#college

Last week, a NYTimes article by Kate Taylor entitled “Sex on Campus: She Can Play that Game Too” made its rounds throughout the Internet, and especially the University of Pennsylvania community, the backdrop setting for Taylor’s article.

Yesterday, Penn alumna Raja Jalabi published a powerful response in the UK Guardian called “College Culture? An Alcohol-fueled Frenzy of Sexual Harassment.”

I think both of these articles are necessary and important: necessary for dialogue, necessary for gaining perspective, and important in ushering change to create safer spaces for everyone both at Penn and nationwide.

Having read Jalabi’s piece, grateful for her publicly speaking up and out, I’ve decided to share a statement I wrote last week in response to Taylor’s initial article:

I found Kate Taylor’s article to be everything from triggering, disturbing, lacking sexual diversity, and deeply heterosexist, to necessary and important. I kept thinking about my own experience as an undergraduate at Penn, a four-year period I cherish, during which I built incredible and lasting friendships, learned from awe-inspiring mentors and educators, and solidified my personal and professional passions and dreams.

Yet, my time at Penn was also coated by both traumatizing and empowering sexual journeys. After my first month at Penn, I was date raped on my dorm room floor by a male stranger while I was drunk (a non-Penn student in town visiting a friend on campus); days before graduation, after a year and a half of chosen celibacy to heal from the aforementioned and other traumas, I had a positive and consensual one-night stand with a male Penn student, transitioning me into a sexual narrative that has since remained positive, consensual, and empowering.

Amongst the host of reasons I chose to attend Penn was their Classical Studies department and The Kelly Writer’s House. Others went for Wharton Business School, Penn’s Nursing School, to play basketball, to join an acclaimed performing arts group, or myriad other academic and extracurricular activities, taught and overseen by top notch educators offering world-renowned facilities.

Penn has spent billions of dollars on academic, research, financial aid, scholarship, scholarly, and creative endeavors. I hope that the Penn community - current students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumnae, and alumni - take this article as an opportunity to approach sexual experiences on campus, sexual identity on campus, sexual orientation on campus, heterosexism on campus, sexism on campus, sexual violence on campus, drinking on campus, drugs on campus, and student life on campus with the same care, funding, and seriousness that are given to matters of the mind.

Penn students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and alumni seek to be leaders in world thought, innovation, and change.

So let us.

Let this be an opportunity to embrace dialogue. To wear Kate Taylor’s article vulnerably on our sleeves. To pioneer a revolution awakening from the silence on these matters and the endless oppressions that jeopardize students’ safety and well-being. To ensure the next time someone writes a feature article in the New York Times about female student sexuality on Penn’s campus it lets go of anonymity and includes LGBTQ, male, and other gendered voices, and welcomes perspective from other campus spaces left entirely overlooked.

May we cease to shame others.

May we cease to harbor shame upon and within ourselves.

May we cease to feel threatened by sharing our stories.

May we ignite a dialogue through and with compassion and empathy.

May our bodies receive the same dignity we demand of and for our minds.