Our History, Our Reflection: Putting Colgate Back Together One Story At a Time…

by Angelica A. ‘10

On November 11th, at 11 a.m., I stood on the Chapel steps anxiously watching members of the Colgate community gather in front of me eager to hear what I had to say about sexual abuse. Below is the original speech I prepared for the speak-out. It is important to note that the movement my close peers and I have started to abolish sexual abuse in our campus is completely grassroots. We have no affiliation with any student-run or Colgate organization’ and our work is a direct product of our passion to make positive change.

My speech, entitled, “Our History, Our Reflection: Putting Colgate Back Together One Story At a Time” is the introduction to the whole event which lasted for almost 3 hours. Brave women came up and shared stories of pain, suffering, and hope; and men shared their passion to fight the abuse that occurs in our community all too frequently. Even Charlotte Johnson, dean of Colgate, stayed for the entire event braving the cold weather and tears of rage with us. We truly achieved a tangible and working sense of community that day!

Hello everyone,

My name is Angelica, and, like you all, I am concerned about the state of our community. And while there is much to discuss about building a positive and more welcoming environment, one aspect we are all especially concerned about is the sexual climate. Up until the Campus Climate Life Survey was officially released last week, there was a lot of speculation about the sexual climate here. Is it true that sexual assaults and rapes are underreported? Or is that idea a farce? And if it is true, how many assaults are not reported?

The Campus Climate Life Survey has given us a wonderful opportunity to take a look in the mirror, and get a glimpse of who we truly are as a community of students, staff, and faculty. Regardless of where we all stand in our community, we all have a significant impact on each other as members of the Colgate community. No matter how we try to divide ourselves, we all are connected by the fact that we all live in Hamilton together, take classes together, and create change together. We exist in a tightly knit environment, and while it may have been easy to avoid our reflection before it is impossible to do that now.

So, here we are. We are looking in the mirror. What do we see? We see the numbers: 45% of women in our community have experienced sexual abuse, and more than 25% of women in our community have experienced an attempted sexual assault or an attempted rape.

We all know these numbers are remarkably high; our presence shows our discontent with our reflection. But before we begin to make changes, we need to learn to our history. There are moments in our history similar to now, where survivors of sexual assault like me have stood up and demanded change. And changes were made, and revoked, and then forgotten. Our responsibility is to figure out why we have lost sight of our history, and to ensure that today’s movement will never be forgotten.

On May 11, 1984 – just 14 years after Colgate became a mixed-gendered university – an article was published in the Syracuse Post-Standard investigating curiously high numbers of reported sexual abuse. This article tells us that during the span of one school year, about 7 months, there were 8 reported rapes, 21 sexual assaults, and 20 threats of sexual assault to a nearby crisis center. That is 49 cases of reported sexual abuse by women of Colgate. How many other cases of sexual abuse in 1984 and before then occurred in our community and were not reported?

Three years later, in 1987, Kristen Buxton was gang-raped by three men in one of our fraternities. Kristen reported this crime, and it should have been an open-and-shut case. All the evidence was there! Her attackers even confessed! But they received no jail time. Once again, our community lost sight of our reflection, our history. We were distracted by our personal interests, dividing once more into smaller groups and distancing ourselves further away from Kristen. She fought the administration of Colgate and the leaders of the fraternity for justice in a 5 year lawsuit and won. Her story is out there. It is called, “Silent No More.” All we need to do is reach out to Kristen and learn from her story…

In 1990, three years after Kristen was gang-raped, another one of our sisters was sexually abused. While digging through archives in the Women’s Studies Center, I found a letter written by two very concerned RA’s to the Dean. They question the Dean and the members of the Sexual Misconduct Board for finding a man guilty of “two serious charges” of sexual assault and yet allowing him to stay on campus. If the perpetrator is still on campus with no punishment, they argue, then he is given full power to commit sexual abuse again. And again.

