My group and I met with Marybeth Seitz-Brown, who is a rape activist and college rape survivor. She went and graduated from Columbia University and is now closely involved with an organization called Safer and has become an expert on the topic of rape on college campuses. This organization works to make all campuses free of sexual violence and they encourage students to hold their schools accountable for their sexual assault policies, such as Title IX. We first met Marybeth at the lecture we attended at NYU where she spoke and discussed the topic. After the lecture we told her about our Social Justice project and we then got her contact information. So, we then emailed and scheduled a time where we could meet with her. On January 29th we met her near Union Square at Argo Tea, where we then conducted our interview.

We learned many new and interesting things from Marybeth. We discussed the topic of affirmative consent and the idea of “yes means yes” instead of “no means no”. She thought that affirmative consent is an important policy that should be used and enforced in colleges; this would prevent rape before it happens. She also spoke a lot about her organization, Safer, which gives in-person workshops to colleges that educate them about rape culture. She told us about her thoughts on rape culture in the media. She gave an interesting opinion that there is very little consensual sex in the media. Therefore, this gives people the message of no means no, instead of yes means yes. Women are being objectified in the media and this is hugely contributing to the amount of rape in college since people are seeing and hearing it in movies, TV shows, songs, which makes it seem acceptable. Lastly, Marybeth gave us some useful sources to look into for our Social Justice teach in about feminism in relation the rape. Overall, I think this fieldwork was a success because we gained knowledge and I enjoyed meeting with her.

Marybeth at the NYU Lecture