Soapbox: On Another Note

This coming year I'll be the president of SAAFE (Sexual Assault Awareness for Everyone) at school. I'm doing this for a number of reasons, but the number one reason is that nobody else wanted the position or was willing to do it. Without a president, an organization loses its status as a constituted org (loses funding, etc.). I am/was very, very unwilling to let that happen to SAAFE, my thought being that, of the many, many organizations on campus, this is one of the very last that should go. There are other orgs that I am more involved with, that are more important to me, but I believe SAAFE to be more important overall.

We're a women's college. Students get riled up about unfair press against Hillary Clinton, about animal rights, about sexist remarks made on television.

They don't get riled up by assault. Most of them do the opposite; they downplay it: they say, "Well, it doesn't matter as much here. It's safer." "I'm not affected by that/nobody I know is affected by that." "That wouldn't happen to me."

I don't understand this. I don't understand how otherwise-intelligent people can perpetuate the silence and refuse to acknowledge this as a problem. Are they afraid that if they talk about it, they will make it real? Are they afraid that they will have to recognize that one in four women is assaulted in her lifetime, and that might mean them or somebody they know?

Guess what? It is real. It is a problem. And yes, unless they live in a vaccuum in which nothing ever happens, it will be them or somebody they know. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

There's a discussion - if you can call it that; people would rather discuss cute animals than rape - on the online communities (forums to you people who live outside the bubble). It started with a well-meaning post; the second post pointed out that nobody talks about it (at a women's college! I don't get it!); the third post (mine) listed facts from the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center's website ( http://www.barcc.org/ ); the fourth post said, and I summarize, "well, I get what you're saying, but it doesn't matter as much here"; the fifth post pointed to an error in logic of the fourth poster but didn't say much.

5 posts.

Number of posts about Vanity Fair: 22.
Number of posts about which cell phone to get: 24.
Number of posts about Sarah Jessica Parker/Sex and the City: 39.
Number of posts about vegetarianism: 49.

This makes me so angry. I don't understand why people aren't out in the streets shouting for justice - or, at the very least, at their computers, banging out angry editorials. But what are they doing? They're saying, "No, it doesn't matter."

You know what? I don't even want to understand. I just want them to care.