Rush After 'A Rape On Campus'

March 30, 2016 2:57 PM

This longform Jezebel article walks through the Greek rush period at UVA today, two years after the discredited and retracted Rolling Stone article 'A Rape on Campus.' It takes a nuanced look at the effects of the article and the attitudes of students in and out of the Greek system today. It's a depressing ride but worth it for the thoroughness of its thinking on the problem of rape on college campuses. Notably, it suggests that the problem isn't that it's only fraternity guys who rape, but that the Greek system tends to provide cover for those who do.
posted by AaronDaMommio (2 comments total)

that the first reported rape at the University of Virginia occurred in 1850 and concerned three male students who took a seventeen-year-old Charlottesville slave girl out into the woods?

No. No surprise. Many of our esteemed ancestors, including Jefferson, had slave women as mistresses and many slave owners raped their slaves...South Carolina was known for shipping and importing saves; Virginia became known for slave breeding, using females slave to increase their numbers and thus their wealth.
posted by Postroad at 3:18 PM on March 30, 2016

Small quibble, this article came out a year ago (January 2015), so just a few months after "A Rape on Campus" (November 2014) was published. In other news, the subsequent defamation cases continue rolling along. "Jackie" is apparently scheduled to give a deposition in the case lodged by Dean Eramo, but her lawyers are saying that being forced to do so will re-traumatize her, and that she specifically never wanted to get up on the stand and be torn down by defense lawyers, which is why she never lodged criminal charges or went to the police in the first place (WaPo). Given the recent hullabaloo with Jian Ghomeshi, that's a pretty understandable desire.
posted by permiechickie at 4:01 PM on March 30, 2016 [1 favorite]