Opinion: AU as an institution does not help survivors, but neither do many of the students

TW: rape, blood, bodily fluids, dark themes

This article was written by an anonymous AU community member who reached out to The Rival seeking a platform to share their story of sexual abuse following the November 10th walkout. The views they express are their own. The Rival stands with all victims of sexual assault.

My freshman year on campus at AU was seemingly a fun one before Covid hit: I went to frat parties, I made “cool” friends who invited me to the parties, and I got decent grades while going out and drinking almost 4 nights a week. I glorified this life, and it wasn’t until I was far enough away from it that I could see how damaging it was and how truly unprotected, fake, and fragile my crystal vase of a social life really was.

When we all were sent home, we all got a harsh reality check. Anyone who attended AU in 2020 and was on Instagram saw the accounts @blackatAU and @exposingauabusers that shared different stories of those who were victims of the racist and misogynistic culture of AU. And, for the most part, there was an institution to blame. Greek life at AU was at its most toxic, and it was finally being exposed for what it was: racist, classist, misogynistic, and one that promoted sexual violence.

I remember all of the sharing, the likes and comments in solidarity, and the disbanding of multiple frats and sororities. The stories of sexual assault had many assaulters in common, who had gotten away with assaulting multiple women. These people were shamed, and it seemed as if Greek life was finally gone once its illusion of fun, like mine, had been shattered to have its pieces of sexism, violence, racism, and classism displayed across the floor.

This is where my story comes in. I was a sophomore at the time who moved to D.C. during the pandemic. I hung out at a former frat house a lot, missing my old time there, with former frat brothers. There we tried to all hang out the way it used to be, but mostly we were just depressed and needed human company. I made friends with one of the former frat guys who dropped because of the Instagram posts and denounced the older frat members. I still saw the extensive drinking, drug usage, and women leaving late at night in the house, but I didn’t see it as what it was: still an operational frat house without the label.

(TW: graphic descriptions of rape) One night, I texted him asking to hang out with him because I genuinely wanted to be better friends with him. I knew he might think I was just trying to have sex, so I sent him a text in advance that I wouldn’t want to do that and asked him if he was still okay if I came over without those implications. He said it was all good. I came over and he immediately made a move on me. I was uncomfortable, but I felt bad for being there in his space, and I knew that he at least wouldn’t try sex because I told him that wasn’t happening in advance. He began to start pressuring me, and I continued to say that I was comfortable just kissing until he kept persisting and I felt so terrible to be there that I said yes. I made sure he put on a condom, and without getting too graphic, it was very painful. I wasn’t lubricated at all, but I was just waiting for it to be over and lost all agency over my body. The point when I was in so much pain, I felt tears swelling in my eyes so I asked him to stop. He simply said “oh, I was just about to come” and kept going. I lost my body until he finished, gripping the pillow in pain with the tears finally leaving my eyes staining his pillow, and it finally stopped. Semen was inside of me and spattered on my thigh, and he got up to get a towel for me to wipe it off. I did not see him take off the condom nor throw it away. I did not think it was strange until I realized when I left that he took off the condom during sex while I was not looking.

I left the house sobbing to myself, though I did not know why. The sex was consensual, right? I mean I went over and agreed to the sex at the beginning. I knew the sex was violent, but I hadn’t been raped, right?

The days following, I had internal bleeding from the wounds inside of me. I painfully walked around my apartment into my zoom meetings with my insides in pain. Each time I saw the blood on my underwear, I cried. I went over to the house after, trying to carry on as usual and in denial. I saw him when I hung out with friends and didn’t say hi, but just sat there pretending everything was okay. I didn’t tell anyone about the encounter except for one friend, and I asked him if he thought it was normal for semen to be inside a woman after sex if he used a condom. He told me it wasn’t. Two weeks later it finally hit me, and I called him crying. “I think I’ve been raped” and he said back in the phone “I know.”

I stopped going to the house, and I knew it was too late to go to the police. While there would have been evidence of the semen and the wounds immediately after, it was too late at that point. I looked into the resources for Title IX, but I remembered all of the stories on Instagram, and I knew AU would be useless and mostly retraumatizing. I applied to transfer schools and tried to forget it. I confided in one of my former best friends about the assault when he asked why I didn’t go by anymore. A week later, someone else told me they heard about what happened to me. I asked my male friend if he told anyone, and he told me that when he was drunk, he “accidentally” told two of the other guys who lived in the house. It was over, my story was out without my consent, and the news started spreading. Just as my body was taken from me, so was my story and my confidentiality.

I couldn’t afford the other university and was forced to stay at AU to finish my degree. As we came back in person, my former friends of the house told me they supported me and stopped talking to my assaulter. I avoided all of his other friends and blocked him on everything and tried to go back to normal. As I left D.C. for summer break, however, I saw on social media that my friends began to be friends with him again. When I came back to D.C. and asked them about it, they told me they all “forgave” him and that he had “changed.” My friends of two years were now actively hanging out with my assaulter, and devastated and hurt, I had to cut ties with them. Having only one close friend and still seeing my assaulter around campus, I am finishing my time here at AU.

My story isn’t unique; so many of my female friends have their own stories. The AU culture, especially with Greek life, excuses sexual violence and institutional misogyny. While I didn’t report it, as when I went to OASIS my only options were Title IX or going to the police which required lawyers, court proceedings, and retraumatization, AU’s structural functions are fundamentally flawed so that so many women do not come forward to report it. Women should not have to live in fear for their bodies; they should not be pressured into sex and ignored when they say no; they should not have their voices unheard. While there are so many cases of assault, there are additionally so many bystanders and people who are complicit in assault by not saying anything when they see their friends spiking drinks, by not supporting women in their stories, by not “picking sides” when a woman comes forward with her story. We must have a cultural change of conscious, one that actually supports women from the higher ups at AU who regulate Title XI commissioners, to us as students. With the walk outs, naming and shaming, and calling for preventative, safety measures and support systems for victims, we can change the culture of AU so that the stories of so many women are not shared for nothing. But while calling on AU as an institution to do better, we must also look internally as a student body to support women and not promote a culture of assault.