Members of Boston University’s Center for Gender, Sexuality and Activism members said the campus harvests a “rape culture,” especially in light of this semester’s reported sexual assault incidents.
The two seperate cases of alleged sexual assault involving hockey players and three reports of ‘peeping Toms’ have exacerbated concerns over BU’s culture.
While a number of students questioned the culture, not everyone may be taking the issue seriously.
“Doubting individual stories, or denying a rape culture exists, perpetuates the problem,” said Ariana Katz, the co-director of CGSA. “Discrediting the idea of a rape culture is simultaneously discrediting the experiences of survivors and people that are living in a rape culture.”
CGSA members began using the term publicly to discuss how rape is trivialized and how survivors fail to report their assaults out of fear of public shame, Katz said. Filmmakers coined the term rape culture in a 1975 film about men sexually assaulting other men in prison.
“You prove a rape culture by the people that are affected by it and by the feeling,” the College of Arts and Science senior said. “So when we talk about how rape culture at BU is a thing, we’re saying these women that came out against the rapists, the hockey players, . . . that their experience is something we’re seeing larger at BU.”
College of Communication junior Michelle Tsiakaros, a CGSA volunteer and a member of the Feminist Collective, said people desensitize rape via their speech and actions.
“It’s making BU memes about rape,” Tsiakaros said. “It’s making casual comments like ‘That test raped me.’”
The popularity of BU memes, such as one posted on March 1 that reads “took the rape stairs and a hockey game broke out,” are good evidence for the idea that there is a rape culture at BU, Tsiakaros said.
“It’s said that there’s truth in humor,” she said. “Some of [the memes] are tasteless, but I think that they’re almost a good way to read the temperature of the campus and that people are thinking about it.”
BU spokesman Colin Riley could not comment on whether or not a rape culture exists at BU.
“I think [memes] can be clever,” he said of BU memes in general. “They can be opportunistic.”
Tsiakaros said the memes are a result of the problem and show how people on campus are thinking about the assaults.
“I try to understand where the people are coming from,” she said. “I don’t like to flat out judge someone if they’re unaware or have grown up with certain beliefs because part of rape culture is you grow up thinking a certain way.”
Despite the attention memes have been getting, Katz said she didn’t consider them as much of an issue as other things.
“I’m less troubled by BU memes than I am seeing people speak on videos . . . saying that they think BU is doing enough,” she said. “That’s more troubling to me than BU memes because [memes] are the faceless Internet that’s full of nonsense.”
Jack Long, a freshman in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said he doubts people consciously think about rape or raping people and does not really see a rape culture on campus.
“I’m not sure people are consciously aware of [rape culture],” Long said, “but when people are under the influence it kind of comes to the surface.”
CAS freshman Dan O’Halloran said he feels strongly about the issue and has been actively following the news on the issue.
“The way I see it is that D1 athletes get huge egos because they’re treated differently by girls their whole careers,” O’Halloran said. “Eventually some feel so entitled that they think they can behave however they like.
“There is no culture though. It’s irrational to say that there is this overwhelming ‘rape culture’ when it’s just certain guys who behave in extremely inappropriate ways. No one at BU or anywhere thinks rape is okay or supports it.
“The media is portraying all women as being in constant fear and all men as having the potential to behave this way. That’s just not true.”
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