Warning: This article contains information about sexual assault and/or violence.
News and social media platforms have recently increased their coverage of sexual assault. After reading articles about rape victims and hearing stories of drunken hookups gone wrong, people tend to instantly forget about the victims of these horrific events. Sexual assault victims go through difficulties no one should have to experience, then are remembered as that girl from that one school, or the guy in that frat at that one university. However, society needs to develop a sense of awareness about such events because they actually have a universal impact.
This story is about a girl who goes to Colgate. It is her account of two drunken hookups gone wrong during her freshman year, and how they continue to impact her life today. This story is about me. It is about everyone. It is more than just a story—it is about you, too.
Jennifer never drank alcohol before Colgate—she’d had three to four experiences with it, at most. On the first Friday back from winter break, the weather was cold and sh*tty, yet the students still found an excuse to grab their “Jug jacket” and see where the night would go. Jennifer had a few cups of that infamous “jungle juice” at her neighbor’s dorm party, then met up with some guys in another dorm for more pre-gaming. After playing a few rounds of shot-for-shot with the guys, it was clear that one of them had been hitting on her most of the night. Her interest in him was enthusiastic and mutual.
After some intermittent and playful kissing, they relocated next door to his single where a make-out session ensued. He took off her shirt and her bra, but she stopped him from taking off her pants. She said she didn’t want to go there, at which point he paused and then went back to kissing. Jen blacked in and out, so her attempts to resist his advances were relatively feeble. Minutes later he was completely naked and was attempting to take her pants off. Again, she denied his advances.
He then physically guided her face towards his crotch in order to “get something more.” As uncomfortable as it was, she gave him the bl*wjob. She felt it was the only way to avoid having sex with him. When he pulled her up signaling he was ready for the real thing, Jen got off the bed and started searching for her shirt and IDs. As she stumbled about, he said, “But babe, the condom’s already on,” as if that was enough reason to force her back in bed. She ran out of the room thinking, “What did I just do? What just happened? Did anything happen at all?”
She ended up at a friend’s room, sobbing and confused by the encounter. “Technically nothing happened, so was this actually an assault?” How could she answer that question?
By Wednesday, a week and a half after that uncomfortable night, her memories had fizzled and her emotions were pushed aside. She was back with her friends, buzzed and ready to hit up the Jug. She hit it off with a guy at the bar, and he suggested they go back to the townhouses together to hang out. She was under the impression it was a group hangout and was thrown off when she realized they were the only two people back at his place. After some making out, clothes and “Jug jacket” still on, he pushed her onto the bed with a clear motive. She had an early morning weight training, so she didn’t intend on staying over or going far with the hook-up.
When he started pulling her clothes off she explicitly said to him, “I am a virgin, I don’t want to do this.” He continued. She then told him three distinct times, “I am not having sex with you.” He wasn’t giving up, and she knew his persistence wasn’t dying down. Her thoughts consumed her. “Why even bother fighting it? I guess this is what happens in college.”
He pressed on and pushed his way inside her.
At 5:30 a.m. she walked back up the hill to her dorm room. She couldn’t help but think that this had been her fault for abandoning her Catholic faith and disappointing her parents. She had heavy bleeding from his penetration in the early hours afterwards, as well as bruising around her hips and butt.
As a precaution she went to the health center to buy the Plan B pill. Purchasing the Pill comes with a questionnaire asking why you need it; when she read the question, “Was this consensual?” she unapologetically broke down in front of the nurse. The following day she had a rape kit done in Oneida and described it as “the worst thing that could ever happen.” The doctor took a cheek swab, went through her hair, took her undergarments, documented all the bruises and markings on her body, and examined her ‘down there’ to find tearing. They took some blood work and gave her a handful of antibiotics as a precautionary protocol. It was an invasive process, to say the least.
She reported the case to Campus Safety, then the Hamilton police. She got an incredible female lawyer through SurvJustice, a non-profit that performs campus hearings. The boy was kicked out of Colgate within a few months.
When asked how she felt in the aftermath, Jen responded, “I still don’t sleep at night. I still have bad depression. It doesn’t leave you – you get okay but it’s always kind of there. Walking by the Jug I still get freaked out. I am afraid his friends are mad at me.”
The day he was expelled, there had been a Yik Yak post with her initials saying she was a wh*re. “I felt bad that I hurt him, and horrible I did this to someone.” She left campus in the spring on a medical leave of absence.
“Once I left I was out of sight, out of mind.” She sought help over the summer and tried EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which helps with PTSD by reprocessing a traumatic event and reversing the negative cognition. Due to a falling-out with her coach, she is not training this fall with the rest of team. Now in the process of rebuilding her friendships, Jennifer says she “feels like no one gives a sh*t…the moral of the story is I am lonely now.”
The fallout immediately following these unwanted hook-ups is painful and all-consuming, and the emotional aftermath extends across time. So why bother fighting it when you’re in that drunken moment and the pressure to give in is weighing you down? Why resist something you are vehemently against? Fight because you are worth something, because your beliefs count for everything that you are and need validation from no one. Resist the pressure and f*ck what people think, because at the end of the day, you stood up for you. That’s what counts.
The hook-up scene here is small and that unwelcomed spotlight can be traumatizing like it was for Jennifer. Emotional trauma that comes from an unwanted sexual encounter is far greater and more impactful than anyone should have to endure.
A first year student at Colgate has come to accept, or was forced to accept, that these experiences are the ordinary – the everyday stories of the students who participate in the hook-up culture. However, this is not “what happens in college.” These tragic experiences taught Jennifer to believe that her suffering is commonplace.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, between twenty and twenty-five percent of women are victims of an attempted or completed rape. There are over 1,500 women enrolled at Colgate, twenty-five percent being three hundred seventy five of them. That is the possibility of three hundred seventy five women graduating with the idea that what may happen to them must happen to most women here. While twenty-five percent does not represent the majority of hookup experiences, we must recognize that this still proportion represents the sexual experiences of too many women. It represents too many women accepting the false condition that this is “what happens is college,” and a single person with this notion is one person too many.
Is there a remedy for these woefully accepted beliefs about sexual experiences. Shouldn’t they be considered fun? Sexy? Exhilarating? Is a change even possible? If so, how and where do we start?
While these stories may have been about one person, the social impacts and the questions they raise are for everyone. This is more than just a story. This is about you. This is about us.
*Jennifer’s name has been changed for her privacy.