Dear Editor,
I would like to thank your staff for writing a very gender neutral article concerning the rape of a young girls at the Phi Kappa Psi house on Halloween evening. In our society we tend to focus on the victims and the allegedality. The focus of this article was mainly on the perpetrator Sako and not on the female, i really appreciated that.
I am a friend of Christopher Gerritz and i fell that you portrayed his character 100%. Instead of blaming him for allowing this to happen you gave him to opportunity to explain his thoughts and ideas without placement of personal opinion.
I am also thankful for the fact that you did not focus on if it was alleged or not. You stated the facts without using that words alleged. Great job!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
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4 comments:
I am a little confused by this letter. Are you being sarcastic about your statements? or are you serious, it is a bit hard to tell.
I think you miss understood our analysis of the Barometer article. The class and I were upset that the article does refer to it as the 'alleged' rape several times. It is a positive that the victim was left out of the title, but the article was not as gender neutral as I would have hoped for. It also bothered me that the article shifts the focus from the rape to alcohol and underaged drinking. I realize that this is an issue too, but it removes the focus from the rape, a major issue that is too often ignore. Blaming the drinking and alcohol removes blame from the actions and behaviors leading to the crime.
I see what you did there... or wait? Did I?
At first I thought you were being ironic, that your letter was a rough edit of a "Stephen Colbert-esque" piece. Upon closer inspection, I realized that this was not the case.
I would "allege" that "somebody" wasn't paying very close attention in class. You had the talking points written down, but didn't remember what was said about them. Right?
No worries. Happens to the best of us. Hopefully after reading Karen's response, it'll all come back to you.
If you were being ironic, what really ruined it for me was this: "in our society we tend to focus on the victims and the allegedality. The focus of this article was mainly on the perpetrator Sako and not on the female, i really appreciated that." <- Both are true. The article focused on Sako's "side," while victimizing the survivor. Rewording will be much needed for an ironic piece. Really, only your last lines can be seen as telling and funny.
So often we read and hear throughout media that a woman alleged rape [by a man], but the word "alleged" is not usually seen with male-to-male physical assault, robbery, or any other crime. Using "alleged" gives the rapist the benefit of the doubt. The reality is, only 1-in-4 survivors and 5% of college-aged rape survivors come forward. And of those, only about 1 in 1000 lie about it. So why would we assume she did? We should support survivors, not re-victimize them. After reading the Barometer article and seeing the way our society blames the victim, its hard to imagine anyone being strong enough to come forward. Let's challenge our paper to be better.
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