Trigger warning: This column discusses sexual violence, assault and rape and may be triggering to some people.

“Shame on the editors for deciding to normalize rape. While the author of this piece should be free to share her experience with the community, that experience should not be presented as a scintillating ‘sex diary.’ The story is not sparking a ‘dialogue’ in a vacuum, but rather in an unsafe culture where, as the comments have proven, it is commonly assumed that victims desire their own abuse. The decision to publish this account as a ‘sex column’ further eroticizes violence against women in a school already pervaded by it. As someone who has not felt safe on this campus since her own sexual assault, I am unnerved and disgusted by the irresponsibility of the decision to publish this piece.”

Such were the words of “Frozen,” who says she is a Stanford student who was sexually assaulted on campus, in response to a “sex diary” The Daily printed two weeks ago. The majority of the 68 comments on the article either echoed or refuted Frozen’s sentiments.

While it was comforting that Frozen, other assault survivors and their allies took up the tasks of responding to statements like “the girl in the story wanted it” or the question “Bro” posed – “so did they fuck?” – it is nauseating to me that those advocating for the respect of sexual violence survivors had to take the defensive. (Also nauseating is the fact that Bro’s question has 30 “likes” and only 10 “dislikes.”)

Further viscerally sickening was the way MemeChu, a Facebook group run by Stanford students, framed the story: “Share your sexy, sultry, sweaty stories in the comments to win a limited edition MemeChu bro tank!” the group posted, receiving 11 likes.

The framing and the comments all suggest that sexual assault is a common and expected situation for anyone to experience. The fact that so few people seemed to acknowledge that survivors were expressing discomfort suggests that most students absorbed these words uncritically.

Some commenters made arguments along the lines of “Jake,” who wrote, “Isn’t the fucking point of journalism to be controversial, to make people uncomfortable, to make people question things and look at them differently?”

While journalism should be a watchdog for injustice, page views and ad sales should not (but unfortunately do) hold more sway – even when the answer to “who might we make uncomfortable?” is sexual violence survivors.

Comments like the ones quoted above force survivors to relive their traumatic experiences and allow people who delegitimize such traumas to dominate the conversation.

While resistance to rape culture should exist regardless of how many people are survivors of violence, Stanford’s numbers paint an especially dire case for increased sensitivity in campus conversations.

In April, Health and Promotion Services released a report that said, “Four percent of Stanford students reported having been raped, while seven percent reported having been sexually penetrated against their will and 15 percent reported engaging in intercourse under pressure, according to preliminary data from a survey of roughly 4,000 students.”

If these numbers are indicative of the whole student body, that means that almost 300 undergraduate students have been raped, that 400 have been penetrated against their will and that an additional 1,000 have had sex under pressure. This total alone is about the size of one undergraduate class.

These figures include male students, both queer and straight. While men also experience sexual violence, their voices are particularly erased by a culture that assumes men cannot be victims of violence.

We need to address the experiences of these students.

Rape culture is an issue larger than our campus, but we can make Stanford a safer place for all assault survivors – and for all students generally. And how our media frame that conversation is incredibly important.

In the interest of creating spaces for the campus to truly engage in safe and open discussions about sexual violence, I present the following suggestions for campus media when addressing these topics:

1) Include trigger warnings at the start of every article and column on sexual violence. Survivors of such violence may suffer from PTSD, such that discussion of these topics can trigger flashbacks, panic attacks or other debilitating symptoms. Trigger warnings about explicit content are a courtesy to survivors who then get the choice to view such content;

2) Be deliberate about language and framing (e.g., let’s talk about “survivors” rather than “victims”);

3) Explore topics such as the prevalence of acquaintance rape and victim-blaming on campus, the marginalization of male student assault survivors and survivors’ opinions of the post-assault support resources and judicial process – a must-read from a student at Amherst on the college’s response to her sexual assault suggests that the larger response system likely doesn’t work. The traditional news-reporting format might not work well for these topics, but long-form features would likely be a step in the right direction;

4) Solicit perspectives that would contribute to a meaningful treatment of sexual violence on campus; creating a system where students could make initial anonymous contact with publications to share their experiences could go a long way toward shattering the silence that male and female survivors of assault on campus live with on a daily basis. We need to look into the vital questions: Do survivors feel safe on our campus? How can we better support them?

Kristian would like to know how you think campus media can effectively address sexual violence on campus. Please email him at [email protected]. All privacy will be respected.