A week and a half ago, those who attended the protest saw the two minutes of Shanita's spoken word poetry, with four other students, Corey Bush, Loren Weber, Dayzaughn Graves, and Sabria Hector standing arms-locked behind her. Those there watched, and then participated, as the student body rose in unison when called upon. 1,000 students, standing together.
What you didn't see, was the hours and hours of preparation that went into those two minutes. The discussion. The debate. The livid group chats, pinging at all hours of the night.
I want to give you, those who attended the convocation, some background on how and why we came to organize this protest against sexual assault.
Important point: We do not have a leader, or a structure. We are grassroots, and even if some people took on more public personas than others, none of us claims to be the leader of this movement.
We met on the Tuesday night before that convocation, having spread our plans through word of mouth, nearly thirty people showed up. We discussed what our concerns were, what we hoped the protest would do, and what our future goals were. Throughout the night, some immediate goals were clarified.
Most importantly, we wanted a protest to highlight and address the root problems we find in the college's policy and dealing's with sexual assault on campus, as opposed to what had been previously seen as a protest that had been targeting a specific individual, a sort of "witch hunt" to use a term many students had been using. We wanted to spark a debate around sexual assault, and at the same time create the pressure and momentum to force the administration's hand.
Overall, we wanted the issues of sexual assault and rape culture to be more directly addressed by administration and students.
As a group of students, some of whom have been directly affected by sexual assault on campus, and had suffered under the administration's handling of such matters, we are committed to whole scale change on campus.
In the process, I, and those of us in the group, have heard first-hand accounts about how so many cases had been swept under the rug. We have discussed various policies which allow this, and discussed concrete measures of what we would like to change.
Changes we'd like to see include increased transparency, to the furthest possible legal extent, greater work in preemptive education, and clear and strict penalties for those found to have committed sexual assault and rape.
We are committed to making these changes in the overall structure of how our college addresses sexual assault.
909 females and 712 males go to Berea college.
1 in 5 of 909 means that statistically speaking, 181.8 females have been sexually assaulted at Berea College. 1 in 71 means that 10 males have suffered the same.
Overall, this means that it is statistically likely that 191.8 students have been sexually assaulted at Berea College.
Yet from 2008-2013, the highest amount of reported sex offenses in a year was 3.
When there is such a discrepancy, you know that something is wrong. Some people choose to blame the survivors of the assault, but this ignores the clear duty of the college to make sure its environment is open to those who need to report such violence. What this tells me, clearly, is that the process of reporting sexual violence at Berea College is prohibitive. Fact of the matter is, as such statistics make clear the college wasn't and isn't doing enough to address this issue.
This is what we are fighting against, and this is what we will continue to fight against.
One last word to those who stood last Thursday.
Before beginning the protest, I went around, offering duct tape to many people, even those not a part of our group. They looked at me like I was crazy. Like I had lost my mind. Yet those same people stood up during the protest. They were touched and felt the power, and the pain, in Shanita's words.
That was easy for you to do. You will stand with us when we have the grace of the very institution we are fighting against, the same institution which continues to allow sexual assault and rape to take a back seat. As long as we are not angry, as long as we have permission to stand.
Tell me, had Shanita spoken her poem from the Q&A mic, without the grace of the speaker, would you have stood? Had her poem been cut in the middle of the speach, and public safety or police tried to drag her out, would you have stood?
Tell me, do you actually believe in change? Or did you stand that day only because everyone else did?
To me, your solidarity is nothing but dust in the wind. It was shallow and worthless.
And you should feel ashamed.
On that day every single one of us was fully prepared to pull that protest off, no matter what. Whether the college or the speaker approved. We were prepared to stand with Shanita, and the survivors of sexual assault here at Berea. We were and are prepared to fight.
Are you?
Note: This is not an official statement of the group, and does not represent all member's views, although it does detail some of the concerns that we, as a group hold.
