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Hamilton's Assault on Dignity and Freedom, Part II
Hamilton College mandated last month that certain students attend a rape prevention session called "She Fears You." The session claims to "[lower] participants' rape myth acceptance and increase[e] their understanding of what constitutes rape". The students who were required to attend had done nothing to indicate that they accept rape myths or that they had a poor understanding of what constitutes rape. Neither had they been accused of raping, sexually assaulting, or sexually harassing anyone. They simply had the misfortune of being first-year, male students.
Certainly, ending rape and sexual assault are urgently important goals. But to tell young men who have been on campus for only a month that they need "to be active in changing the rape culture on campus" implies that their mere presence is part of the problem. I can't help but find that insulting to the young men I know--the ones who I played ultimate Frisbee with, the one who decorated my locker with streamers for my 16th birthday, the one who picked me up for the prom in a powder blue tux, the one who drove a half-hour at 5:00 am to leave flowers on my car. But at Hamilton, these young men would have been told that they were "perceived as potential rapists" who were not "capable of entering caring and emotion-based relationships."
As ACTA argued in Protecting the Free Exchange of Ideas, trustees are the legal guardians of the university and are responsible for ensuring a culture that welcomes freedom of conscience and principled beliefs. Sadly, this is not the first time that ACTA has found major assaults on such freedom. If Hamilton's trustees are serious about upholding freedom of thought and conscience as central to a university community, then they need to do much more than just trust that everything is in order.
Posted by Heather Lakemacher on October 13, 2010 at October 13, 2010 03:20 PM
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