The authors of this letter also say, “[the perpetrator’s] presence on campus impairs the academic performance of the women directly involved and many other concerned men and women on campus.”

Jump forward 19 years to last semester when the Campus Climate Life Survey was conducted. One of our sisters writes in the discussion section: “I was raped and not only did Colgate do NOTHING, they dismissed me after I did not do well academically..when I was forced to see my rapist around campus.” This woman expresses the same exact concern the RA’s 19 years ago expressed to the dean: the perpetrators of sexual assault are still on our campus with no punishment, and this is having a direct effect on our entire community.

During the past 40 years when women have been present on this campus alongside men, there were brief moments in history that challenged our perception of sexual abuse at Colgate. And lucky for us, they have been recorded. It is important to remember, though, that these moments are extraordinary because of the simple fact that they were recorded. Know that there are many more moments in our history when our sisters were sexually abused and they were not recorded. We cannot read their stories; we can only feel the shadows of their grief in our dorm rooms, in our class rooms, on these chapel steps. Their memories have manifested themselves in the current state of our community: they are present in our reflection!

In loving memory of the women whose stories can never be read, we are going to make sure that our history will be recorded, remembered, and used to make positive change. Some of our sisters today have found the strength to write about their experiences of sexual abuse and share them with us. We have read them online and we have seen them in the bathroom stalls. These essays also provide another opportunity to look into the mirror, and get an honest reflection of our community.

In her essay, one of our sisters puts all the numbers we have been throwing around into perspective and into our hearts. She says:

In her story, she reminds us that these numbers are the women in our lives – our roommates, our classmates, our professors, our girlfriends, our sisters, our mothers. We can keep citing and gathering numbers, talking about them until we are blue in the face. But it is impossible to fully comprehend what is going on if we do not stop….acknowledge that these numbers are in fact people….and that we already know them.

How many of you know someone who has been sexually assaulted?

The most unfortunate fact about sexual assault is that once you know the true history of Colgate University, those numbers cited in the Campus Climate Survey – 25% and 45% – aren’t surprising at all. What becomes most appalling, is that these numbers have persisted over the years unnoticed. Why?

The common thread among the stories I have just shared with you – and the stories you will hear today – is that the focus is only on the victim. But we never gain sight of the perpetrator. There are brief moments, but then they slip.

Where are the perpetrators who are sexually abusing 45% our sisters? They are in our community! None of them have been punished!

Imagine! Making friends with a brother who seems cool, welcoming, smart, funny; and when you trust him enough to be alone with him, he betrays your trust and violates your physical and emotional space. He psychologically manipulates you to feel that you brought the unwanted aggression on yourself. This isn’t really sexual abuse, you’re just complaining to save your reputation. You don’t want to be labeled as a whore or a tease; you want to be labeled somewhere in between; you want to be normal.

After the traumatic experience is over, you fight to feel comfortable in your own skin again. Trying to reclaim the physical and emotional space that is yours, you shower away the dirtiness of it all hoping that it will eventually disappear. Each step you take is your first step, wavering and unsure. You keep moving with hopes that eventually you can become stable.

But you can’t leave your room without seeing him. He is there to remind you of that moment when you had no control, no power, no rights, no existence. He is there to remind you of your uncertainty – maybe you did cause that “mess;” maybe you shouldn’t have drunk so much or spent so much time talking to him; maybe you could have avoided that party; maybe…

You might even find the courage to report it a week after that horrible night. You go to campus safety and battle to the end of the interview, reliving the experience for the sake of having a solid report. You seek out the dean of discipline, and sift through his coded language. You deal with the lengthy amount of time it takes for the dean to get anything done. You deal with the fact that he is still here, passing you on the your way to class; and all of his friends, who were once your friends, are now retaliating against you – calling you a slut, a whore, a stupid bitch who asked for it. You sit in front of the sexual misconduct board. You share your story in front of him. He questions you when you are done. You leave and you wait to hear your case. The board finds him guilty, and they punish him with probation.

