Senior Year will drive you crazy if you don’t make it yours. Take challenging classes. Read at least a book a week. Enjoy your friends and family. Enjoy yourself. Try new things. People say it’s stressful, but there is so much and so little time.
I do not believe any true form of social acceptance can be gained through assimilation. The assimilator loses a part of themselves and those they mimic are lose the benefit of learning to interact with those unlike themselves. They are being given a false view of what acceptance looks like.
As we near college, there is an increasing rate of rapes on college campus stories in the news— consider how many do not make it on the news. As young people, leaving the relative safeties of our homes—if the opportunity to be sexually, mentally, and emotionally abused is anywhere, it is in the home— we are forced to face the reality that we may be sexually exploited while at school. There is a motion to allow guns on campus, so as to empower female students to protect themselves in the face of sexual assault. While I am completely of the mind that women should have the right to defend themselves, I also understand they also have the right to not be violated in the first place. This "solution" to the alarming amount of rapes that occur on college campuses is problematic and harming for several reasons: Rape is not an anomalous event whose perpetrators and victims reside in the realm of a college campus and are between the ages of 18-24 . Each year there are about 293,000 people sexually assaulted. About every 2 minutes someone is sexually assaulted. 40% of rape victims are under the age of 18 (RIIN). People of color experience sexual assault too and they are a minority in PWIs (Primarily White Institutions…any college that's not an HBCU). Native American women are statistically the most sexually assaulted group of women;Their presence on college campuses is almost non existent. Shoot, with imperialism and colonialism only 1.7% of American people claim to have any heritage that relates to the Native American race… in America.(US Census Bureau) Trans, non-binary, homsexual, asexual, pansexual, bisexual, queer and any other minority are being sexually assaulted on college campuses. Cisgender men are raped also. This "solution" further perpetuates rape culture. Nevada assemblywoman Michele Fiore, who is sponsoring a bill to force colleges to allow guns on campus, told the New York Times, “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them." If the only thing keeping men from assaulting 'hot little girls' is the thought of a bullet to the head, we live in a terrible world. If rapists at the schools are not being told not to rape, then there's a problem. Constant conversation until the patriarchal societal constructs that allow rape culture to run rampant— victim shaming, slut shaming, male privilege, respectability politics and many more. The reported campus sexual assault cases (with numbers between 5%-20%) are not handled satisfactorily by universities as it is. Militarizing a population on a college campus instead of demanding humane treatment from all inhabitants for all inhabitants doesn't seem like a great idea. I would not feel safe knowing my classmates have concealed weapons on them at parties or in class because other classmates may try to attack them. Impracticality Many rapists are not strangers in hoodies on a late night. They are family members, friends, classmates and it occurs in familiar places. On college campuses, drinking is prevalent and someone too drunk to consent to having sex should not be wielding a weapon.The gun accidents from nights of drinking or general misuse would immediately call for the disbandment of this measure. When should this weapon be carried? When is it justified to use legal force? Also, who decides who can bring a gun on campus? Trans and non-binary folk have just as much right as cisgender women to bring guns on campus for sexual assault prevention. This is not to mention that homosexual and as cisgender men are raped also. Know your rights:
Readings on Rape Culture: http://thefeministwire.com/2013/06/we-live-in-a-rape-culture/ |
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May 2015
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