Jeremiah Baky
The U.S. justice system failed rape victims in the sentencing and early release of Stanford rapist Brock Turner.
It is a sad case, a sickening one, but it is just one case of many and is a reality of what happens on college campuses.
Various studies estimate between 1-in-6 to 1-in-3 young women will be sexually assaulted during their college careers. Colleges are not helping this travesty. Most colleges around the U.S. are disarming women, preventing them from carrying stun guns, pepper spray, knives, and most commonly guns.
College administrators are basically serving up rape victims on a silver platter, defenseless lambs to the slaughter from regressive policies that are not allowing women and men to protect themselves from violent offenders.
Colleges and universities, instead of allowing the students to protect themselves, pretend to care about the problem of campus rape by promoting sexual assault awareness and telling women not to drink around men and not to go around strangers. Though alcohol contributes to the problem, much like in the Brock Turner case, it is not the entire problem.
Unarmed, victim-rich environments are a huge part of the problem. Colleges and universities, despite all of their rhetoric, seem to forget that they are educating adults, people who should have rights that include the most fundamental right to self-defense: self-preservation. But no, as soon as we cross the threshold of university property, we put ourselves at risk.
Women are at risk of running into the next Brock Turner and being assaulted. If the woman comes forward, overcoming the fear and judgment she will face, there is a chance that there will be little to no retribution in the courts for her physical and permanent mental scars from this spineless, violent individual.
Seeing the lack of punishment for sleazes like Turner, more aggressors will weigh the risk-reward factor of violent attacks, and there will be more victims.
Imagine instead, college campuses respecting their students as adults with rights, instead of cash cows. Imagine a campus safer because they respect students’ innate rights to self-defense and allow them to protect themselves on campus.
Imagine instead of a rape victim, there is a person who protected herself with a weapon of her choosing. Instead of rape crisis counseling, there are groups to teach people to properly defend themselves and properly carry firearms on campus, if they want, to protect themselves.
Imagine a scenario where a would-be rapist gets a gunshot wound instead of three months in jail for changing someone’s life forever.
Imagine, instead of colleges trying to suppress crimes to fudge the statistics, they can genuinely claim to be safer institutions.
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