Author: Juliet Suess
Sex is everywhere. With the constant infiltration of images and information on the Internet, on phones, on the radio, in advertisements, in songs and in movies, the media has become another form of sex education.
The average college student spends between 12 and 15 hours per day on some form of technology, be it cell phones, laptops, tablets or TVs, according to research done by Dr. Rey Junco, a college professor. The number of blatantly sexual images a student takes in during that time is incalculable.
It is no wonder, then, that students arrive at college with preconceived notions about sex and the college culture surrounding it. Students hold these ideas despite the fact that most of them received a Bush era abstinence-only education.
“A great deal of research has shown that young people who only get abstinence-only education are less informed about sex and are less likely to use protection against pregnancy and STIs when they begin having sex,” sociology professor Lisa Wade said in an email. “Absent any sex education from educational institutions, young people are left turning to the media and their parents. They don’t want to talk to their parents, so the media is their main source of information. Unfortunately, the vast majority of media has one goal: to make money. So the sex education of young Americans is being left to capitalists who are aiming to exploit them to line their pockets.”
Some students, like Tyler – an Occidental first-year – from an article in “Sex for Life” written by Wade and politics professor Caroline Heldman’s entitled “Hooking Up and Opting out,” think that “college would involve ‘countless nights in which I would be totally hammered and have sex with extremely attractive girls…not a week would go by in which I would not have sex at least a dozen times.’ “
Students get these ideas from shows like “Girls Gone Wild” and MTV’s “Spring Break” specials, websites like “Total Frat Move,” from Twitter’s #humpday and in pornography, which is ubiquitous. These types of media depict males having unlimited sex, women having mostly naked fun, constant partying and alcohol in every hand.
The alcohol industry is a huge player in the television and commercial market, spending at least $2 billion in alcohol advertisements per year, according to Multinational Monitor.
Media, including prominent news sources, hone in on stories that proliferate these ideas: a drunken football star commits sexual assault, a fraternity gets shut down after a hazing incident and sexting scandals involving female students.
As a result, students come to college with the understanding that this is how college students – especially athletes and Greek students – act.
“I have a stereotype that the frat boys and sports team members are the ones committing sexual assault mainly from the stories and ways these stories have been portrayed in the media,” an anonymous female student said. “You hear about a [lacrosse] team or football team committing sexual assault and the media usually tells the stories of multiple people committing the crime.”
But newly hired Survivor Advocate Naddia Palacios said that this is not the case at Occidental, even if nationally certain social groups, like athletics and Greek life, are recorded to have more instances of sexual assault.
“In general, people will target certain groups,” Palacios said. “The reason [athletes and Greeks] are targeted is because they are easier to find statistics on. If you belong to a student organization and we find a pattern on that organization, then every student in student organizations is a perpetrator, so I think that is the unfortunate tie-in for when people say ‘athletics needs a lot of work’ or ‘Greek Life needs a lot of work.’ But it is easier for us to remember if one athlete of Greek member does it. And at Occidental, there isn’t a clear pattern [of who is committing assault].”
And it is not just for sexual assault that these groups are stereotyped. Athletes and Greek organizations are also associated with binge drinking; “hooking up,” promiscuity and sexualized acts; lackadaisical behavior when it comes to school work; and, in the case of athletes, toughness and big muscles.
Every Greek organization at Occidental declined to comment on the stereotypes surrounding fraternity and sorority life, despite other students commenting that they believe stereotypes apply more to those in Greek Life. Various Greek organizations have just come off probation.
One Greek president said in an email: “On behalf of the Greek community, I would like to say that we do not have some terrible image problem we are seeking to correct, and our collective involvement on this campus has proven time and time again that the Greeks not only have broken the negative stereotypes, but built a very positive one, one where Greeks are assumed to be involved in campus life activities beyond their organization, academically driven and generally comprising the most outspoken voices on this campus.”
Despite that Greek life feels that they are not negatively stereotyped, some students said otherwise.
