If you’ve read “I am Charlotte Simmons”, by Tom Wolfe you see how Charlotte, a first year college student is sexually assaulted in college. brutally by a fraternity brother. She turns the situation around by adhering to her home values, and in the end, her attacker gets his comeuppance.
Charlotte was excited about starting college, meeting new people and be popular. Like in the musical Wicked, “popular” is the drumbeat at Charlotte’s college, and she is surrounded by girls who, like in the musical, are as cool and pretty as Glinda. Charlotte is more like Elphaba, who does not fit in because she comes from a poor family and wears plain dresses. She’s an excellent student though, and the first in her family to go to college, so she has no frame of reference to help her prepare for college’s potential pitfalls.
Most students think that rape will never happen to them. They are usually surprised to hear that women are raped at the staggering rate of one in four; and one in six for men, before they become 18 years of age (Finkelhor, 1990). During their lifetime, the adult rate is one in six women and one in 33 men; and 73% of offenders are someone the victim knows (US Department of Justice 2005 National Crime Victimization Study).
Generally, college students are four times as likely to be assaulted as the general population, and this is for the cases that are reported. Men are even less likely than women to report sexual assault. Given these statistics…
This article was published on the IECA website here:
http://www.iecaonline.com/PDF/IECA_Library_Date-Rape-How-Students-Can-Protect-Themselves.pdf
