Duke is a campus of contradictions.
In mid-February, dozens of Duke women performed The Vagina Monologues to a sold-out Page Auditorium. Paying $5 a ticket, the audience members, both women and men, wanted to be there-and it showed. They roared at the monologues' hilarious moments, they sat silently when actresses spoke of rape, of assault, of war, of fear, of anguish. As I left the theater, moved by the performance, I felt proud to attend a university where events like these can draw hundreds of people.
This Monday, less than a month later, I read a letter to the editor of The Chronicle from a student who had, incidentally, performed on V-Day. At another recent event, this one meant to bring body issues (instead of the names of body parts) into the open, she left Griffith Film Theater feeling disappointed and appalled. The lecture she attended, "Celebrating our Bodies," involved a frank discussion of self-perception. Unfortunately, several male audience members-college students, mind you-were unable to handle such a "mature" subject: They laughed at the mention of gay men, cheered at images of emaciated anorexics and booed when pictures of normal-sized women were projected onto a screen.
As disgusted as I was by the letter-writer's account of the lecture, I was not totally surprised. I had a similar encounter my freshman year: As part of the greek pledging process, new members of both fraternities and sororities were required to attend a session on sexual assault. Theoretically, we were supposed to use the small-group environment to "increase awareness" of sexual assault on campus; in practice, nothing of the sort happened.
After a large introductory session in a Gross Chem. lecture hall, we split into groups of about 30-half women, half men-and spread out in smaller classrooms. Soon into our discussion, the facilitators were stuck answering lighthearted and point-missing questions by several of the men in the room: What's the statute of limitations for date rape? What's the exact definition of sexual assault? Oh, I think I might have done that last weekend....
Now, pardon my naïveté, but since when have anorexia and rape become funny? I came to college hoping that brutish behavior and undeniably offensive comments would be taboo in an environment of higher education. But just when I begin to think that we have entered an age of enlightenment, my hopes have been shot down with an instance of unwelcome ass-grabbing, or the knowledge that the women in my dormitory had a running bet to see who could refrain from eating "bad" foods the longest.
Disappointing as it is that we need to hold workshops to discourage women from starving themselves, or to explain why date rape is uncool, what is most disturbing is that participants in these events don't quite understand that these are serious topics that affect real people. And those people are sitting in the room.
At the sexual assault session I attended, one of my sorority sisters-a woman who had been raped before coming to Duke-bolted out of the room after a few minutes of the male participants' not-so-witty banter. I took that as my cue to escape, too. Despite the arsenal of retorts I'd developed while witnessing my fellow freshmen's idiotic attitudes, I could not work up the nerve to launch them. Instead, I left the room.
After reading this week's letter to the editor, though, I knew I had made a mistake. Perhaps if someone had spoken up-had actually confronted the children masquerading as college students-different versions of the same incident would not recur. I wonder whether anyone has told these boys-because anyone who finds rape amusing cannot be considered a man-that their perceptions of the female body are skewed and that their behavior toward it is unacceptable.
I commend the theory behind mandating that new members of selective groups must attend events that often prove valuable in improving women's safety on campus. But I question the effectiveness of a requirement when groups of boys are incapable of mustering the energy needed to simply shut up-forget about what it would take to make them actually listen to the content of one of these sessions.
But the majority of Duke students understand that topics like rape and eating disorders are not amusing. We must not allow the puerile few to be the loudest voices whenever we try to hold serious discussions. We must not let them act on notions that any woman raped was asking for it and that any bulimic woman looks better anyway. By leaving the room whenever a huddle in the back row cannot stop giggling, we allow them to win; at the next event they are required to attend, they will behave no differently. So instead of letting our disgust win out over our courage, I encourage the thousands of Duke men and women who do care about eliminating violence against women to turn to the jerks in the back of the auditorium and tell them to shut the hell up.
Jaime Levy is a Trinity senior and editor of TowerView.
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