My group and I attended a lecture at New York University where people spoke about the issue of rape on college campuses. At the lecture a Columbia Graduate and rape survivor named Marybeth spoke, as well as Vanessa Grigoriadis, a New York magazine writer who wrote an article about Emma Sulkowicz. (Emma is a rape survivor and activist.) In the past my group had interviewed Vanessa and we found out about this lecture through her. Many people attended this lecture, from high and middle school students to NYU and Columbia students to feminists and and people against college rape. These two women activists brought up many important perspectives and ideas involving the topic.

           At the lecture they spoke about how the whole idea of rape culture is such a big issue in college. They talked about how affirmative consent is important. This means the whole concept of no means no transforming into yes means yes. I agree with this idea because often there are rape cases that people are not found guilty because they victim did not say “no”. In my opinion there should be a form of affirmative consent and I think if this was the case, rape would be less of an issue. I learned about Title IX which is very important to know about for my topic. Title IX is an Education Amendment (1972) that protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance and an example of a type of discrimination that are covered by this amendment is sexual harassment. The problem is that many colleges are not letting victims of sexual assault on campuses receive their rights by the college not having their best interest in mind by protecting the victims. Instead, colleges often fail to report alleged sexual assaults or harassments to the police because they want to avoid media attention and are therefore are in violation of Title IX. They also discussed the Rally at Columbia which my group and I attended. They said that this is a time where many schools across the country are acting on this topic by proposing new rape policies to the heads of the schools. They also spoke about how sex education  and education about college rape is very important for teenagers to be exposed to this even before going to college. People and especially girls should not have to be afraid to go to college because of this issue and it is unfair that the amount of rape culture has gotten to the point where 1 in 5 girls are raped. The perpetrators should be the ones being condemned, not the victims.

After the Lecture my group and I spoke with Marybeth, one of the people who spoke. In the lecture she talked to everyone and again with us how she is part of an organization called SAFE so we thought she would be a good contact to have, so we asked for her information which we now have. I hope to get in contact with her so we could speak with her more in detail and possibly she would have a volunteer position open. Overall, the Lecture was a great experience and it went well because I learned a lot and got to speak with people afterwards that could give us more opportunities for fieldworks.

Vanessa, Marybeth, and the Interviewer at the lecture