My Apology and an Attempt at Empathy

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At university, the one skill all students are expected to learn is the ability to think critically. In physics, you aren’t meant to just follow the same, simple algorithm your instructor has showed you in class, but to understand why that very algorithm works so that you can build your own methods for solving more difficult problems. In archaeology, your professor will explain to you a certain artifact’s importance to a culture. However, it is your responsibility to condense the social and theoretical mechanisms that led to that importance, so that you can begin to see similar and more profound relationships in any piece of material culture.

Without exception, if you cannot do this in the classroom, you will fail. Apparently, at UBC if you fail to do this in a more social, and yet still very politically-charged, community setting – for instance, during Sauder’s School of Business FROSH week – you get to slap yourself on the wrist. I would say “what a joke,” to the four Commerce Undergaduate Society (CUS) members who believed that stepping down from their positions was a fitting response to their actions and choices; except that making a serious and sensitive issue inappropriately funny – and by doing so undermining it – is really what dug this rabbit hole in UBC’s recently re-manicured landscape.

Let me explain myself, because unlike other popular perspectives, my anger about the Sauder FROSH rape chant event is coming from what I believe happened right there and then.

Statistics suggest that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually assaulted by the time they are eighteen*. With facts like those, I don’t think that it would be an absurd idea to speculate that there must have been sexual assault victims present during those chants.

Until now, college seemed like a soft start to life to me, because it is supposed to be a place that houses the most enlightened individuals who help you to draw out your best while knowingly holding back more real world responses, such as their personal issues or biases against you or your perspective. Now, when I think of the implications of how the rape chant, and the subsequent actions of those CUS leaders and UBC likely affected the potential sexually assaulted individuals at that chant – it makes me sick.

Why? Well, let’s try and do what I recently noticed a few people did on the UBC Compliments Facebook page towards a former CUS leader, in asking him to try to regain that position – that is, to use empathy. This time, let’s direct it towards those people who have been sexually assaulted and were encouraged to sing about rape and not mention it to non-participants, during their first week at university… Take your time.

Dear, new fellow UBC female, transgendered and male students whose wounds have been cut into by a place that I know you have worked hard to be accepted at, I am sorry. 

I am sorry, as a part of a student body who has let themselves live with ignorance about the actions that have been done against people with experiences like yours. I am sorry that UBC is merely mandating C.U.S. to spend $250,000 on student counseling and education on sexual abuse and violence, whilst $45 million dollars is being spent on public outdoor beautification. Since the strongest message that this sends is that: UBC cares more about its image than it cares about your wellness.

In the past I may have failed victims of sexual assault because I did not know what to do to help them. Today I am going to do the only thing I can think to do, and that is to say: I am listening, what can I do to help? 

Sincerely,

Your Fellow Student.

*This statistic comes from the USA, but is likely similar to the situation in Canada.

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