“I think the stigma of hookup culture/binge drinking is more toward Greek Life,” Andrew,* a male athlete, said. “If anything, I’ve heard people joke about how athletes don’t party as hard because they have morning practice.”
But not all stereotypes surrounding athletics deal with partying; some stigmas surround how athletes act or how their actions are viewed.
“I feel like [people see me] as a douche bag,” James, another male athlete, said.
Female athletes feel that their view is a dichotomy between their feminine sexuality and a stereotyped masculine athleticism.
“Sometimes I feel hyper-sexualized, but usually I feel like I am less of a sexual person because I lift weights and am not afraid to get into workouts. People view these as masculine traits,” Rachel said.
Athletes are often considered lazy or perceived to be more privileged in the classroom, being given things like test extensions, tutors, etc. Although these views tend to be geared toward a Division I environment, athletes across the country are viewed as less involved with academics or simply more stupid.
At Occidental, though, the discrepancy is not quite as high. Compared to the student body’s grade point average of 3.27, the average for all student-athletes comes in at 3.17,** according to Athletic Director Jaime Hoffman. The University of Alabama often suffers some of the highest criticism because of their athletic success, and it is thought that many of their football players focus more on sports than school. According to Alabama’s athletic page, their athletic teams combined for a 3.04 GPA, and the highly stereotyped Crimson Tide football team a combined 2.64.
Despite all that is said about athletics, not all participants feel that they are stereotyped negatively.
“I feel like being an athlete, male or female, is a respectable quality at this school,” Jill said. “Having the ability to balance rigorous academics, extracurriculars and a varsity sport is something that can be looked highly upon for both guys and girls.”
Because a stereotype exists, people – especially younger and more impressionable students – are more likely to imitate certain stereotypes, according to Wade. For example, because a hook-up culture exists, and it has been stereotyped that most students take part in hook-up culture, first-year students are more likely to “hook-up,” especially in the first weekend after Orientation. Likewise, seeing alcohol on TV more prominently makes a person more likely to consume alcohol afterward, according to a March 2009 Science Daily article.
Jill said that the reputation for being a part of a binge drinking culture does not make her feel pressured to take part in those activities at Occidental.
“If anything it fosters a more positive atmosphere for people who don’t want to drink and party as much,” she said.
For some teams at Occidental, drinking is a part of culture. “Our team, I suppose like all male teams, has a bit of a reputation for being crass and hard partying,” Frank said. “Binge drinking culture is a big part of our team, but we have had members who abstained from drinking and still enjoyed and participated in the culture of the team.”
According to Wade, it is situations in which alcohol is very present that more hooking up – and sexual assault – happens. In fact, Wade says alcohol facilitates this sort of culture.
“Most hook-up scenes are places where there is a lot of alcohol,” she said. “It is not that people need it to let loose or get permission to be sexual…I think it plays a role in making sure that everyone around thinks that the act is careless.”
Hook-up culture, she explained, requires that the two people involved do not care about each other.
“In hookup culture, you lose if you care more about the other person than they care about you,” she said. “It is sort of a race to the bottom to see who can care about the other one less.”
And all these stereotypes and behaviors can be tied back to media. Shows like ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” or “Grey’s Anatomy,” two popular programs among high school and college girls, or CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother.” It is on TV and in media that students learn these behaviors and enact them.
“The biggest perpetrator of rape culture is the media,” Palacios said. “It’s not about your parents, your friends, about higher education; it’s about the media. Higher education is where they get the real education. Most people think that men who rape are psychos, but then it turns out to be your lab partner and people are shocked.”
The media leads to stereotypes, which perpetuate hook-up culture and popularize it.
“The importance of sex to a happy life is really exaggerated in the mass media,” Wade said. “This is because of media using sex to manipulate us into watching their shows or buying their things. It makes us think that the importance of [sex] right now – even if we are 14, 17 years old – is of utmost importance in deciding if we are a worthwhile human being.”
