campus officials Posts

Back in the late 1980s when I was a Villanova University undergrad, sexual assault didn't happen. True story.

It will surprise no one to learn that I co-edited an alternative, "underground" weekly junior and senior year. We called it The VACUUM, a name whose acronym changed every issue. Reading about an early "date rape" study in my feminist studies class I extrapolated how many rapes should reasonably be expected to occur on a campus of Villanova's size. I added a few anecdotes from my all-male dorm experience and published it in The VACUUM. A short while later some friends of mine who edited the official student paper picked up the story and even cited an anonymous quotation from me in what is probably the only official documentation of the VACUUM's existence in the V.U. archives.

Right around this time a female student brought her allegations of an on-campus sexual assault to the local police. Campus officials feigned surprise and provided the local media with parroted quotes: "In all my xyz years working here I have never ever heard of an allegation of rape." Chief of Security, Dean of Students, etc., all delivered the same line, clearly coached by a public relations team, with only the years changed to reflect their campus tenure. Thousands of students, dozens of years, hundreds of frat parties, tanker-fulls of cheap beer and not a hint of impropriety.

Last night I chanced on my alma mater's website and saw a link right there on the homepage to an article mysterious titled Recent Campus Incident (generic URL, probably designed to disappear soon). It documented an alleged assault on a female student by three members of the football team last month. The announcement reports that the University found them in violation of the campus's Code of Conduct and "rescinded the admission of the three young men."

A Google News search turns up that this has been extensively covered by the media with almost 500 hits. The Delco Times reports that the 1990 Clery Act and its amendments have made university cover-ups illegal and required reports and specific protocols for responding to campus crimes. The current media spotlight and long-standing federal laws certainly account for much of Villanova's 2007 enlightenment. Whatever the source of change, it's nice to see. Even three players from the beloved football team can get the boot (sorry, have their admissions rescinded) for criminal behavior. Better still, the university can fess up to the crime and take some responsibility. The times, they have a' changed.

The U.S. media is giving all-out coverage to video stills of an American named Nicholas Berg, who was decapitated by iraqi insurgents (the original video bore the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American"). Barely mentioned is that Berg was arrested by U.S.-backed iraq police forces and detained without charge by iraqi police from around 24 March to 6 April, after being stopped at a checkpoint in Mosul. UPDATE: According to The Guardian and other sources, Berg was originally arrested by the iraqi police but actually held for the thirteen days by U.S. military personnel.

Yes, folks, stop looking for the video and start asking how Berg got into the hands of his executioners. His own family said the U.S. military was at least partially responsible for his imprisonment. On April 5, they filed a federal suit claiming that Mr. Berg was being held illegally by the United States military in iraq:

The Bergs last heard from their son April 9, when he told his parents he would come home by way of Jordan. Suzanne Berg said that the family had been trying for weeks to learn where their son was, but that federal officials had not been helpful. Philadelphia Inquirer

In what is becoming the motif of the iraq Occupation, agents with the F.B.I. claim that the iraqi police acted independently by arresting Berg in the first place. The police are yet another tier of the blame-and-denial game being played by the Pentagon and Bush Administration. The U.S. controls (or should control) the contractors and iraqi police and needs to take responsibility for what their minions are doing in iraq.

My heart goes out to the family of Nicholas Berg. He's from a Philadelphia suburb near the one I grew up in. He took classes at two colleges in my old neighborhood and I could easily have passed him cutting through the campuses. I can totally empathize with his desire to see the world and maybe make it a better place by helping to rebuild iraq.

There are questions that must be answered and the U.S. media had better start asking them:

When did the U.S.-backed iraqi police release Berg?

Who released the execution video (even hawkish blogger Andrew Sullivan can't find the site, even Aljazeera doesn't say where it is) and who added the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi caption?

Some of the websites questioning the Berg story are clearly those of wingnut conspiracy types. With that warning, here are some interesting links and threads:

• Is Berg Story a Fraud? on the Nonviolence.org board.
• Doctor declares Berg video a fake. I myself wondered why the stills of the captors holding his head looked so clean-looking. The democraticunderground forum has other interesting discussions, including ones looking at the captor's body language and researching the video codecs the web video was recorded with (apparently very up-to-date, it was made by pros, perhaps purposefully kept fuzzy).
• iraq militants claim al-Zarqawi is dead
• Fishy Circumstances and Flawed Timelines Surround American's Beheading. Lots of links here.

For what it's worth, I was contacted my a major American news organization Thursday morning. The researcher said they were asking many of the same questions and she asked if I had uncovered anything interesting. If any of my readers know of other resources, send me an email and I'll post it here and pass it along to this news source.