MINTZ: What could be worse?

Traditions of every sort have such a prominent place in American culture, and maybe nowhere more than among horny teenage boys. Some are more innocent in nature: boys with hookup lists in the Notes application on their phones or conversations about their latest conquests over a few beers. I know many a girl with the same lists on their phones — my sister has one complete with a series of emojis after each name to denote where it was, who it was, and how good it was. I’d be lying if I said that I never sat around whilst discussing boys and the merits and pitfalls of “getting with” them.

But something somewhere took a sinister turn. Of course, this is nothing new. You see it in the news, you hear it being discussed in the dormitory elevators. Hookup culture has turned, at least for a (way too large) segment of the population that includes many aforementioned horny teenage boys, into something much more insidious, something that seems much more like — or that literally is, in some cases — a game.

Flash back to Marathon Monday. Somewhere between the whole “waking up at ungodly hours of the morning and immediately starting to drink” thing and the “heading home by 3 p.m. to eat in the West dining hall and nap” thing, I ran into a guy with eight or so tally marks written on his arm. Pretty smart, I thought. Keep track of how many shots you’ve taken so you don’t find yourself waking up at 7 p.m. in Kenmore Square wondering how on earth you got there.

“Is that how many shots you’ve taken?” I probably slurred.

“No, it’s how many girls I’ve hooked up with,” he replied. I suddenly felt nauseous, and it was not related to all the alcohol.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not that preposterous of a story. People will roll their eyes at my words and write this off as normal guy behavior and tell me that I’m overreacting. But I am not shutting up.

I’m not shutting up about consent and how often the lines are blurred and fabricated and manipulated. I’m not shutting up about how my best friend was screamed at from the balcony of a fraternity house and called a slut and a whore and worse just for daring to walk by. I’m not shutting up about the time a senior coerced my freshman year roommate into doing things she was clearly uncomfortable with during the first few weeks of school. I’m not shutting up about the letter that The Daily Free Press received last semester about a girl who’d allegedly been raped and then grossly mistreated by the system that Boston University put in place to aid survivors of sexual assault. I’m not shutting up about the time I told a guy “no,” but he overpowered me and I had to kick him in his unmentionables to get him off of me.

And I am certainly not shutting up about Owen Labrie, the former prep school senior from New Hampshire who allegedly raped a 15-year-old freshman and was handed, after a long and highly public trial, a bone-chilling “not guilty” verdict on August 28.

If you are unfamiliar with the case, let me explain: St. Paul’s School is a co-educational prep school where senior prefects often partake in a tradition called the “senior salute.” During this, senior boys proposition desirable younger girls for sexual favors during the last few months of school.

The girl, whose name has never been released, was the object of Labrie’s affections, and while at first she rebuked his attempts to get a “salute” out of her, she was eventually coerced by one of his friends. In return, Labrie said, he would give the friend “10,000 blow jobs.”

This is where the lines get blurry. Labrie says that the consensual encounter ended at kissing and touching. The girl says that he raped her, scraping the inside of her vagina and being too rough.

The jury gave Labrie three misdemeanor charges of having a sexual encounter with a minor, using a computer to lure a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. But they did not convict him of aggravated sexual assault, even after finding him guilty of penetration.

And herein lies the problem. The nine men and three women on the jury didn’t find the encounter “bad enough” to accuse Labrie of the legally worse charge of misdemeanor sexual assault, which in New Hampshire would carry a fine of up to $2,000 and/or up to one year in prison.

Maybe this is a sign that sexual assault laws need to change with the times, but this is also a reflection of the culture that we live in that allows traditions like the senior salute to thrive. We dismiss it and throw around phrases like “it’s not that bad,” or, “it could’ve been worse.”

But what’s “not that bad” about making sex into a one-sided, male-favored game? What “could be worse” than physically and emotionally harming a minor who was smooth-talked into bed by someone with only the worst intentions? And what, exactly, does it take to actually get a sexual assault conviction? When will the female finally be trusted to decide whether or not she was assaulted?

I’m worried that we will actually have to find out before any changes are made.