I am writing this in response to the recent acts of harassment that have taken place on the UA campus over the past three years. Pictures of an individual wearing a shirt that read “YOU DESERVE RAPE Galatians 6:8” and shouting threats at passing women have begun trending on facebook. Numerous news outlets have reported this harassment. U of A has stated that these actions do not constitute a “threat” or violate their harassment policy.
The actions of these individuals are threats of violence. The University of Arizona has shown a deplorable lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of its students by taking a passive stance to these threats. The main concern, aside from education of course, of an university should be the safety of all students. For women to be subjected to these threats without action fro m the university is completely unacceptable. For this person to declare that anyone “deserves rape” is an active threat of VIOLENCE to every woman and man on campus.
The University of Arizona has a responsibility to its students to put an IMMEDIATE stop to these individuals and publicly condemn these actions.
I have written a review on the University of Arizona’s facebook page calling for the institution to protect its students and am writing this now in the hope that larger exposure will compel the University of Arizona to revise it’s harassment policy and provide protection to its students. In a country full of school-based violence, ignoring the threats of these individuals is unacceptable and I am hoping that your newspaper will join me in denouncing the lack of action taken by the University of Arizona and prompt them to do better to insure the safety and wellbeing of all persons on its campus.
As a native Arizonian, I know we can do better.
—Alyssa Evensen
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2016.
The UA doesn’t care about their Facebook comments, but they do care about getting audited by the Dept. Of Ed’s Office of Civil Rights. File a complaint for a Title IX violation (Google “office of civil rights” and you’ll find the form), and eventually OCR is going to have to audit the UA’s lack of response to this harassment. Whether or not they find legal fault with the admin is irrelevant – threat of an audit is often enough to get admin to get their butts in gear and do something.
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.”
Samuel Johnson, as quoted in James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 1 (1791), p. 335.
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”
Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Vol. 1 (1897), ch. 20.
“If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).
“As a young constitutional lawyer, I was put to the first amendment test when I was called on to defend racists and neo-Nazis. I really had no choice. Surely now we know that none of us do. Free speech is unequivocal, unpolitical, and indivisible.”
Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Support for Free Speech”, Congressional Record, Volume 141, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 2, 1995), United States House of Representatives, Page H4448.
Not much learning going on at the U of AZ these days, is there?
Just because that speech hurts your feelings, and they wore mean T-Shirts, doesn’t mean you get to impose your safe spaces on the real world, the public campus.