer who was convicted of assaulting a graduate student while unconscious and was sentenced to six months in county jail. Since this sentencing, the general public has turned to the media to express their outrage over the leniency. Many social issues that contributed to this result, such as white privilege, financial advantages and favoritism of athletes have been discussed at length, but the one serious issue that it seems that no one is discussing is the fact that Brock Turner is anything but alone. In fact, statistically speaking, Brock Turner received a severe punishment resulting from a rape, compared to the millions of sexual assault cases occurring yearly on college campuses that go completely unnoticed.

Consider the DeAnza College rape for example. In March 2007, NY Daily News reported a 17-year-old girl was gangraped by eight DeAnza baseball players. The girl was unconscious, but there was significant evidence found on her and at the crime scene indicating the assault. Additionally, there were three eye witnesses who testified on the behalf of the victim. During the trial in 2011, however, the same judge who dealt with the Turner case favored the side of the defendants. He rejected the eyewitness accounts due to intoxication, rejected the victim's experiences because she was unconscious and could not remember, and more or less ignored the medical evidence found on the girl. He had no problem, however, with allowing the defendants to provide Facebook pictures of the girl dressed scantily from six months prior to the incident as a source of evidence, like her outfit from September 2010 could have indicated a form of consent for her to be raped eight times in March 2011 and excuse the judge's dismissal of the case. Right. (Dillon 1)

The case of Beckett Brennan resulted similarly. Brennan was a freshman student at the University of the Pacific who, one night, went to an on-campus party with her teammates. She reported drinking six shots of vodka, and then not remembering anything until she found herself at an off-campus party with a bunch of strangers. She needed a ride back to the original party to find her teammates, so she accepted a ride back from two men that she knew from the men's basketball team, thinking they would be going back there too. Instead, the two took her back to their apartment where they and one other man raped her one by one. During the school's trial, Brennan reported that the questioning felt more like she was the one defending, with questions about everything from the level of alcohol she'd consumed to her personal life and clothing choices. The men were found guilty, and one was expelled while the other two were suspended, but no legal action was taken, according to CBS News.

And these are just two additional examples. Yes, of course the case involving Brock Turner is absolutely disgusting. It's disgusting that he destroyed a young woman's life and will spend mere months behind bars for it, not years. It's disgusting that the first picture released to the media was his yearbook picture rather than his mugshot. It's disgusting that the judge favored him for his status rather than taking him down for his actions. But what is worse is the fact that in our current day society, millions of rapists like Brock Turner get off annually just as easily, if not more so, and overturning one judge or putting one man behind bars won't help that. It won't help the statistic that one in every four women in college will be sexually assaulted during her attendance. It won't help the one in six males, or the one in five members of the transgender / nonbinary community, according to statistics found on Oneinfourusa.org. The fact of the matter is that we live in a culture that exploits women and perpetuates rape, but then excuses it by pointing the blame at the victim for excuses like excessive alcohol consumption or revealing clothing when the fact of the matter is that rape is rape and no amount of excuses or delusions could ever excuse such behavior. Ever. And thinking that any ever could is only adding to the rape culture so obviously prevalent in our society.

So yes, put Brock Turner behind bars and remove Judge Persky. Please do. But don't forget the bigger picture, for the sake of all that go unnoticed.