If you went to a small college and one of the BMOCs went around forcing himself on drunk girls, what would you do? What if you were one of those girls? Would you report him to the local police? To sometimes ineffectual student disciplinary boards with limited powers and few protections for the victim? Or would you seek justice on
Facebook? When a popular student at Lewis & Clark College
forced himself on a female classmate,
“I’m sitting up against the wall on his mattress, and he’s standing over me,” she continues. “It started happening, and then he, like, twisted his fingers around my hair and started pulling it and being just kind of violent. I started choking because he was just, like, pushing my head.… I started gagging and choking, and I couldn’t really breathe.”
She says she started pushing on [his] abdomen to tell him to stop. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s right, choke on it.’”
her friends created a Facebook group naming and shaming the perpetrator (there were also allegations that the male student had similarly assaulted other women at the school). The best response? Probably not. But when you're combating reactions like these, does moderation seem appealing?
“They were lighting a false fire,” Erin Dees, a sophomore, told The Pioneer Log . “Students who only see him in a classroom setting don’t need to know and judge his reputation.” ... “I don’t think he’s a predator,” says Matt Poole, a senior who is also friends with Shaw-Fox. “I don’t think he actively seeks out victims. I think he has a problem, and he can be helped.”
Don't students have an interest in knowing if one of their classmates is a rapist? Would you want to be lab partners with him? Join a study group with him? Move into the dorm where he lives? At a small residential college, how many people do you
only see in a classroom setting? Whether someone "actively seeks out victims" or not is small consolation to the person who happens to be nearby when circumstances permit a serial rapist to rape again.