He is still here with no understanding of what it is exactly that he did wrong. He is not educated; he does not understand the consequences of his actions. And by law, he cannot be forced to understand, to be educated, to be punished for his crime. You cannot whisper his name to your girlfriends to warn them, lest you get punished. You still have to pass him on campus, see his friends who continue to treat you like a banished leper…

Imagine! This is the plight of 45% of our sisters! If there is one thing that divides us it is the fact that the perpetrators of sexual abuse are still terrorizing our sisters with no incentive to change their behavior. If they are not punished, why should they stop?! And furthermore, if the perpetrators are not punished, why should our sisters report their abuse?!

There is a system here that seeks to protect our justice, but this system has not encouraged our sisters to heal and the perpetrators to reform their behavior. We see this in Kristen Buxton’s story, in letters written by RA’s to the dean, in the CCLS, and in my own experience. As sad as we are about what is happening to our sisters, we all must realize that the administration has good intention in their hearts. However, the administration must also realize that their intentions are not matching the products – they are providing a forum for us to report and seek justice, and the few who do utilize this system see nothing but injustice. Our sisters are still subject to sexual abuse, and the perpetrators still remain in our community.

We assume that the perpetrators are men, but we cannot tell which men. How can we tell the perpetrators from our brothers apart, especially when the perpetrators are friendly acquaintances? Where are our brothers, the men of good-conscience?

In our attempts to understand why our community is so grief-stricken, we have further divided ourselves by gender, by class year, and by our role here at Colgate as students and administrators. This picking and pulling apart of our community, our identity, OUR REFLECTION, is completely counter-productive. Our mirror is cracked into so many pieces. We are confused by all the little fragments of our reflection. Let’s put them back together.

In order to make proper changes, we must build bridges – among men and women, students and faculty. Since we cannot decipher the perpetrators of sexual abuse from our brothers, we have all made rash assumptions about half of our campus. And further, since we never hear the true stories of our sisters who are sexually abused, we are left to assume that another half of our campus is silent and bitter. These gaps must be filled.

To our brothers, the men of good-conscience, our community needs your help in this trying time! The longer it takes you to speak-out against the horrible crimes being committed towards our sisters, the more our sisters will feel alone! To our sisters who have survived sexual abuse, speak-out and reclaim your agency! Tell us your experiences; bring your cracked pieces of the mirror to their rightful place; show us the cause of your suffering! To that 19% of our brothers who have also survived sexual abuse, please expose to us the complexities of our community! Give us the glue and help mend our fragmented reflections!

When our mirror is whole, we can finally see ourselves reflected – complete with our history, the good and the bad, our present, our agency, and our motivation to work for a more welcoming a positive future.

So, here we are. We have our fragments of the mirror. I have the history pieces. And it looks like you have the number pieces. I see some more stories over there. Good! You have the glue! Are we ready?!
Awesome!

So, this is how this speak-out is going to work:

The essays written by our sisters who have survived sexual abuse will be read aloud. We must hear them and we must learn from them. These essays are powerful and they have a lot to share. Remember, this is a safe space and we all welcome our history and the beautiful members of our community. So, I welcome the survivors of sexual abuse whose stories have not yet been written or published to come forth as well and teach us.

Also, it is our responsibility to work together to create change institutionally so that this movement will make changes, and will forever be remembered. My fellow activists and I have been working on drafting a proposal of very specific things we want to see changed in our justice system here at Colgate. We want you all – students, staff, and faculty – to be a part of this. Here is a notepad. Write down your name and email address if you are interested in helping us make these changes, and we will email you the proposal so we can work on it together. And then, as a community, we can present this to the administration and create change!

One last thing before I step down. Everyone is free to speak. Remember that our goal is to heal and become a more unified community. There will be heated moments of frustration, confusion, anger, and sadness. Try not to judge. Use these moments to empathize and create a stronger connection with each other. This is our glue! Let us channel these emotions, and transform them to be productive, to make solid changes! Thank you!