Night of Decadence: Friends don’t let friends become rapists

As Wiess College’s Night Of Decadence approaches every year, Students Organized Against Rape and other dedicated organizations pull increasingly frequent all-nighters to prepare for the onslaught of sexual expression that defines many Rice students’ only night of decadence. Unfortunately, the combination of heavy boozing and sexual inexperience that climaxes with NOD entails in what many would downplay as simply “sketchy behavior,” but what I and the law would call sexual assault.

At this point, I could tell female readers that they should pay close attention to their drinks (who pours them and how many are downed), their company (avoid being cornered by or alone with suspicious males), what they choose to wear (the more you reveal the more you are at risk!), and have a buddy at all times. Or I could take a radically new approach: Hey guys and girls, this NOD weekend, make sure you and your friends do not rape anyone.

Aghast, you may recoil at my use of the word “rape” — that violent back-alley crime committed by strangers and sadistic criminals, an image of horror that has undoubtedly been ingrained in the back of your mind as a crime that neither you nor any of your friends could ever possibly commit. How wonderful the world would be if this specific rape paradigm accounted for the 25 percent of women who have been victims of sexual assault during their lifetimes. How wonderful the world would be if we could believe that we as intelligent individuals were above this most base and despicable crime.

How sad does it make you, then, to hear that out of the 37 sexual assaults identified by last year’s Sex at Rice survey, only two were perpetrated by strangers? Why can Rice not come to terms with the fact that sexual assault happens to a lot of us and, conversely, that many of the people among us are capable of committing sexual assault?

The real problem is that most people do not actually know what constitutes a sexual assault. Wikipedia, which we all know and love, defines sexual assault as “any physical contact of a sexual nature without voluntary consent.” I place my emphasis on the idea of volunteering one’s consent to a sexual encounter — it is either given freely or not at all. If you find yourself spending any time trying to convince your partner to engage in a sexual act, they are not volunteering their consent, you are attempting to coerce it out of them. If your partner says no or even nothing and you choose to ignore this lack of consent, you are sexually assaulting them. If you find yourself pursuing a partner who is intoxicated, you are attempting to prey on an individual who cannot consent.

Let’s do a replay for the home team: If an individual is intoxicated, they cannot legally consent to sex no matter how many times you ask. If you find yourself shadowing a girl back to her room at Lovett with the knowledge that she is intoxicated and the intent to have sex with her anyway, you are premeditating a rape. However, if you get drunk with the subconscious or overt intention of lessening your responsibility for acts you may commit that night, whether or aggressive or passive, you should re-evaluate why you need to drink to hook up.

If this new definition of rape throws your world into hell in a hand basket, that is all right, because now you know better. And now that you know better, you can help be part of the solution instead of the problem. Only you can prevent forest fires.

This idea that I have an active responsibility to stop rape in my everyday life is actually one that I arrived at solidly in the last two weeks, because in the last two weeks I both failed to prevent the rape of my dear friend and possibly averted that similar fate for someone else at Rice.

The first time I made the mistake of ignoring my gut instinct that my friend was not safe alone in a room with her male friend, I guess because I did not want to embarrass her by presuming that she was not in control of her actions.

The second time I looked harder at a drunk boy and girl having a “tickle war” on the ground in a crowded room of people and saw that he was trying to grab her breast as she pushed him with increasingly nervous laughter and agitation. I asked out loud if anyone thought we should do anything, to which one person responded that we should “let them make their own mistakes.”

I failed to prevent my friend’s rape because I was afraid to prevent her from making her own mistakes — but this time I directly asked the girl if she was okay and they both relaxed. I do not think that boy meant to do any harm — but once the idea that he could potentially be doing harm was brought to his intoxicated attention, he took notice.

Our blase attitude of letting people make their own mistakes when it comes to rape and sexual assault needs to end here. People do not benefit from making these mistakes for themselves because generally, they learn nothing except that their behavior was either excusable, acceptable, or even worthy of congratulations — man, you got some ass! If anything, allowing our friends to make these mistakes jades them to the reality of sexual assault and its incredibly damaging consequences.

We as a group need to stop being worried about social embarrassment and speak out when we know something is wrong. It is a gut-wrenchingly brave thing to do standing up to your friends — something that takes true courage. So be safe and say NOd to rape this weekend while you keep your best interests, your special friend’s best interests and the best interests of everyone you know in mind.

Whitney Alsup is a Martel College sophomore.

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