Nationwide shock went through the crowd as the media focused on a Stanford student, Brock Turner, raped an unconscious young lady while being under the influence around January. Many were conflicted with the idea that he was treated less harshly and with special treatment merely due to him being a swimmer at an Ivy League school, Stanford University. There was variety of disagreements whether or not to convict him for a longer sentence. Towards the end of his trial, the judge had agreed that 6 months in jail will be enough to repent his crime despite the fact that rape is one of the more serious crime cases. Just last week, outrage broke out when he was released, with him serving only half of his 6 month sentence.
The media’s influence and the school’s high status made the news more highlighted and public than all the other cases nationally. It was not the fact that the judge had happened to shorten the sentence, the bigger issue was that since it was a Stanford swimmer, he naturally had to be a good person, right? This thought infuriated more people bringing in issues with racial relations as well, creating a whole new argument on inequality.
TIME magazine had published an article the past Friday morning with the headline, “Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to be released from jail this Friday” which soon raised chaos among the media. Why was he perceived as a “swimmer” to lessen the harsh fact that he was a rapist? It has been widely perceived that white men such as Turner face shorter prison terms and have their sentence more lenient when compared to a colored person. So, when this broke out, it created the commotion within the people who were indirectly affected. The victim had given a statement saying “I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin two lives. You are the cause and I am the effect.” The quote stood out to many people because it was a bold statement that displayed the effects that one night will have on the victim forever from the “20 minutes of action”, that Turner's father called it.
Resulting from this, many people have started to look down at Stanford University as a whole. The school has also received approximately five federal complaints about sexual violence. Although, people do not realize that the Stanford community did not handle the case, instead it was given to the criminal justice system. Since then, the University has been receiving many complaints coming from the negligence of the system of the school. We should not be targeting the school at hand, when clearly it is the justice system at flaw. The society’s perspectives and the defective criminal justice system had both tied in to make the decision of the crime that ended up being not fully resolved, releasing not only the criminal but the crime back again into the real world.
