Penn State students always prided themselves on the drinking culture.
Obviously that can't be said for all but its a well known fact of college life, especially college town college life. (Penn State being a bad example here due to recent history, but it is my alma matter and its all I got, well, that and IUP, a literal party school) There are many that would like to break the stigma and change that but thats not going to occur anytime soon because when theres a will, theres a way. And when giving young adults free time, freedom, and a world of possibilities, things may digress at points.
The hope for college is progress, but with any road, there are detours and 'accidents'.
Sexual assult has always been part of society. Its a sad but true fact. And much worse than any detour or accident I allude to above.
Thankful for us, we are in a time of development and understanding and growth of our society where laws, and even tougher laws, as is the hopeful response to such incidents, deem that illegal, as it is obviously immoral, but not all of us are moral characters, and noone is 100% of the time so there needs to be a system to prevent the illegal, the immoral, and the outright wrong (all items for debate, but we continue to conversate).
Please don't take any of this as justifucation for the brutality of the reality of the events that occurred at Stanford, or thereafter. Or any sexual assault for that matter. (I'm working on my disclaimer)
So, some would define Penn State a party school, where, like any area of society (sad to say and admit to) sexual assault can occur. I had known a student who was accused of sexual assault. He was a foreigner, who escaped to his home country once this was made news, where culture may be very different in their view of women but nevertheless, I don't care about this land or any other, sexual assault is brutal and wrong, and misunderstood. I'm not here to debate that or explain that, but we as a society, as evidenced by this new phenomena of large social issues and personal cases going national and gaining social media steam and society's interest and loud cry, do not understand how to deal with our feelings of those, and in turn our treatment of offenders, help for victims, and how to move forward. The conversation is necessary, and most certainly, our criminal and justice system needs constant monitoring and growth as society grows, as our understanding grows, and certainly, and most tragically, as the depths of humanity are uncovered.
I digress, but the depth of humanity seen at these moments shakes us.
The reactions of our sytems put to protect us, fail us.
Our words are many, our words are controversal, but all are necessary to move forward as a society. To take responsibility, to not say we were intended for this outcome and we should have known because these are new depths.
But to say, how can we improve our world, how can we, as a system, as individuals, even and especially, improve ourselves.
These cases are damaging, most obviously to the victimn who I am not attempting to discount in any way, as this is hers to live with, to deal with, to try and overcome. But we, as a society need to take charge and move the needle for her, for all victims.
Obviously noone would ever conceive to do something so heinous and despicable, intoxicated or not, but we need to know, hell, I need to know, that this woman will have not spoken in vain, these lows our of society were not reached in vain.
We, I, all, must read, and react, for sure, but improve.
Use these instances to better our law system, better our school systems, better our views on difficult but necessary subjects, but most of all better ourselves, as parents, as people, as members of this society, this broken society.
I fell off my original path but this is where the victim ended up in her 12 page letter to the attacker, a section of her statements that was not widely publicized.
That she had the hope for her attacker, to better himself, to use what occurred here and his unforgivable actions to do just as I mentioned, improve, no matter where he ends up.
Sadly that may not be his story, but I cannot tell you that.
I can, however, feel the overwhelming empathy as a society that we feel towards the victim, and as we hope each day is better for her, hope the same for our society, which comes from our action to improve and better.
