By Sarah Farid
Meet Erica and Jake. One night at a party, Erica got drunk and they proceeded to have sexual intercourse. It was clear that Erica did not necessarily resist nor did she actively participate in the act.
Sound familiar? The story is fake, an anecdote told by visiting speakers Katie Koestner and Gordon Braxton to students this week as part of Body Politics Day. The workshop, titled Face the Jury, lead students in a discussion on date rape and sexual assault by asking them to judge which character was at fault. While the situation was pretend, for some students it sounded all too real.
“I was Erica,” exclaimed a voice from the back of the room when a male student made a light-hearted comment about the story, implying that the girl in the story could have simply resisted.
The girl tearfully explained how it felt to be in that situation and said that the boy’s comment was “irresponsible.”
“If you don’t say ‘no’ it’s a go!” remarked one female student.
A female audience member later asked the girl who commented earlier in defense of the male character, Jake, if she had ever been raped or abused.
“Have you?” interjected a boy from the back of the auditorium.
“Yeah, actually, I have,” she responded.
This debate came after the poignant story of Katie Koestner, a rape victim who has dedicated her life to creating awareness of date rape. She has appeared on Oprah, MTV and in TIME. She was the subject of an HBO program called “No Visible Bruises: The Katie Koestner Story.”
Koestner was a freshman at the College of William and Mary when Peter, a boy she had been “hanging-out” with, raped her.
Even though Koestner reported the incident to her RA, dean, health clinic and the police, and even though Peter admitted to school officials that Koestner told him “no” repeatedly, Peter was only banned from her dorm building as punishment.
Koestner later asked the males in the audience to try and make a difference.
“I wanted to ask for your help because I really want to quit this job,” she said.
“A lot of people think that rape is something that happens when some stranger grabs a woman, rapes her and she is lucky to end up alive,” she added. Koestner then explained that 84 percent of the time the rapist is someone the victim knows.
“Katie’s speech was really touching,” said sophomore Laura Pennick, who was at the program in support of a friend. “I am not a victim myself, but I could sympathize completely with what she was saying.”
Koestner concluded her speech by asking one last favor of the audience: “When there is an opportunity to speak, you’ll break the silence.”