A Culture Too Casual For Its Own Good

A recent article on the evils of fraternity life at Dartmouth written by Janet Reitman for Rolling Stone Magazine[1]online, when discussing the issue of sexual assault at Universities stated that “Brown, a school with 8,500 students, averaged eight assaults” and continued to note that 95% of all assaults go unreported. With April being Sexual Awareness Month, this statistic has unsurprisingly struck a few chords amongst the Brown community. The topic of sexual assault has become a taboo, and lines between consensual and non-consensual sexual encounters, particularly in the University setting, have become blurred. Spurred on by the rambunctious, rowdy and sometimes regrettable attitude so many of us apply to going out, what could have simply been one night of spontaneous drunken fun, terrifyingly, has developed the potential to be the exact opposite of that. “In college, everyone drinks to get drunk, that’s just the way we all seem to think. So it’s kind of anticipated that you might do something you regret. It’s sad but I think it’s sort of become part and parcel of the ‘college experience’.” Anonymous ‘14. It has become commonplace to witness the conversation between college students that consists of “I was totally blacked out last night”/ “I literally don’t remember a thing”, which is fine if you have decent, loyal friends surrounding you from start to finish who can piece by piece fit your night together in a way that reassures you that nothing morally, emotionally or physically scarring actually happened. If, however, your friends are as taken by the bottle as you are on any given night, you have a problem. It is, sadly, not a rarity when a girl wakes up, or rather, comes to, and realizes not only that she has had sex, but furthermore, that she cannot remember it. Whether it is with a longstanding partner or a guy she has just met, the feeling of violation and the physical reality of it remains the same either way. “The issue for me is that girls get too drunk and do things that they don’t remember, but the scary part is that they don’t remember whether it was consensual or not, or whether they had the capacity to comply in their drunkenness.” Anonymous ‘15. The relentless nature of Brown’s hook-up culture means that this sequence of events is all too familiar on a nightly basis, and the social dynamic has taught us to embrace it. The casual dismissal and social acceptance of instances such as these as an ‘oops’ moment renders those who are victimized by them as visibly unfazed, even if emotional turmoil boils beneath the surface. “It reflects really badly on guys because a girl can be totally cool with coming home with you and then suddenly you’re the bad guy for taking advantage when you were just as drunk as they were”. Anonymous ‘14. Keeping up an appearance of indifference and casualness, therefore, suggests the kind of breeziness that it seems guys are into and that, subsequently, girls have maintained a standard for.