Monday, December 5, 2011
WMST Party!
This year’s Women’s Studies Department party will be on Thursday 12/8 from 8PM to Midnight in Donovans Pub. Hosted by students from WMST 202: An Introduction to Women’s Lives and Beyond, this celebration will feature catered desserts and multiple performers from Poetically Minded, Spoken Word artists, and musically talented students. Celebrate the end of the semester with your fellow Women Studies enthusiasts! A guest DJ will be spinning the jams all night for those of you who love to get your groove on. All faculty, staff, students, community members, and age groups are invited to Come As You Are!
Last Brown Bag of the Semester
Join us for this semester's last BROWN BAG. In a change of scenery, this brown bag will be held in RYAN 212, but still on Tuesday (December 6th) at 11:30am. This week's title is "Body Talk: Messages Behind Mainstream Dance Moves" and is co-sponsored by OUS (Office of Undergraduate Studies). Our presenter is Tehmekah MacPherson, who graduated from Colgate in 2002 and is currently a professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. She will be performing and discussing popular dance movies today and the messages they give off. As always, there is FREE LUNCH and EVERYONE is welcome!
Rape Education...And Why it's Terrible
Since I seemed to be the only person who didn't love Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (i.e.: the most stressful show on Prime Time television) I decided this semester to start watching with my nifty Netflix account (thanks mom!). Since starting season 1 only a few weeks ago, I've officially gotten through 8 seasons (holding off on starting season 9 until after finals because the cliffhanger was just TOO good. those writers are GENIUS.) of the incredible crime fighting duo that is Detectives Benson and Stabler. I've always loved crime shows and police procedural dramas, but something about SVU is particularly appealing to me. SVU is one of very few successful crime shows that accurately depicts police procedure and our justice system. It's not always pretty and it's not always clear cut. That is especially true in the special victims unit where they deal with sensitive issues like rape and molestation. It's a running motif in the show that the SVU detectives are somewhat of pariahs within their professional community because they don't prefer their victims dead or because they choose to deal with heart breaking cases about dead children and mutilated sexual assault victims every day.
During the season when Benson was undercover with the FBI (read as: Mariska Hargitay on maternity leave), Stabler got a new partner who was a rookie to the SVU. In one episode in particular, Stabler and his new partner were talking about a rape victim and they had a disagreement. His female partner was essentially asserting that women need to be aware of their surroundings so they don't become victims of rape and Stabler, an 8 year veteran of the SVU, took that as "victim blaming." She argued that this was not true, and I don't exactly disagree with her. I say this because of the way rape education is taught in our society. While telling someone to be aware of their surroundings so that they don't get mugged is one thing, telling a woman to be aware of her behavior so she does not get raped is a different thing entirely. Rape education is always targeted at women and generally goes as follows:
"Don't walk home alone at night."
"Don't wear revealing clothes."
"Don't lead him on."
Rape education for men goes as follows:
...*crickets*...
Why don't we tell men anything about rape?! It infuriates me that we teach the potential victims of a crime how to avoid it, but we don't tell the potential perpetrators anything. Not to say that all men are rapists and that all women are just sitting around waiting to be raped, but I can't think of any other crime that is discussed in this way. We encourage children not to steal just as often as we encourage people not to waive their cash around on a busy New York City street. College campuses are unfortunately overrun with sexual assault, but universities often think that a power point presentation during orientation is a deterrent. There is SO much more we could teach about rape that we simply don't. Many sexual assaults on college campuses are fueled by alcohol. Rape education makes men seem like unbridled monsters with no degree of self control. Let's give them just a little more credit. Don't lead him on? That's ridiculous. While I think that women need to know their boundaries before they put themselves in a situation where signals may get crossed, that's NOT AN EXCUSE FOR A MAN TO RAPE HER. No one wants to be raped. If you wanted it, that pretty much disqualifies it from being rape.
As easy as it was to make that power point telling women to live their lives looking over their shoulder, you could add a slide that lists all the things that don't count as consent like alcohol, short skirts and one's previous sexual activity...or we could continue this rape "education" that results in low reporting of assault because the survivor thought she asked for it.
