Column: Stop rape at Duke

I heard a story last night about one of our campus rapists. Maybe you know him. He's raped at least four female students in his time here. He is white, a West Campus resident and not unlike many of the men at Duke. He is not unlike many of my friends. The majority of the people who see him on campus do not know about his propensity for violence against women. He could be in one of my classes and I would not know who he was.

Yet not all of us are ignorant. The story I heard also revealed that his friends do know about this man's acts of violence. His friends know the names and faces of the women he's raped and details of the attacks. I can't know how they truly feel about his behavior, but their actions reveal that it's not very important. They don't confront him or end their friendships with him. They maintain a disturbing and dangerous silence.

A fundamental reason that sexual assault is such a problem at Duke is the behavior of people like this man's friends. There are probably 200 to 250 undergraduate men on this campus who are rapists (one out of 15), based on a 15-year old survey. Fifteen percent of undergraduate men say they would commit rape if there was no chance of punishment. These students present a significant threat to the safety of female students. On our socially insular campus, the threat of action from police may not prevent rape, especially since 90 percent of rapes are never reported. One thing that could be extremely effective in deterring rape on campus is the threat of condemnation and ostracism from the social communities that rapists identify with.

To fight sexual assault we must build a community where men who assault women are treated as people who are destroying our community instead of part of it. The biggest barrier to creating this community is people who do not value women enough to confront the men who profoundly damage their lives. I am not cynical enough to believe that these people think rape is acceptable. The same survey of college students found that 80 percent of men and nearly 100 percent of women universally condemn rape. This majority doesn't stand up to their friends who are rapists, and so there is no reason for them to fear consequences. They know they have very little chance of being caught or meeting the condemnation of a person they care about and respect.

Of course, it would help if the administration actually treated rape as a crime instead of some kind of secret disciplinary problem. Students' names are printed in the crime reports for possession of drugs or stealing, but not for rape. In a community where dozens of women are raped every month, only a few men, less than five, have been expelled for rape in the last few years. I am intentionally vague about this statistic because the average student can't even access this information. We don't even know if the people, presumably students, who raped a woman in an East Campus bathroom last year and sexually assaulted a woman in a West Campus bathroom this year were caught.

President Nan Keohane wrote a guest column recently about sexual assault on campus, but we have yet to see her use her administrative power to enforce the law against student rapists or make ending violence a top administrative priority. She instead suggests that people proscribe their social lives to avoid being victimized. Though many women do this and will continue to do so for their own protection, encouraging personal action from students rather than creating serious consequences for rapists isn't good social policy.

Still, the threat of administrative action doesn't stop people from doing much here at Duke. Our power and privilege make us feel invincible to trivialities like state and federal laws. Though sexual attacks on this campus are not talked about nearly as much as they should be, there are undercurrents of conversation between women and male allies that reveal a dangerous and frightening rape culture. We should bring those conversations into the open in our social circles and demand ethical behavior from our friends and classmates. If you know rape is wrong, don't accept it from your friends. Our collective silence allows campus rapists to continue violating our friends.

Jillian Johnson is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every third Thursday.