Anna Minkinow and her friends started to assemble for their demonstration Monday morning at the corner of Drill and McAlister,. She and a few others held hand-painted signs, made originally as a therapeutic exercise and gagged and bound themselves. I stood in front of them and passed out flyers that explained the situation.
Over this past summer, while Anna was a student attending Tulane and living in the dorms, she was raped. Her joint hearing board hearing was this past Friday, and the student who raped Anna was found guilty.
The student's punishment was that he was not allowed to live on campus anymore, he was not allowed to contact Anna and he had to attend mandatory counseling sessions at the ERC.
This student was found guilty of rape.
A board made up of students, faculty and staff found him guilty of raping a fellow student in the Tulane dorms, and his punishments are living off campus and seeing a counselor. While he is not allowed to contact Anna, Tulane is a small campus and she will see him. The Joint Hearing Board has the power to recommend suspension and expulsion as punishments for these kinds of crimes, but they did not.
Everyone has heard all of the statistics a million times before, but they bear repeating until the message sinks in: One in three women will be the victim of sexual or physical violence in their lifetime. Someone in your classes, someone in your group of closest friends, someone in your family will be physically or sexually abused in their lifetime based solely on gender.
Tulane's treatment of such survivors is offensive and terrifying. As a woman on campus, I don't feel safe attending a school where the vast majority of Tulane's police force doesn't take gender-based crimes seriously.
I don't feel safe attending a school where I now know that even if a rapist is caught and found guilty by the school, the punishments will be comparable to the punishments given for drinking in public.
Anna Minkinow is an amazing person. Her willingness to fight for the rights of rape survivors on Tulane's campus is commendable, as is her willingness to share her experience to help educate people on the realities of rape.
Hopefully Anna's fight will help the administration realize their responsibilities to all of the students on campus.
Elizabeth McNamara is a sophomore in Newcomb-Tulane College and can be reached for comment at lizzmcnamara@gmail.com.
2008 Woodie Awards
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