Shocking Posters Should Spur Support

Author: Alexa Varriano

A crime has been committed on this campus. A heinous atrocity. Period. The fact that a person could have understood the "pop quiz" poster as declaring warfare against men on a battleground where the two sexes are pitted against each other rather than against rape absolutely disgusts me. It makes me believe that some men, which implies just what it reads (not all men), are so frightened by "members of the feminist persuasion," whatever that's supposed to mean, that they were unable to look at the poster for what it was: a cry for awareness. That cry for awareness does not pertain solely to "members of the feminist persuasion," but rather to all human beings. It is a cry that should be resonating very loudly on this campus. And I agree with Kevin, everyone should be offended by that poster, offended that such appalling acts were inflicted on someone without their consent.

If you were offended by the poster, then you should ask yourself why. Was it really the language used? Was it the shock of seeing those words blatantly staring you in face? Or was it something else. Why did you feel that the poster was "gender bashing"? Why did you feel that it was an unfair attack on all men or, as Kevin so brilliantly took the liberty to infer "men on Middlebury campus"? The poster did not say "men on Middlebury campus." It said "some men" and "a guy." Can you deny that "some men" have committed sexual violence against women? Do you know where every guy on this campus is at any given moment? And can you therefore assert that "a guy" did not commit this appalling act? If none of the choices presented on the poster are ones you would make then you should not feel offended. You are not being attacked.

I would like to present my thought process while I was digesting that poster's message. Immediately, it hit me that this was not merely a homogenous poster feeding me a meaningless statistic — it was a true story. When you think of rape, is the first thing that pops into your mind a man masturbating in front of a drunk, half-conscious girl because "someone has to get [him] off"? As soon as I read option D on the poster my stomach practically lurched into my mouth from disgust because of the repulsive act that I just read about and, more so, because of the realization I came to. It was real; this happened to someone on this campus. And it was not just a girl who experienced a bad hook-up or regretted drunken sex; it was someone who had clearly been violated. Would you be creative enough to put such a colorful idea on an anti-rape poster? Would you really be capable of conjuring up that image if this did not actually happen to you?

Rather than arguing over men versus women or bringing up the ludicrous threat of litigation against the writer of the poster, perhaps we should be a little humane about the situation. There is someone out there who feels so isolated that she thought the only way she was able to reach out to people and tell her story was through such a shocking poster. Instead of hurting her further by criticizing her tactics, perhaps we should ask ourselves why she was forced to resort to those tactics, and how we can help everyone who has been violated, especially those too frightened to even write a poster. This should be seen as a wake up call, to the administration and to the student body as a whole, not as a scare tactic employed against men. There is a girl out there who has been victimized and is screaming for our help — will you continue to ignore her?