The University of Virginia - Searing Allegations of Campus Rape

It has been decades since I graduated the University of Virginia, first with a history major and then with a law degree.  During my days at "UVA," I attended many a fraternity party and it is not without reason that the school is known as a party school despite the rigorous academics that are the norm.  This week, Rolling Stone published a story that has sent the University administration reeling and let to the unusual move of the suspension of all fraternity and sorority activities until January 9, 2015.  The story alleges a gang rape in 2012 at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house (pictured above).  I did not belong to Phi Kappa Psi but did attend some parties there from time to time (I initially belonged to Zeta Psi and shifted my allegiance to Kappa Sigma later).  Back then, let's just say the Phi Kappa Psi parties were wild even by UVA standards.   

I don't know if the allegations of the rape are true or not, but I do know two things: (i) like most institutions, UVA tends to place maintaining its reputation above all else and (ii) here in Virginia, too often the authorities, including the police, tend to put too little effort into protecting the rights of minorities, gays, and yes women.  In the latter regard, we have a bunch of aging white male Republicans in the General Assembly striving to maintain control of women's uterus yet paying little attention to the other needs of women.  The male chauvinism can be intense, especially when Republicans hold power.  The problem is part of the overall problem of needing to drag Virginia fully into the 21st century and insuring that ALL Virginians are protected be they male or female, gay or straight, white or belonging to to a racial minority.  

The Rolling Stone articles is in many ways not accurate - e.g., most students are from average family backgrounds and while there are still self-imagined "Southern aristocrats," things today are far more egalitarian than 40 years ago - and doesn't paint an unbiased picture of the university.   Here are some article highlights that seem off the mark:

But the dearth of attention isn't because rape doesn't happen in Charlottesville. It's because at UVA, rapes are kept quiet, both by students – who brush off sexual assaults as regrettable but inevitable casualties of their cherished party culture – and by an administration that critics say is less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal. Some UVA women, so sickened by the university's culture of hidden sexual violence, have taken to calling it "UVrApe."

"University of Virginia thinks they're above the law," says UVA grad and victims-rights advocate Liz Seccuro. "They go to such lengths to protect themselves. There's a national conversation about sexual assault, but nothing at UVA is changing."

Prestige is at the core of UVA's identity. Although a public school, its grounds of red-brick, white-columned buildings designed by founder Thomas Jefferson radiate old-money privilege, footnoted by the graffiti of UVA's many secret societies, whose insignias are neatly painted everywhere. At $10,000 a year, in-state tuition is a quarter the cost of the Ivies, but UVA tends to attract affluent students, and through aggressive fundraising boasts an endowment of $5 billion, on par with Cornell. "Wealthy parents are the norm," says former UVA dean John Foubert.

Attorney Wendy Murphy, who has filed Title IX complaints and lawsuits against schools including UVA, argues that in matters of sexual violence, Ivy League and Division I schools' fixation with prestige is their downfall. "These schools love to pretend they protect the children as if they were their own, but that's not true: They're interested in money," Murphy says. "In these situations, the one who gets the most protection is either a wealthy kid, a legacy kid or an athlete. The more privileged he is, the more likely the woman has to die before he's held accountable."

Thankfully, the story does contain a small amount of somewhat balanced language:

S. Daniel Carter, who as former director of public policy for the advocacy group Clery Center for Security on Campus is a national expert on college safety, points out that UVA's sexual assault problems are not much worse than other schools; if anything, he says, the depressing reality is that UVA's situation is likely the norm. Decades of awareness programming haven't budged the prevalence of campus rape: One in five women is sexually assaulted in college, though only about 12 percent report it to police.

UVA president Teresa Sullivan denies the administration sweeps sexual assault under the rug. "If we're trying to hide the issue, we're not doing a very good job of it," she says, noting that this past February UVA hosted the first-ever sexual-assault summit for college administrators. It's true that recently, while under close government scrutiny, the school has made some encouraging changes, including designating most UVA authority figures as mandatory reporters of sexual assault and teaming up with student activists to create a bystander-intervention campaign. Students praise UVA's deans as caring folks who answer late-night calls from victims and even make emergency-room visits.

Am I saying that things cannot be improved at UVA?  Certainly not.  But,  I cannot help but suspect that if UVA were a lesser tier school, this story would never have been written.  Especially, if the S. Daniel Carter is correct that its problems are not out of the norm.  I further know that of my family members who attended the University, none to my knowledge ever encountered anything like what this article would have readers believe is a rampant problem (my oldest daughter graduated from UVA with an undergraduate degree and I have 6 other relatives - not counting my former wife and her family members - who have attended UVA).  Were we all living in a vacuum?