How the United States responds to the kidnapped Nigerian girls and the epidemic of rape on the college campus will define for a generation just how equal women really are.
Important things are being learned in our colleges, but I’ve still been referring to college as “four-year summer camp with no counselors, for smart kids.” Throughout our culture, for about 40 years or more, we’ve portrayed these years as the pinnacle of freedom. Before college, there is mom and dad, and afterwards, there will be a spouse, and kids, or at least a boss. In that sweet spot of the college years, we have a rare chance to just “live and become.” It turns out, left to their own devices, college kids have enabled a deep rape culture. 1 in 5 women are victims of sexual assault in college. Most students, men and women, are guilty of bystander apathy, or lack of knowing how to intervene rather than assault. Meanwhile, there is small group of repeat offenders whose behavior goes unchecked.
250 schoolgirls in Nigeria have been kidnapped. Their captors, the Boko Haram (may their names be erased), have said that the girls would be sold in the market unless their imprisoned “brethren” are freed. As soon as the world heard this, we were all outraged. The President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, originally brushed the news aside, waiting an outrageous 3 weeks before reporting this atrocity.
I have four sons, and no biological daughters, but each year I graduate about 100 high schoolers. I am thankful that my part-time daughters do not live in Africa where the wars between tribes, religious or politically defined, have made women’s bodies as much the battlefield as any parcel of land. No, my girls are headed to college. So, I still worry.
From the White House Report (click to link)
1 in 5. This was the finding of the White House Special Task Force. Soon after the publishing of the report there was grousing about the numbers. “The definition of assault is too narrow.” “The study was too small.” “Not every drunken hook up counts as sex.” I am embarrassed about a country that can so easily shift the conversation of sexual violence of epidemic proportions to just another political finger pointing game. This is the United States, not Nigeria.
“In a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible.” – A.J. Heschel.
In one of the most horrific stories in the Bible, and yes, there are many to choose from, a woman is raped by “a depraved lot.” She walked back home in the light of day and collapsed dead at the door of the home where she and her husband had been staying. Her husband took her body and quickly continued his trip home, to safety. In agony, and in contempt for the society that would tolerate the actions of the depraved men who raped his wife, he sent a piece of her dead body to each of the 12 tribes. “And everyone who saw it cried out, ‘never has such a thing happened or been seen from the day the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt to this day! Direct your hearts to this! Take counsel and decide.” (Judges 19:22-30).
The story is gruesome, and unbelievably, the above paraphrased version holds back some of ugliest details. I wish that we could just dismiss this grotesque story under the heading of “the Bible contains some outlandish stories,” but what to do with today’s epidemic of rape? Silence has signaled tacit acceptance of the culture of rape in our colleges, not to mention our military. This indifference threatens the fabric of our society; it hurts our boys as well as our girls. This ancient problem has not gone away. 250 kidnapped girls in Nigeria. 1 in 5 US college women. “Direct your hearts. Take counsel and decide” just what kind of a society do we want to be.
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