-Renyelle Jimenez
During the season when Benson was undercover with the FBI (read as: Mariska Hargitay on maternity leave), Stabler got a new partner who was a rookie to the SVU. In one episode in particular, Stabler and his new partner were talking about a rape victim and they had a disagreement. His female partner was essentially asserting that women need to be aware of their surroundings so they don't become victims of rape and Stabler, an 8 year veteran of the SVU, took that as "victim blaming." She argued that this was not true, and I don't exactly disagree with her. I say this because of the way rape education is taught in our society. While telling someone to be aware of their surroundings so that they don't get mugged is one thing, telling a woman to be aware of her behavior so she does not get raped is a different thing entirely. Rape education is always targeted at women and generally goes as follows:
"Don't walk home alone at night."
"Don't wear revealing clothes."
"Don't lead him on."
Rape education for men goes as follows:
...*crickets*...
Why don't we tell men anything about rape?! It infuriates me that we teach the potential victims of a crime how to avoid it, but we don't tell the potential perpetrators anything. Not to say that all men are rapists and that all women are just sitting around waiting to be raped, but I can't think of any other crime that is discussed in this way. We encourage children not to steal just as often as we encourage people not to waive their cash around on a busy New York City street. College campuses are unfortunately overrun with sexual assault, but universities often think that a power point presentation during orientation is a deterrent. There is SO much more we could teach about rape that we simply don't. Many sexual assaults on college campuses are fueled by alcohol. Rape education makes men seem like unbridled monsters with no degree of self control. Let's give them just a little more credit. Don't lead him on? That's ridiculous. While I think that women need to know their boundaries before they put themselves in a situation where signals may get crossed, that's NOT AN EXCUSE FOR A MAN TO RAPE HER. No one wants to be raped. If you wanted it, that pretty much disqualifies it from being rape.
As easy as it was to make that power point telling women to live their lives looking over their shoulder, you could add a slide that lists all the things that don't count as consent like alcohol, short skirts and one's previous sexual activity...or we could continue this rape "education" that results in low reporting of assault because the survivor thought she asked for it.
-Renyelle Jimenez
Friday, December 2, 2011
How do we encourage positive sexuality on campus?
Recently, there was a Brown Bag where a some members of Colgate's Conduct Board discussed the role of the Board. The panel included students, professors, an administrator. The Brown Bag's topic coincided with a project I did this semester for Professor Darby's Language and Gender class (Prof Darby was also one of the panelists).
For this Colgate Workplace Gender Styles paper, I had interview someone who works at Colgate and discuss how language and gender is related to their work on this campus. I interviewed Kim Taylor, Dean of the Sophomore Year Experience, also a panelist.
My initial focus of the project was strictly focused on the language of Colgate's Policy on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment and the issue of "what is consent?" However, talking to Kim, she raised a very interesting idea that I believe is key to effective consent and prevention of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment.
Kim talked about her experience being involved with Yes Means Yes, a positive sexuality discussion group. She described a group of mostly women discussing sexual desire saying that "I really don't know, I've never really felt that way, I've never felt a single desire, I don't know what that means, I just know what I'm supposed to do." Kim connects the issue that this lack of talk about sex to sexual misconduct by saying that "you can't give good consent if you don't know what it is you want."
To know what it is you want, you need to be educated about it, and education requires talk. But before we think about how we talk about sex, we need to figure out how make it safe and comfortable for people on this campus to talk about sex.
Culturally and socially, there is a taboo around sex. Nobody really wants to talk about it because it is very personal. And amongst college students, and especially incoming freshman, peoples' experiences and personal beliefs about sex and what is appropriate to discuss varies greatly. Being involved in Yes Means Yes before, I found the experience really enlightening and liberating. However, everyone who participated were more or less already interested in gender, sex, and sexuality. This culture of positive sexuality needs to spread beyond those who take women's studies classes or go to women's studies Brown Bags, it needs to permeate throughout the whole campus.
