I went to a very small high school in the middle of the country. There were 30 kids in my graduating class, and it was the type of school where everyone knew each other’s first and last name. If someone told a secret on one end of the hall, everyone at the other end would know in a matter of minutes.
I spent so much time hating high school, living in seemingly never ending anticipation of the day that I would receive my diploma and kiss the place goodbye. So did everyone else I knew. The thing I didn’t realize about high school until I had graduated was that those were four formative years. It’s the time of life where you learn a great deal about yourself. You become the person who is going to carry you through college, making a slew of bad and good decisions that shape you in a way you couldn’t experience outside of those prison walls of education.
I remember one specific day in high school. It was lunch period, and I had been late because I was finishing up an art project. When I found a seat, it was with a group of people that I didn’t regularly spend much time around. As I sat choking down my cafeteria food, I overheard a conversation happening just a few seats over from me.
“I don’t think I’ll go out with her again — she wouldn’t put out. I basically tried everything, and she just wouldn’t have it.”
I don’t remember much else about that conversation, but those words have stuck with me ever since that day. In life, you learn that you can’t have everything. When I was in kindergarten, I got first place in the spelling bee, and I got to choose a prize out of a giant treasure chest that my teacher had sitting behind her desk every day. However, I could only have one prize. If I won again next week, then I could get another. But I had to be patient and memorize an entire other list of spelling words, which just wasn’t okay with me. I wanted two prizes – a blue dinosaur for me and a red dinosaur for my dad – and I wanted them now. So, what did I do? I waited until my teacher wasn’t looking and I stole them. When the bell rang, I snuck the miniature dinosaurs into my pockets and ran outside to hug my dad.
As soon as my dad picked me up, I showed him the dinosaurs and told him what all I had to do in order to get him one. While I thought I was being a sly victor, my dad felt differently. Despite how young I was, I’ll never forget that look of disappointment. As tears started streaming down my face, my dad sat me in his lap and explained to me that what I had done was wrong. He told me that I can’t have everything in life, and that most importantly, I should never take something that isn’t mine, because that’s stealing. Taking something without permission meant that I didn’t work for it – I just expected it to be mine.
My world was much smaller then, and while my little brain was only beginning to wrap my head around what that meant, I’ve carried that day with me throughout my entire life. And when I overheard that student say what he said to his friends at the lunch table, recollections of sitting in my dad’s lap while tears streamed down from my cheeks onto my Osh Kosh B’Gosh overalls came flooding back to me.
My dad taught me something very important that day. He taught me that no means no. Not kinda. Not “well, if you really want to.” It means no. I don’t think this is something that gets instilled into young men enough. Perhaps we’re taught that we can’t have everything under the sun, but we aren’t properly taught that people are not ‘things’ — they are living beings, and we can’t have any and every one we want. But we live in a sexualized society that sells sex and tells us that every woman ‘wants it’ and that if she’s wearing revealing clothing, she’s asking for it.
This is alarming. Perhaps it’s not entirely our parents’ fault. Most people think that this goes without saying. But that can’t be the case when the numbers just don’t add up. According to studies published by The Center for Family Justice, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every two minutes. Furthermore, one out of six women have been victims of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. 38 percent of women who have been raped are between the ages of 14 and 17. 60 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are not reported to the police. 73 percent of sexual assaults are committed by a non-stranger. 38 percent of rapists are friends or an acquaintance of the victim.
These are scary numbers. That is why I want to commend President David Rudd and Vice President Rosie Bingham for bringing attention to sexual assault and domestic abuse while also supplying students with an abundance of resources to reach out to if they are suffering from such problems.
It is far too easy to ignore these numbers and pretend that they don’t exist. That doesn’t make them go away, however. These things happen all over the world, and they happen every day in our own backyard. We know this is true, as The Daily Helmsman reported just last week on a 19-year-old man who was arrested for allegedly raping a female victim in a social setting involving alcohol. These things end only when we help those who are suffering and offer them a safety net to fall in. Rape, sexual assault and domestic violence end when people band together, stand tall and responsibly educate others, such as David Rudd and Rosie Bingham have done in their campus wide email to the University.
We are two weeks into a new semester, and just as the president and vice president did, I wish all of you a successful year. Remember, no means no and yes means yes. These are definitive words that have no gray area in their meaning. A woman shouldn’t feel threatened walking across campus alone at night. A woman should not have to wear more clothes to feel safe in her own body. She shouldn’t be worried about going to a party and drinking too much. As adult males, it is not our right to place the blame on women. No means no, and I hope that wherever my fellow high school peer ended up, he knows that now.
