October 11

We discussed three cases of campus rape today in class. I will only discuss two of them here, because one fits the dominant U.S. campus rape scenarios and one does not at all.

The first case fits the dominant model, and it occurred at Vanderbilt. This case caused quite a stir because there were several disturbing aspects in the case. A girl was raped by a man she met at a bar who put date-rape drugs in her drink and he rape her and encouraged his teammates to rape her while he videoed and photographed the assault. The photos were shared with other players. The target was passed out and did not know what happened until a couple days later. The case got a lot of attention, but only two of the four attackers were convicted.

This case fits what we are learning in this class. First, the attackers were athletes, which seems to be fairly common, especially among college cases. Second, alcohol was involved; both the target and the attackers had been drinking and the attack occurred at a party. Next, and probably most important, the attackers tried to shift blame elsewhere. They tried to blame alcohol and college culture (which also occurred in the Brock Turner case). When the male attackers have been drinking, alcohol is used as a benefit to their cases. They argue that they cannot be held responsible. Yet, when the woman target has been drinking, alcohol is used as an accusation against her. If she was drinking then she must have been "loose with her morals." Or, they assert that because she was drinking, that she must be a party girl. Also, the spreading of photos and videos seem to be occurring more with campus rapes. These are all things that we have seen before and seem to be recurring themes.

The next college case that is quite different happened at Ohio State University. One of the initial differences is that the attacker was not an athlete or a student. He was a drum instructor for the marching band. He raped a woman who was trying to join the band. She was underage and he got her into a bar, where they discussed and drank. He then took her back to his residence and raped her.

This case was different because the attacker was not an athlete or a student. We have seen mainly athletes attacking women at parties, so that immediately does not fit into the dominant picture. Additionally, the fact that he was in a position of power in the university seems out of the "ordinary" for the cases in class. He also did not seem to be a part of the hypermasculine culture that is often a part of athletics. One similarity is that alcohol was still involved, but again, the alcohol consumption is different because they did not consume it at a party. Another thing that is different is that the attacker apologized for the assault he committed and did not blame her for the attack like in other cases. Yet, the presentation of him in the headlines was also still the same, in that the headlines did not focus on what he did. Instead, the headlines focused on who he was before the attack. They commented on the nice things he did, such as taking care of his mother. That aspect was quite interesting.

We discussed three more cases in the class, but most of them (including mine), involved college athletes. These two cases above are very different in that one of them conforms to many of the aspects about campus rape that we have discussed. The second one is different for several reasons. Yet, both cases seem to exhibit what we know about rape, which is that it is about power and domination.