Besides posters and pamphlets people don't usually read and You Decide during freshman orientation, what else can we do that is perhaps more effective? I don't really have any solid answer but one idea I really like is that at some other colleges, there are peer sex educators/mentors, students who advise other students. I see the benefit in this that students are more likely to listen to other students who have experiences they can relate to or students who understand what the campus culture is like.
So what do you think, how do we encourage positive sexuality at Colgate?
- by Catherine Yeh
For this Colgate Workplace Gender Styles paper, I had interview someone who works at Colgate and discuss how language and gender is related to their work on this campus. I interviewed Kim Taylor, Dean of the Sophomore Year Experience, also a panelist.
My initial focus of the project was strictly focused on the language of Colgate's Policy on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment and the issue of "what is consent?" However, talking to Kim, she raised a very interesting idea that I believe is key to effective consent and prevention of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment.
Kim talked about her experience being involved with Yes Means Yes, a positive sexuality discussion group. She described a group of mostly women discussing sexual desire saying that "I really don't know, I've never really felt that way, I've never felt a single desire, I don't know what that means, I just know what I'm supposed to do." Kim connects the issue that this lack of talk about sex to sexual misconduct by saying that "you can't give good consent if you don't know what it is you want."
To know what it is you want, you need to be educated about it, and education requires talk. But before we think about how we talk about sex, we need to figure out how make it safe and comfortable for people on this campus to talk about sex.
Culturally and socially, there is a taboo around sex. Nobody really wants to talk about it because it is very personal. And amongst college students, and especially incoming freshman, peoples' experiences and personal beliefs about sex and what is appropriate to discuss varies greatly. Being involved in Yes Means Yes before, I found the experience really enlightening and liberating. However, everyone who participated were more or less already interested in gender, sex, and sexuality. This culture of positive sexuality needs to spread beyond those who take women's studies classes or go to women's studies Brown Bags, it needs to permeate throughout the whole campus.
Besides posters and pamphlets people don't usually read and You Decide during freshman orientation, what else can we do that is perhaps more effective? I don't really have any solid answer but one idea I really like is that at some other colleges, there are peer sex educators/mentors, students who advise other students. I see the benefit in this that students are more likely to listen to other students who have experiences they can relate to or students who understand what the campus culture is like.
So what do you think, how do we encourage positive sexuality at Colgate?
- by Catherine Yeh
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Behind the Scenes of the Student Conduct Board Reflection
The Student Conduct Board Brown Bag on November 29th was more informative than emotional; it was nonetheless very useful. It became clear in the beginning of the panel discussion, that hardly anyone in the audience knew what the Conduct Board did let alone what their responsibility was on campus. People only seemed to understand that one was in “trouble” if they had to meet with the board. To help the audience understand more of what the board did, faculty, staff, and students on the board talked about what they did and what happens when the board meets to discuss disciplinary violations. They discussed how the room was configured, what types of questions they ask the violator, and how they decide on sanctions. It seemed that the case they get most often pertains to plagiarism, but they also talked about how the setup would be different if it was a sexual misconduct case. Overall, the audience walked away with a greater understanding and appreciation of how disciplinary cases are handled in the Colgate community.
During the second half of the discussion while talking about sexual misconduct, Dean Taylor mentioned the TIP form. Every year, colleges and universities have to report how many cases of sexual misconduct occur on campus to government officials. Colgate derives its numbers from the TIP forms. However, almost no one in the audience had ever heard of this form, so this is my attempt to get that information out there.
After Dean Taylor hears about sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, bias-related conduct, possible or planned crimes, law/policy violations, and/or other crime information, she is required to fill out a TIP form online or call campus safety and inform them of the incident. It is as anonymous as you want it to be and it doesn’t necessarily mean you are pressing charges. However, Dean Taylor isn’t the only one required to fill this out, EVERYONE should do it. All you have to do is identify the TIP as either sexual misconduct, harassment, theft lead, weapon violation, etc. and also provide details/description of the situation or incident. Optional information includes name, phone, email, and other helpful information. This is simply a way for Colgate to track what is actually happening on campus and possibly address repeated offenses. Thus, I encourage everyone to take a look at the form and get the word out to others about this option. Here is the link to the form.
-Michelle Van Veen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)