This is the second installment of a series of articles dealing with sexual assault on college campuses.
It is intended to promote awareness of the issues surrounding sexual assault as well as shed new light on old myths and conceptions surrounding the issue. It will also provide resources on how to deal with assault should it occur.
Future articles will deal with a variety of other aspects of the issue.
Did you know that there
is a stereotype on cam-
pus that male athletes
and fraternity broth-
ers are considered more of a threat to women than any other guys when it comes to sexual assault? I didn't.
For those of you out there who believe this stereotype to be true, consider a few things. First, you need to be careful no matter what you do or who you're with, because there are some sick people out there.
If you (women) took your sex drive and multiplied it by a thousand and then went to a school with a drought of guys, then you might be able to better comprehend the need for caution when you're dealing with all guys here at Hopkins.
Second, fraternity guys and athletes aren't all the same--not even close. Within one team, you can often find several different groups of guys.
You name it -- some drinkers, some stoners, some academics, some meatheads -- there are probably a few of each. You can't place these many different groups into one overriding category of "jock" or "frat boy." I'm not saying that all these guys are trustworthy either.
How could I? I don't know all of them. But to assume that they're dangerous because they play a sport or are in a fraternity is ridiculous.
Here's a test: On my team there's one guy who spends most of his time in the library, never drinks or does drugs, has a girlfriend of two years whom he talks to on the phone every day, and he's not in a fraternity.
Now there's also a guy on the team who drinks as much as he possibly can every day of the week, sleeps around whenever he gets the chance and is in a fraternity.
Neither of them has any previous history of sexual assault. With all this information, who do you think is more prone to sexually assault a woman?
The answer is that there's no way to know. You might assume Guy 2, because he drinks a lot and sleeps with almost anything.
You might have said Guy 1, since he might have pent-up sexual energy from never seeing his girlfriend and spending most of his time crammed in a booth on B-Level. The truth is that neither is impossible.
So why is it that athletes and fraternity guys have this reputation? I don't really know for sure. I guess it could be that some guys who are rowdy partiers and big drinkers, or maybe because some of the guys sleep around.
Whatever the reason, I've never heard of an incident and most of my friends for the past four years have been either athletes or fraternity brothers.
But if you're one of the people who believes this stereotype to be true, you might want to rethink your reasoning.
The truth is that you can never know who's a threat, so you need to just do your best to be safe. How do you do that? Well, most of the girls I know travel in groups (even to the bathroom).
It sounds stupid, but it's important and, apparently, fun. It works out nicely for us guys, too, since fighting over the one girl at a Hopkins party gets old quickly.
Also, a simple suggestion is to try not to drink so much that you're going to do something you regret. Everyone knows that finishing that bottle of Cuervo might not always be the best idea.
Lots of girls say that guys take advantage of them when they're drunk, but most of the time we're just as drunk as you.
To assume that at the end of a night we're going to be the responsible one who says, "No, we've had too much to drink" is about as presumptuous as this stereotype.
