As a new school year approaches, incoming college freshmen will be hearing a great deal of advice from everyone they know. The Freshman Fifteen is real, do your homework, not everyone you meet on your first week is your friend—those are the common ones, just to name a few. Before I went to college, I asked everyone what they wish they had known before they went to college. While most of these pieces of advice were helpful, they did not prepare me for the unfortunate experience I had in the dorm my freshman year. Instead of dwelling and being upset about it, I've chosen to spread the word in the hopes of preparing a new generation for an all too common occurrence so that one day, it will stop. This occurrence is known as sexual harassment.
I was especially excited for college because I believed I would be in a self-selected group of mature individuals. While the friends I made were precisely what I was looking for, not everything was perfect. I remember how it first happened. It was the day after I moved in. I was sitting in my single room between orientation activities when I heard prolonged laughing outside my door. I didn't know what to expect, but I got up and opened the door to find four or five guys with the marker of my door whiteboard in hand. They had drawn a penis on my whiteboard. At the sight of me, they ran away laughing. I managed to shrug it off, erase it, and move on.
It was harder to do the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.
The lesson I have for you is not "you will get sexually harassed in college." It's quite the contrary. When I was in 7th grade, a 11th grade boy decided it would be funny to say he had a crush on me for a week. To demonstrate his false affection for me, he would say some very questionable things that one would think a 16-year-old would know better than to say to a 12-year-old. The worst part of this was that it was all under three teachers' gazes. They thought I knew it was a joke and was cool with it because I didn't do anything about it. In reality, I was the youngest in the class I was taking with the 11th grade sexual harasser, dying to fit in with a bunch of cool older kids. I learned from that experience not to take shit from immature boys. He managed to pull that joke off for a week and got suspended for it, although he should have been expelled because he did it again to my best friend the next year, although she knew better than to just roll with it by then. I learned from that experience that it won't stop unless you do something about it, and I vowed not to let a boy or a man take that kind of power over me again.
I don't know why these college boys would stoop so low, but they did. After a few weeks, it was still being done, but exclusively to my whiteboard. I had no idea who was doing it. They'd do it while I was sleeping or in the shower, usually. I'd alert my RA each time, which clearly did nothing. By the end of September, she told me I could file a report at campus safety.
Many schools' campus safety departments have proved to be unreliable in regards to handling sexual assault cases. I was prepared to publicly speak of the harassment on social media if Campus Safety didn't respond well. To my surprise, they did. I wasn't turned away. The officer I met with was responsive. He told me that I didn't have to take my board down, that the boys who were doing this were immature and needed to stop. The harassment didn't stop immediately, but neither did Campus Safety. Eventually I met with the Title IX coordinator and the head of Campus Safety, who told me they would increase their efforts to stop this and eventually hold a meeting with the building.
If you are thinking to yourself, "why didn't she just take her board down?" or "why didn't she just put her pen away?" consider this: if a woman was sexually assaulted while wearing a short skirt, would you defend the assaulter's decision to commit such a crime? Is a short skirt an invitation for sexual assault? Is a whiteboard an invitation for sexual harassment?
At the end of October, the Title IX coordinator and some of the housing staff held a mandatory meeting with the entire hall, boys and girls, holding them all responsible for the sexual harassment. Eventually it came out that it was only happening to me. No one took responsibility. One boy asked, getting giggles out of his friends, "How are these images offensive?" Even some girls suggested that I take my whiteboard down. I guess the turning point was when the housing staff said that if it didn't stop, they would install cameras in the hall. No one wanted that. After that, it stopped.
There are many lessons or pieces of advice you can take from this. In general, I'd like to convey to women especially that you matter as a body in the college space. No one has the right to trample over you. No one has the right to humiliate you. No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable. If something like this happens to you, report it. Don't stop telling people until something gets done. If your school does nothing about sexual harassment, they are in violation of Title IX. Sexual harassment is not a natural burden that people have to deal with. It is an occurrence that we need to work together to stop.
A more general statement can go out to people of all genders: don't. Harass. People. Don't do it because your friends are doing it. Don't do it if they think it's funny. If you find yourself hanging out with people in college who think it's funny to draw obscene images on someone's whiteboard or anything like that, you are hanging out with the wrong people. Don't be that person. Find other friends immediately.
If someone were to ask me what I wish I'd known before I entered college, it would be not to take shit from anyone. I let the harassment go on for about three weeks before I went to Campus Safety. I was holding out hope that it would stop naturally, and I didn't want to be the girl who went crying to Campus Safety. I realized it was the only way it would stop later than I would have liked, but it stopped. I lived in fear for the rest of the year that it would happen again, and I still worry that it will. But now I know better than to let any sort of harassment slide. I hope you'll learn the same from my story as well. To all incoming freshmen: good luck, be safe, and do the right thing.