This perpetuation from stereotypes to hook up culture can lead back to the media. But, Wade clarified, that does not make people rape.
“Media doesn’t turn perfectly nice people into rapists,” she said. “But, if we’re collectively ignorant about sex and unclear about what type of interactions are healthy or not, it gives the very small percent of men who commit the vast majority of assaults cover.”
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“It is a rape culture,” Wade said of sex culture on campus. “But America is a rape culture, Western culture is a rape culture. You don’t step onto Oxy’s campus, and it isn’t a rape culture just because we are nice.”
Rape culture is a term that is more often used in women’s studies. It used to describe a culture in which sexual violence, including rape, assault and sexual harassment, are common. In this culture, stereotypes, acts, attitudes and media condone, normalize, excuse or encourage sexualized violence, according to “Transforming a Rape Culture,” edited by Emilie Buchwald and Pamela R. Fletcher.
But OSAC member Hailey Jures made sure to make one point very clear: “We can still have great, normal and healthy sex, and we do.”
And sex is important, said Wade. Not only is it important, but it is a large part of relationships (which are becoming more rare in college because of hook-up culture) and the continuation of the human species. But the emphasis is on healthy sex in healthy relationships.
According to Palacios and Wade, those who commit sexual assault hone in on certain people, ply women with alcohol and exhibit coercive behavior. But the binge-drinking and hook-up cultures both look similar to the traits of a rapist. Athletes and Greek life students are usually lumped in with these predators, according to Palacios, because of the party scene in which they take part or with which they are associated.
“Statistically speaking, the places where we see hook-up parties tend to be disproportionately fraternity, sorority members, athletes, so there is some quantitative evidence that sexual assault comes out of those people more often,” Wade said.
Predators “use alcohol as the primary ‘weapon’” of rape, usually “have access to consensual sex, engage in ‘hyper-masculine behavior’, are not mentally ill and may be highly respected” and “have extreme over-perceptions of the other men’s acceptance and support for their attitudes and behaviors,” according to work by David Lisak and Alan Berkowitz. Thus, it is harder to pinpoint them in a party crowd, where there are a lot of too drunk students, including women.
“But 95 percent of men would never take advantage of that,” Palacios said.
That is because only four percent of men, according to Wade, are committing about 90 percent of all rapes. Wade discussed a study that was conducted in which college men ages 18 to 22 were given a survey that described rape but did not use the term. About six percent of college men say yes, and four percent of those men would say yes, they have done it on average about six times.
“That four percent are deliberate predators. The truth is that there are some men on campus who are going to be repeat offenders, and there is no gray area about it,” Wade said.
So, the stereotypes surrounding Occidental’s recent sexual assault cases that made national headlines have been proven false by this theory: girls are not “crying wolf,” as one male student said, and not all men are predatory, as has been feared by multiple women on campus, according to recorded interviews with The Occidental Weekly.
But the rape culture on campus and in the country has facilitated these happenings. And rape culture is spread and normalized by the hook-up culture on college campuses, as well as the norms of college culture, such as through rape jokes.
“The problem with living in a rape culture is that the behaviors of those 4 percent of men look normal, making a joke about sexual assault make those guys look less bizarre, plying women with alcohol at these parties is normal,” Wade said.
One Occidental student shared her experience with the “party scene” and consequent rape with The Weekly.
“So basically what happened is I went to a Brotel party. Someone handed me a drink and I stupidly drank it. And the next thing I know is that I’m under this person, and it was terrifying. And there was a lag between me seeing and processing what had happened. Once that clicked, I pushed him off, grabbed his robe and ran back to my dorm. I told my RA, and they put me in a room by myself. I had to retell the story to the MRA. She reported it to Dean [Barbara] Avery, who didn’t contact me until three days later. In our email, I was told that I would have to see him during the hearing, and I absolutely couldn’t do that. One of my friends went to talk to her for me, and she said ‘sorry; it was protocol.’ They took me to Santa Monica for a rape test kit, and I had to go with Juls White, and it was extremely uncomfortable. And I know he is a repeat offender because I got a call the next month from a girl I don’t really talk to, and she told me he did the same thing to her. Not drug her, but took advantage of her in a situation where she was really messed up.”
