April 29, 2013 - So after all the links talking about various colleges with problems regarding their sexual assault policies, Friday I discovered this blog from a rape victim attending my alma mater. Honestly I'm not surprised to think my former college would have this issue, though I think it has amazing educators working there, I didn't have the best social experience on campus and found the administration slow to react to institutional problems instead claiming to make adjustments for future students of which current students never saw the benefits. I'm not going to get into the specifics of my issues with USC, but it wasn't like there were no issues. Despite strong marketing emphasizing the campus' diversity, campus life mostly caters to rather specific types of people, which I think and hope is my brother who currently attends, but it certainly wasn't me. Other than a handful of people I met there, including Emily, I mostly view my time at USC rather negatively. And it appears little has changed.

I don't know what's going to happen in Tucker Reed's case as I worry there's strong precedence for acquittal based on this research paper that demonstrates major flaws in how rape is prosecuted with examples of cases clearly demonstrating rape. I think Tucker Reed has pretty substantial evidence validating her accusation, but some of her strongest pieces of evidence hinge upon her interpretation of specific laws in the California penal code regarding violent criminal acts allowing them to be admissible and as ridiculous as it may sound, I worry rape may not be considered a violent crime in California. Meanwhile, I know USC's stance on how the situation boils down to the fact that since she and her "alleged" rapist (not gonna lie, super biased about this case and she does identify him by name and photo on her blog, but he threatened to sue her for defamation so I'll just let you go there as well as point out that both his facebook and twitter are not difficult to find) presumably don't attend classes together or live in the same school owned building, they've done their extremely minimal part of ensuring her safety that the guidelines state. I'm concerned she won't find justice, but I'm extremely proud of her for speaking out about what happened to her and hope she doesn't mind linking to her blog here as I got the impression she wants to reach the widest audience possible.

In other news a navy sailor fought off her attempted rapist on a bus, and yet another abortion clinic closed its doors to restrictive laws in Virginia last week though other clinics in the area do intend to make the "necessary" changes to keep their doors open. If people proposing these laws are so concerned about patient safety, then require any hospital with a maternity reward to have at least one doctor on staff who performs abortions. The goal should be to make access to safe abortion easier, not harder by eliminating all legal abortion.

I also wanted to make some kind of statement about how today's comic features Star promoting a healthy idea about communicative relationships but for completely irrelevant selfish reasons, but I think that's fairly obvious, and I've already rambled quite a bit.

-D