What we’ve recently seen (and haven’t seen) as a campus community

Earlier in the semester I saw my managing editor walk into my office, sit down and, speaking very slowly, explain to me what he had heard from a young woman he had just interviewed. Pacing himself, he explained that the woman (a fellow student) told him she was sexually assaulted by two different men affiliated with the same fraternity. 

Weeks later, after several updates and newsroom discussions, I saw my least favorite word on the front page of my favorite campus newspaper. A big part of me wanted to remove that word from the front page, but ultimately I could not see a good reason to censor what was news. 

Then I saw a Daily Helmsman story break news like I haven’t seen before. 

We saw camera crews on our campus. We saw protests. We saw emails. We saw administration respond. We saw TV news recap the situation late at night and pair it with information on a growing social media movement. 

We saw “#MeToo†encourage victims of both sexual harassment and sexual assault to come forward online with their stories and struggles. I saw more than enough Facebook friends post that hashtag to begin to realize how large-scale, and yet how also very local, this serious societal problem is.

While our campus news was breaking, we simultaneously saw coverage of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and the several prominent Hollywood figures who came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against him. 

This issue can be seen in many places and that is ultimately why we have to talk about it.  

Soon we saw a talk held to talk about why the university can’t talk specifics.

There we saw brave women use their voices and traumatic experiences to shed light on solutions for not just the University of Memphis, but for universities across the country. 

There I saw an old high school rival ask our university president what was going to be done about a group of individuals who were seen trashing the newspaper that I work to edit all week. I saw more than a few things that surprised me that night. 

Before the event was over I saw our university president act as a punching bag for this pertinent issue ­— an issue attendees were passionate about and that a few were extremely well-versed in discussing. I saw that president take this heat. I saw administration listen.    

Then we saw the student government host an entire week dedicated to sexual assault awareness. We saw booths. We saw meetings. We saw more protests.

In the past three weeks we’ve seen bravery, determination and fear all wrapped up into the campus community’s responses to these unfortunate reminders of a large-scale problem that needed to be addressed. But we’ve also seen a strong and resonant choir preach to itself, unfortunately. 

Despite all of these things we’ve seen since our story broke, last week we also saw news of two more allegations of sexual assault. This time, we saw that these alleged incidents were reported to have happened on campus. 

That, out of everything, was the hardest to look at. It was the hardest to see. I saw a news notification on my phone for one article and saw a lively Wednesday night newsroom fall silent as I shared the story. 

Let me be clear; I’m not saying what follows is directly related to these allegations of terrible crimes, but here’s what we have not seen the past three weeks: 

Through all of these discussions, talks and protests at the university, we haven’t seen many Greek community members attend, and with some of these events, we’ve seen minimal attendance by men in general.

A strong and resonant choir has been preaching to itself. 

Yes, we saw a lengthy and insightful open letter from a member of the U of M greek community addressed to Zeta Theta Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha. In the letter, student Isabelle Grogan said that she “understands the pride we take in our letters, in our sister/brotherhood, in our ritual, and in our core values†and that she “truly believes that the gentlemen of Lambda Chi Alpha have no ill intentions towards students, or other members of fraternities and sororities.â€Â 

But she continued: “I believed that if he was guilty, that would be an individual situation, one that Lambda Chi would surely condemn. I expected that the fraternity might make a public statement expressing sympathy for the victim, and explain how their chapter does not approve of this awful behavior.â€

Still, at every turn, we at The Daily Helmsman have not seen any emails from Zeta Theta Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha at the U of M. We have seen zero emails criticizing our coverage. We have seen zero emails accusing us of getting the story wrong or even hinting that any corrections were to be made. We’ve seen zero emails expressing how, even if they believed their alleged rapist was innocent, they do not condone sexual misconduct in their organization. 

There has been no public response from the chapter and no official statements condemning sexual assault as a whole.

We as a campus have seen U of M administration and SGA act to address the community’s concerns. We have not seen nearly the same level of recognition for this large-scale problem from other groups. There are those who need to begin to see it as a problem if they do not already see it as one. If we’re going to start seeing a better future, we need more eyes to be open. 

We need to see the “brothers†who are “very active on campus, and work visibly hard to support Feeding America†that Isabelle Grogan mentions in her letter.

Where are those young men? 

Darrell Ray, our vice president for student affairs, said at the campus talk that "People make choices and so sometimes it is not the group. Some of the people ... may be in a group, and so we want to be sure that we don’t make assumptions about fraternity men."

"And that’s not to say that there are not fraternity men who don’t make bad decisions, but let’s just think about it holistically because assault it not a problem that’s limited to organizational type."

He’s absolutely right and I don’t want to believe in stereotypes about fraternities. I’ve known students, friends, a priest and a barbeque cook at a wine festival that were all good-hearted Greek men.

Still, I want to see that our organizations here at the U of M, despite the possible inhumane actions of a few, would have the guts to publicly address an issue that the university president, the vice president for student affairs, the dean of students, student government, brave student-speakers, student groups, sign-holders, letter-writers and many others have had the spine to address during the past three weeks.   

If, for some reason, they think this problem will “just go away†or “it won’t matter†that they speak up or not, consider this:

For close to a year we’ve seen a man sit in the highest possible office in our country who literally bragged on-tape about assaulting women, “moving on them†without consent.

There is verifiable evidence of his intentions, and many in society still saw this man as a leader. It doesn’t matter what your political preference is here. What was said was wrong.

Most Americans, myself included, have seen the news eventually just let this go. Maybe we shouldn’t let them. It still matters. 

We’ve seen a lot as a campus community, but we all still need to do our part. Only then might we see societal change. Only with our eyes open.