The Weekly could not obtain more information about her claim because Dean Barbara Avery has said previously she cannot comment on specific cases due to federal privacy rights laws.
Occidental is not an outlier to most other college institutions or other sexual assault cases: many victims are given alcohol, according to OSAC’s webpage, in a party scene where it seemed like a perfectly normal behavior to be drunk and going home with another person. Women who go to college are also more likely to be assaulted than women who do not go to college, and women who choose to participate in hook-up culture are more likely to be assaulted than those who choose not to do so, according to Wade.
This culture at Occidental is not new. An anonymous alumnus ‘11 told The Weekly that although most parties at Occidental were safe and fun, “there were parties where I distinctly remember feeling like, ‘This is a sketchy scene. If I were a woman I wouldn’t feel great being here at all.’”
The subsequent handling of sexual assault claims by the administration, as well as the negative headlines that followed, is not unusual. Angie Pefiano describes in a Huffington Post Blog her own frustration with Amherst’s system for handling Sexual Assault, which echoes the stories that have headlined the debate between Occidental administrators and the students.
As a result, there has been a heightened sense of awareness on campus regarding hooking up and partying. Male students told The Weekly they were worried women viewed them as predators even if they were not, while women were concerned that they would not be able to spot a predator and could be at risk of assault. And, Jures said, “with good reason. We have already had a few cases this year, just in the first few weekends.”
But the ‘11 grad said that even with the growing sexual assault movement and knowledge about assault, “the sexual climate didn’t really change noticeably… The broader party climate changed as a result of administrative crackdown, but there was no material change in anyone’s attitude toward sex or hooking up.”
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At Occidental, though, there have been some steps toward change, according to a number of emails from President Jonathan Veitch as well as numerous articles from a variety of publications.
One change was the hiring of Palacios as the Survivor Advocate, who will assist in the case of a reported rape. Palacios has also put two male Programming Assistants in charge of Project S.A.F.E. (Sexual Assault Free Environment), which has tried to increase its presence on campus. So far they have given 32 talks to various groups on campus in order to educate them.
Emmons has also increased its presence on campus. Psychologist Jenny Heetderks commented that the psychologists at Emmons are trying to start large discussion groups for anyone affected by sexual assault in any way, which, Psychologist Matt Calkins notes, is pretty much every student on campus.
Although there has been a lot done on campus so far, Wade and Palacios agree that there needs to be an emphasis on education and healing for the campus.
Biology professor Gretchen North told The Weekly via email in an article entitled “Veitch discusses verbal consent, zero tolerance at faculty meeting” that “it’s important that we get a policy soon, but it has to be one that makes sense to most of the community,” North said in an email. “That said, I’ll repeat the word soon. Students need to know where they stand, and they need to be safe, and we all have to get on with the rest of our lives here at Oxy.”
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In Focus: STIs
“I felt like I had a sign on my forehead, like people could see that I was dirty. I felt like I was going to be alone forever,” an anonymous alumnus told The Weekly of his experience with contracting herpes in a phone interview.
He attributes this feeling of fear and loneliness to the stigmatization of STIs in Western culture.
As a result of the stigmatization, STIs are seen as a terrible fate and have become the butts of jokes, which perpetuate stereotypes and, by extension, hook-up culture and rape culture.
“We are stigmatizing people with STDs because a huge number of people carry these viruses,” Wade said. “Even plants get STDs, and it is not because some plants are good, and some plants are bad; it is just what happens when people live together. People are being stigmatized for this, similarly to the ‘that’s so gay’ joke.”
