My daughter is a senior at Brown University, and she has enjoyed a wonderful experience and has taken advantage of every opportunity Brown has to offer. I couldn’t be prouder of her, and she does not need me to take care of her or protect her. So it has been a difficult decision for me to go ahead and write this column.
I am writing because my daughter talked with me about something that happened to her, and she wanted to get my feedback about what she ought to do about it.
She is a teaching assistant in a few classes, and at a party one evening, a male junior student for whom she is a TA was there as well, and after some small talk, he asked her if she would give him her number in case he had questions about the material she was teaching. The next morning she read texts from this student, including “My TA is so fucking hot” and “I want to fuck you.”
Hearing such things is not good for my blood pressure. I wonder sometimes what has happened to our culture today. But then I think back to when I went to college. I attended a Catholic university, yet we too had our parties with our games of quarters (now it’s beer pong, I hear), and “binge drinking” was simply called “drinking.” As someone who once was a student at the height of his libido-driven longings, I can relate to the havoc that an intense sex drive can have when let loose by the inhibition-releasing effects of alcohol.
Back in my day, having grown up Catholic, I was taught to believe that boys will be boys and it is in our nature to relentlessly pursue women, whom we should depend on to be the gatekeepers of our morality. If a woman did not resist our advances persistently for such and such amount of time, she was a “slut” and not worthy of the pursuit. We expected resistance, expected “no,” but were to search for body language (perceived or otherwise) which indicated she meant “yes” … eventually. Alcohol served as the perfect excuse, often for both parties, to allow us to “sin” because a “waft of wind” pushed us over the cliff of propriety.
One time I was so possessed with alcohol-induced libido while hounding a young lady at a bar that she finally agreed to come to my room. After stumbling into my room, I began to undress her at a frenzied pace. But then I saw that tears were streaming down her cheeks, and instantly I sobered up and learned that she did not want to be with me but was just acquiescing based on her own frustration, loneliness, drunkenness, whatever. How hard it is for me to admit that it was only then that I saw her as another human being with a heart and not just a body.
I have often asked myself if today’s college culture might be healthier than in my time. At least students seem more open about their sexual needs and desires, and perhaps women are not as condemned as “sluts” for one-night stands while men are simply sowing their wild oats. The truth is I don’t know the answer. It seems to me sexual intimacy is a very deep and meaningful part of what it means to be fully human. While humans are capable of sloughing off a casual sexual experience as meaningless, there is something much more deeply connected to our psyches than other shared recreational experiences.
Yet even in the current environment of a more casual attitude toward sex, how could what the young man said to my daughter be acceptable communication? If there is a move toward a more overt discussion of our sexual needs, wants and intentions on our college campuses, does that environment give license to the kind of offensive, antagonistic communication those texts convey? I don’t think so, and I am hopeful that the young man, through some intervention, will come to realize the inappropriateness of his actions.
But it took me a few weeks to gently urge my daughter to address the issue appropriately. She finally agreed to do so, but it was not without anxiety. After all, she’s very busy and addressing this would require time and emotional energy.
Also, she’s a resilient woman and fully capable of ignoring these texts, moving on and not letting this man’s ignorance and rudeness get in her way. So I asked her what message she might be giving this man and the fraternity brothers with whom he may have shared his texts. Could her silently ignoring his inappropriateness have emboldened him to “keep trying” in order to eventually “score”?
My daughter finally decided, of her own volition, to address the issue with her professor to do her part to try to improve the culture at Brown, especially as it relates to sexual harassment and rape. How much better for her to put a stop to sexually harassing behaviors before they slippery-slope into far worse. I love my daughter no matter what, but I admire her courage in addressing what happened to her for the greater good. I encourage all students, male and female, to step forward and have the courage to intervene and report and publicize behaviors that they know are harmful to the culture of what Brown aspires to be. I urge students to talk about and think about and reflect on what it means to be human in all its positive and potentially negative aspects, and to avoid the mistake that I and many in my generation made to conveniently blind ourselves at times so we could fulfill our selfish desires at the expense of another’s humanity.
Stephen Raglow-Defranco is a concerned father and a budding feminist.
