A complaint was recently filed against Ohio State University for their treatment of a victim of rape on campus. In Jane Doe vs. The Ohio State University, the victim claims that Jeremy Goldstein, a male student enrolled at the school, sexually assaulted, molested and raped her. Nineteen days earlier, the complaint alleges, Goldstein had allegedly raped another female student. Despite rules and regulations that required OSU to remove Mr. Goldstein from campus property pending further investigation, Jeremy Goldstein was neither suspended nor removed from university grounds and, thus, was in position to commit the brutal rape upon Jane Doe.
Women from all the Big Ten schools are trying to do something about this. And luckily, this story is garnering some national attention. There's a Dateline piece featuring the case and discussing the way colleges handle sexual assault -- it's running in the fall and we'll let you know when/how you can see it. There will also be an article in Good Housekeeping in September. Keep an eye out.
In the meantime, if you've ever successfully lobbied your college for better treatment of sexual assault victims, we could use your advice. Post a comment here, or contact WARR - Women and Allies Rising in Resistance -- at OSU.
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My old school actually did something like this too, except they had the victim sign a confidentiality agreement type thing, stating that she wouldn't disclose either the nature of the assault or the name of her abuser.
She got the agreement nullified as soon as she threatened to bring her lawyer into all of it -- the school knew perfectly well that what they were doing was sketchy.
My guess is that the school isn't exactly going to put up a fight here -- they're going to be all about appearances, and this isn't quite going to give them good publicity.
However, the problem with this extends far beyond the scope of this one incident. This kind of crap happens all the time at colleges everywhere. Instead of having local police take care of rape investigations like they should and dirtying the college's name, colleges "take care of it" themselves, which, way more often than not, consists of effectively sweeping it far under the rug.
And what can we do about it?
Unfortunately, I've got no clue. Institutions don't really seem all that willing to change unless you've got lots of green to back you up. And I know I, for one, am a broke-ass college student with debts up to my ass.
And the "school rape" story that I keep hearing about on national news is the one about the FEMALE teacher who raped the male students...I hate hearing that story every day; I can only imagine how many thousands of female students are raped by male teachers yearly (monthly? daily?) who don't show up on national television, every hour for weeks straight...
osu is so f-ed up. What ever happened to this lkoser?