STI jokes have become parallel to the gay jokes that were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s; they recently lost momentum as the gay rights movement grows. These types of jokes are an indicator of the stigmatization of these groups.
“AIDS jokes are in the same category as Holocaust jokes or rape jokes; they’re usually not funny, but they get a reaction from a crowd, so people keep using them,” positive psychologist and comedian Brett Wheeler said via email.
Wheeler also said that the stigmatization of gay people may have also led to the stigmatization of STIs.
“Probably the biggest culprit [of STI jokes] is the mistaken belief that AIDS is a ‘gay disease’ and all of the homophobia that goes with that assumption,” he said. But there are 41,400 people infected with HIV in the United States, according to a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
One in five people carry the Herpes Simplex Two Virus (HSV-2), which causes genital herpes. That is 776,000 people in America, according to the CDC. While 80 percent (possibly as many as 90 percent) of people carry the Herpes Simplex One Virus (HSV-1), which usually causes cold sores around the mouth, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is the most common STI with 14.1 million carriers, according to CDC. HPV is so prevalent because it is viral; however, it can be prevented with the HPV vaccine, according to University of Southern California professor of Pediatrics and Medicine Lawrence Neinstein, MD.
He also said that chlamydia, the most common bacterial STD (with 2.86 million carriers), is most common in 20 to 24 year olds in both men and women and also the most common in college students.
“We are once again seeing a rise in some STDs such as syphilis. We are also noticing a rise in gonorrhea rates in college settings,” he said via email. The CDC reports that 820,000 people have Gonorrhea.
Though Neinstein said that the stigmatization of STDs is “far, far less than 20 to 40 years ago,” surveyed Occidental students said they would more than likely walk away from a potential partner if they had an STI.
“I would be devastated. If a partner told me that, I would like to say I could still be with them, but in reality I would probably stay away,” Andrew said.
The alumnus knew that would be people’s reactions to his disease. “I just did not tell anyone outside of my family. I stayed away from dating people. I just couldn’t bear the shame of it.”
He also worried that people were going to make assumptions as to his sexual promiscuity as a result of his STI.
“STD’s normally come with the stigma that you are a sexually promiscuous person,” Jill said.
After he contracted herpes, he began to act differently. “I thought, well, if people think it, they might as well do it,” he said in reference to “sleeping around.”
“I was worried about being alone, and I am still scared of telling people, but those I have told were cool with it as long as we practiced safe sex. But I ended up giving it to an ex of mine. I felt horrible about it at first, thinking it was all my fault.”
“I still struggle with it every day still, thinking I am dirty and unwanted. But I know from experience that those things aren’t true. I know that I am wanted, and in some ways, getting this disease was a good thing, not something I would want to repeat, but I learned a lot about myself and about people.”
“Even though it turned out not to be too bad for me, I try to make sure that other people know that people do not want to get this disease. People need to be having safer sex, including myself apparently.”
Education is key to not proliferating these infections, according to both Wheeler and Wade.
“The biggest challenge in teaching people about STIs is talking about prevention without playing into the stigma,” Wheeler said. “It’s important to realize that STIs aren’t a moral judgment, they’re an unwanted health problem, like any other contagious illness. We can prevent them without calling people’s character into question; if you get a cold, no one is going to say ‘That’s what you get for touching all of those doorknobs.’”
As a result of the abstinence-only education still in place in many states, Wade says most students have come to Occidental naive about what safe sex is and how to have it.
“This generation is much less likely to use condoms or dental dams during sex and oral sex,” she said. “Most people don’t even know what a dental dam is!”
Nanstein also agreed that students are not using condoms as often “because: They think they are safe, they think their partner is not infected, they are intoxicated or they don’t want to.
Project S.A.F.E. and Emmons are working to educate students on all matters regarding sexual assault, condoms and healthy sex.
But it’s about “trying to change a culture,” Veitch said in The Weekly’s article, “Veitch discusses verbal consent, zero tolerance at faculty meeting.”
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