Struggle demands end to ‘rape culture’

About 50 members and supporters of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence demonstrated Oct. 22 outside of the Izzone Campout at Michigan State University. At the annual event, named for MSU Spartans men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo, student basketball fans camp out for 24 hours to try to get season tickets in the student section at the Breslin Center.

The feminist coalition of student activists was formed after allegations of rape against two men’s basketball players went unacknowledged by MSU’s administration. Although a police report was filed immediately after the alleged assault occurred in a dorm at the end of August, and police recommended criminal sexual conduct 1 charges, no charges have been filed against the assailants, who remain in university housing and on the basketball team.

During the protest, demonstrators held signs, chanted and marched around the field where the Izzone Campout was held. Some of the posters read “Don’t Cheer Rape,” “Expel Rapists,” “Consent Not Coercion” and “Every Victim is Someone’s Child.” Demonstrators chanted, “Hey hey! Ho ho! Sexual violence has got to go!” among other anti-rape messages.

During the demonstration, coalition members were repeatedly approached by fans who insisted that the Izzone Campout was an inappropriate venue to protest the alleged assault. This attitude seemed to be relatively widespread.

Several days after the demonstration The State News, MSU’s student newspaper, published a letter by an Izzone participant in which the writer criticized the protesters for supposedly ignoring facts and disrespecting the judicial system. (Statenews.com, Oct. 25) The writer described the alleged rape as “sketchy” and then dismissed the allegations. These are precisely the attitudes that the coalition seeks to address.

Activists target MSU’s lack of action

In response to this letter, the State News on Nov. 3 published a letter written by the Coalition Against Sexual Violence. It pointed out that even with no action on the part of the prosecutor, MSU’s administration and Athletic Department could still choose to take disciplinary action against the players.

“The Coalition does not ... accuse basketball fans of supporting Izzo’s inaction with regard to this case, in part because we suspect that many basketball fans are not even aware of the alleged assault. ... The Coalition criticizes Izzo’s failure to remove the alleged players from his team; as long as those players remain on the court, basketball fans will find themselves cheering on alleged assailants whether they support Izzo’s response to the incident or not.”

The coalition also addressed the “rape culture” prevalent on MSU’s campus: “The lack of administrative response to this and other incidences of sexual violence at MSU helps to create and maintain a rape culture in our community. Rape culture is defined as ‘a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. ... A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.’”

The coalition is fighting key components of rape culture by speaking out against both victim-blaming and silence as the normalized responses to sexual violence, both of which have been common reactions to this particular case.

“Another aspect of rape culture that has been prevalent in this case,” the coalition wrote in the letter, “is the insistence that the accusation probably is false. However, a Portland, Ore., police study found that only 1.6 percent of sexual assault cases were reported falsely, while the 2005 National Crime Victimization Study concludes 61 percent of rapes never even are reported.

“We can take these statistics into context if we consider that from 2007-09, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education lists 42 cases of sexual assault reported on MSU’s campus. Based on that data, we can project that there were actually about 105 instances of rape during those two years — 63 of which went unreported. And of the 42 reported cases, barely one of them statistically could be accounted for as false — if the numbers are rounded up.”

Despite these statistics, individuals have consistently dismissed these allegations against the basketball players as likely being false, suggesting that the survivor simply regretted having consensual sex with the assailants.

The coalition will continue to organize against rape and other forms of social injustice and violence, in order to pressure MSU’s administration to act and speak out against sexual violence on campus, and to send the message to MSU students that sexual violence is inexcusable.