Bad (and maybe triggering) news out of the University of the Pacific. A women’s basketball player is suing the school for mishandling her case after she came forward to the administration accusing three of the school’s men’s basketball players had raped and assaulted her at a party last May, specifically by refusing to permanently expel all three of the men. The school denies any mistreatment, saying that the young woman had previously “praised the school’s handling of the matter.” However, here’s the extremely disturbing kicker:

Pacific spokesman Richard Rojo said Thursday that the school does not consider the incident to be a rape.

“We would call it date rape,” he said.

Rojo said the university considers “outright rape” and date rape to be different, in that date rape does not involve “a rapist jumping out of bushes and attacking people randomly.”

He said, “These are people who knew each other. … It’s a social situation and unfortunately an all-too common problem at universities.

“It doesn’t make it right. It’s a sexual assault, and that’s why the university took action in this matter.”

Doe said in her lawsuit that Pacific’s handling of the matter was hostile, causing her to feel unwanted at Pacific. Doe, a freshman, left the school.

…In her lawsuit, Doe accused Pacific Vice President of Student Life Elizabeth Griego of blaming Doe for the assault and saying the three men “are very popular and do not need to force anyone to have sex with them.”

I mean, I don’t even know what to say to this kind of response from adults who are responsible for running an institution meant to safely house and educate over 6000 young people. Rojo’s distinction between “outright rape” and “date rape” is inexcusably misinformed, irresponsible, and frankly, revolting. The statistics about the sexual assault of college women are not a well-kept secret: we know that 9 out of 10 victims know their attackers, and that 91% of campus sexual assaults take place in campus living quarters. The random rapist in the bushes, while certain a figure that exists, is quite simply NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING THE PREDOMINANT THREAT for college women. By classifying stranger rape as the only kind of “real” rape, you dismiss the experiences of the vast amount of rape survivors.

Not to mention that absolute absurdity and ignorance of claiming that men who could “get it elsewhere” wouldn’t have to resort to rape. As if all rapes were cases of men sitting around thinking “man, I wanna get laid tonight” and then finding the easiest partner.

The school has received a number of complaints, thankfully, and quickly moved to “clarify” the statement. Rojo said:

“I would like to clarify that, under the university’s sexual-assault policies, date rape is rape.”…”By requesting the use of the term ’sexual assault’ or ’sexual misconduct,’ I was trying to describe the context of the allegations that were made in this case regarding violations of the University’s Code of Conduct. I was not suggesting that there was any criminal finding that a ‘date rape’ occurred or did not occur. I also was referring to the situation from a ‘threat’ perspective, and not from the perspective of the victim. We did not want to suggest that there was a threat of a random rapist attacking women on campus. In trying to explain that, I ended up giving an ill-thought-out statement.”

So…Rojo didn’t want to cause any alarm. Well yeah, I also don’t want to scare kids about a threat that is pretty rare. But how about taking this opportunity to educate students about the realities of assault, the prevalence of aqcuaintance rape, and try creating a campus culture that instead of dismissing and shaming their students (the first article spends a good deal of time talking about how drunk and flirtatious the young woman was at the time of her alleged assault), values prevention and offers support?  Cara has more on this here.

In other horrifying (and again, triggering) news, two stories today blew my mind. Cara writes about a man accused of raping his unconcious girlfriend live on a webcam. From Marcella comes the story of a man who allegedly used craigslist to arrange for the rape of his wife. Both of these stories are beyond distrubing and speak to the very serious—and very frightening—fact that our legal system has not yet caught up to our technology. Between sexual exploitation of minors and others who have not consented to being photographed or filmed, cyber-stalking, bullying, and threatening, and the posting of other people’s personal or sexual information online (links from Marcella), women and children seem to be the  most frequent victims of the unmonitored web. I wish I could offer some ideas for progress on the web front, but at the moment I—like everyone else it seems—lacks the knowledge and the foresight to see where our technology will lead us next. Also, I’m tired—too much bad news for one day.