Auto-SummaryDespite a shocking and swift conviction of two former Vanderbilt University football players for a 2013 sexual assault, students on campus showed little urgency in addressing the issue. The case, which was captured on video, drew national attention but received little reaction from Vanderbilt students, many of whom were unaware of the incident. The university's reputation and the students' desire to protect it may have contributed to the lack of concern. The victim, now a graduate student, filed a complaint with the federal government, alleging that Vanderbilt discouraged victims from reporting such crimes. The university has since improved its sexual assault prevention and response, but the trial highlighted the need for more effective bystander intervention programs.
These students would rather let reports of assault and rape go unreported and be pushed under the rug than tarnish the reputation of their shitty school.
Vanderbilt rape trial didn't stir students on campus.
Quote:
NASHVILLE — The crime was horrific and the verdict stunningly swift. Two former Vanderbilt University football players are facing the possibility of decades in prison after it took a jury less than four hours to convict them for their roles in a 2013 sexual assault of an unconscious woman. Two more former football players await trial.
At a time of widespread alarm and almost daily news reports about sexual assaults on college campuses, it is hard to imagine a case more likely than this one, captured on video by the assailants, to mobilize a campus. As if to underscore how pervasive the concerns have become nationally, representatives from 76 Tennessee colleges and universities were holding a conference on the subject here, not far from the courthouse where Tuesday’s verdict played out.
But transformative moments are hard to come by when a community’s population turns over every four years and its members have a deep investment in its reputation. So interviews Tuesday and Wednesday at Vanderbilt brought out horror at what had happened and a distinct distance from it. Until the trial began more than two weeks ago, the episode seemed to elicit little sense of urgency — in fact, the student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler, found that many students were not even aware of it.
Over the past two weeks, lurid testimony about the gang rape, and the revelation that several people knew of the assault but failed to report it, drew attention throughout Nashville. Still, many students, more than a quarter of them not on campus when the rape occurred, find it hard to square what happened with their views of this elite university as an oasis from a harder world. In interviews, reactions mostly clustered around two poles: This is not the sort of place where such things happen, or they happen everywhere — and either way, no one should point a finger at Vanderbilt.
“After the first few weeks at school, I felt like I knew everyone,” said Rebecca Bendheim, a sophomore from Barrington, R.I. “I didn’t feel in danger at all of any type of weird sexual advance.”
Andrew Walther, a senior, expressed dismay that the assault had happened at Vanderbilt and said that “it becomes a reflection on us now.”
And those who study sexual assault said that for all the national concern, changing behavior and culture on college campuses is likely to be a long, difficult process, no matter how dramatic and convulsive individual cases may be.
“At a lot of institutions, there’s an intense effort to protect the reputation of the place,” said John D. Foubert, a professor of higher education at Oklahoma State University. “What’s different at really elite institutions is that the students will also do most anything to protect the reputation of the institution, because they think it reflects on them.”
At many colleges, “people still have the ‘Oh my God, I’m so shocked that it could happen here’ reaction,” said Jane Stapleton, a co-director of the violence prevention program at the University of New Hampshire. People need to understand that no place is immune, she said, “but not use that as an excuse, either.”
Sarah O’Brien, now a graduate student at Vanderbilt, was sexually assaulted while she was an undergraduate there, and said there was a powerful element of denial on the campus.
“When you’re in a setting with a bunch of people who are primarily privileged, they don’t feel a need to talk about this,” she said. “They feel they have the privilege that this probably won’t happen to them.”
She filed a complaint against the university with the federal government and alleged that Vanderbilt discouraged victims from reporting such crimes. Vanderbilt is one of roughly 100 colleges and universities under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for their handling of sexual assaults and harassment.
But in the case of the football players, it was the university that first discovered evidence pointing to an assault — security camera images of men carrying an unconscious woman into a dormitory room — and referred it to the police. To this day, the victim says she has no memory of what happened in Gillette House in the early morning of June 23, 2013. Long before the case went to trial, the university expelled the men.
“The safety and security of our students is Vanderbilt’s top priority,” Beth Fortune, the vice chancellor for public affairs, said in a prepared statement that was the university’s only comment on the verdict. “Sexual violence will never be tolerated.”
The university has said that in the last few years, it has improved its sexual assault prevention and response in several ways, including mandatory sessions on sex and alcohol for incoming students, a website that collects a range of resources in one place, and an expanded program on the role of bystanders.
During the trial, a lawyer for one of the defendants, Cory Batey, attributed his client’s behavior to the university’s culture of hard drinking and easy hookups. On the witness stand, Mr. Batey said he had been too drunk to remember what happened.
“That argument infuriated a lot of Vanderbilt students,” said Tyler Bishop, the editor in chief of the student newspaper. “Party culture is very big here,” and many people want to defend it.
The prosecutor in the case, Thomas Thurman, said in an interview on Thursday that alcohol was just one of the excuses the football players had fallen back on. “These young men appeared to think they were entitled because they were athletes and rules didn’t apply,” he said.
Mr. Batey and Brandon Vandenburg, both 21, were convicted of multiple counts of aggravated rape and lesser charges. There was testimony that Mr. Batey had violated the woman in multiple ways and urinated on her.
Mr. Vandenburg, who had briefly dated the woman, was not accused of touching her sexually that night — he told the others he could not achieve an erection — but was found guilty for being the ringleader. Witnesses testified that he had given condoms to the other men and egged them on, and that it was his voice heard on a video, instructing them and laughing.
Three of the men recorded images of the assault on their phones.
Mr. Vandenburg’s roommate said he had been awakened by the commotion, seen the woman lying motionless on the floor and heard one of the men say he would have sex with her. Other students say they saw the woman lying unconscious in the hallway where the men had deposited her. At least two of Mr. Vandenburg’s friends received images of the assault from him.
Yet none of those people went to the police, just as no one had intervened earlier after seeing Mr. Vandenburg giving drinks to the woman and then, with the help of the other three, carrying her after she passed out.
Experts say the programs that are most effective at reducing sexual assault are those that persuade people that bystanders have an obligation to intervene, and teach them how to do it. In fact, a large part of the conference held this week in Nashville was about such programs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/vanderbilt-rape-trial-didnt-stir-students-on-campus.html1
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You Bene Gesserit made me a FREAK!
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if it were mine ur mind would be so blown you'd cease to exist 
did you do that on purpose or are you just really that (someone help me i need a politically correct word for stupid).
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