Sexual assaults on campus then and now

August 4, 2007

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.

“Conservative Liberal Quakers” and not becoming a least-common-denominator, sentimental faith

July 13, 2004

Over on beppe­blog, occas­sion­al QR com­menter Joe Gua­da talks about start­ing a Bible study group in his Friends meet­ing. It’s a great post, which real­ly pulls togeth­er some of the issues of those of us try­ing to be both con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al in our Quakerism.

None of their con­cerns were a sur­prise to me; I’ve had many of the same myself. What did sur­prise me was how long it took mem­bers to final­ly approach me with their “con­cerns” (a Friend­ly euphemism for being in com­plete dis­agree­ment with anoth­er). They seemed to be tak­ing the Bible too literally…

I doubt that I changed any minds dur­ing our lengthy, but respect­ful con­ver­sa­tion. But, unlike what seems like the opin­ion of the major­i­ty of lib­er­al Friends, where per­son­al and cor­po­rate rev­e­la­tion is the sole arbiter of faith, I believe that indi­vid­u­als and groups need far more than that to keep us from dete­ri­o­rat­ing into a “least-common-denominator”, sen­ti­men­tal faith that tries to be all things to (most) every­body (as long as they agree with our pol­i­tics). I believe that Friends have a rich his­to­ry to draw from, which includes our present Faith & Prac­tice (along with past F&P’s), the writ­ings and tes­ti­mo­ny of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, and (hold your breath) the Bible.

This past week I’ve been won­der­ing whether the best descrip­tion of my spir­i­tu­al state is a “con­ser­v­a­tive lib­er­al Friend,” i.e., some­one in the “lib­er­al” branch of Friends who holds “con­ser­v­a­tive” val­ues (I mean these terms in their the­o­log­i­cal sense, as descrip­tive terms that refer to well-defined his­tor­i­cal move­ments). I feel a kin­ship with Joe and with some of the peo­ple I met this year at the FGC Gath­er­ing. There is a small-scale “con­ser­v­a­tive lib­er­al” move­ment going on and it seems like we should fig­ure out a name for ourselves.

Back in the 1970s and 80s there was a group dubbed “neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers,” lib­er­al Friends who moved to con­ser­v­a­tive year­ly meet­ings (espe­cial­ly Ohio) and out­did the home­grown con­ser­v­a­tives, adopt­ing plain dress and gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for being stick­lers on con­ser­v­a­tive the­ol­o­gy and practice.

But although I’ve picked up plain dress, I’m not a 1970s “neo­con­ser­v­a­tive” Friend. First off, I’m not mov­ing to Ohio (it’s a love­ly state I’m sure, but roots trump ide­ol­o­gy for me any day of the week). I’m not even seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing leav­ing Lib­er­al Quak­erism. For all the some­times muddied-thinking, I’m proud of our branch. I’m proud that we’ve said yes to gay and les­bian Friends and I see it as our pos­i­tive come­up­pance that so much of our reli­gious lead­er­ship now comes from the FLGBTQC com­mu­ni­ty (so many of whose mem­bers are sol­id Chris­tians dri­ven out of oth­er denom­i­na­tions). I see us as one of the most dynam­ic, forward-thinking branch of Friends. Besides, lib­er­al Quak­erism is my home. I’ve been giv­en enough hints that I think my min­istry is here too. Not that I’m not grate­ful for all the branch­es of Quak­erism. I am graced with new Friends met through this blog from all the branch­es of Amer­i­can Quak­erism and I’ve found that there are those seek­ing out to reclaim Quak­erism in each of them. I have broth­ers and sis­ters through­out Quak­er­dom, blessed be! But my role, my home, and my min­istry is to be a Conservative-leaning voice among Lib­er­al Friends. And it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that I’m not alone. Some­thing is afoot in lib­er­al Quakerism.

So what might we call our­selves? Is “con­ser­v­a­tive lib­er­al Friends” a use­ful term?

We Quakers should be cooler than the Sweat Lodge

July 5, 2004

I have just come back from a “Meet­ing for Lis­ten­ing for Sweat Lodge Con­cerns,” described as “an oppor­tu­ni­ty for per­sons to express their feel­ings in a wor­ship­ful man­ner about the can­cel­la­tion of the FGC Gath­er­ing sweat lodge work­shop this year.” Non-Quakers read­ing this blog might be sur­prised to hear that Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence holds sweat lodges, but it has and they’ve been increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial. This year’s work­shop was can­celled after FGC received a very strong­ly word­ed com­plaint from the Wampanoag Native Amer­i­can tribe. Today’s meet­ing intend­ed to lis­ten to the feel­ings and con­cerns of all FGC Friends involved and was clerked by the very-able Arthur Larrabee. There was pow­er­ful min­istry, some pre­dictable “min­istry” and one stun­ning mes­sage from a white Friend who dis­missed the very exis­tance of racism in the world (it’s just a illu­sion, the peo­ple respon­si­ble for it are those who per­ceive it).

I’ve had my own run-in’s with the sweat lodge, most unfor­get­tably when I was the co-planning clerk of the 2002 Adult Young Friends pro­gram at FGC (a few of us thought it was inap­pro­pri­ate to trans­fer a por­tion of the rather small AYF bud­get to the sweat lodge work­shop, a request made with the argu­ment that so many high-school and twenty-something Friends were attend­ing it). But I find myself increas­ing­ly uncon­cerned about the lodge. It’s clear to me now that it part of anoth­er tra­di­tion than I am. It is not the kind of Quak­er I am. The ques­tion remain­ing is whether an orga­ni­za­tion that will spon­sor it is a dif­fer­ent tradition.

How did Lib­er­al Friends get to the place where most our our younger mem­bers con­sid­er the sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny to be the high point of their Quak­er expe­ri­ence? The sweat lodge has giv­en a gen­er­a­tion of younger Friends an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mune with the divine in a way that their meet­ings do not. It has giv­en them men­tor­ship and lead­er­ship expe­ri­ences which they do not receive from the old­er Friends estab­lish­ment. It has giv­en them a sense of iden­ti­ty and pur­pose which they don’t get from their meet­ing “com­mu­ni­ty.”

I don’t care about ban­ning the work­shop. That does­n’t address the real prob­lems. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and won­der why they’d want to spend a week with some  white Quak­er guy who won­ders aloud in pub­lic whether he’s “a Quak­er or an Indi­an” (could we have a third choice?). I’ve always thought this was just rather embar­rass­ing.  I want the sweat lodge to with­er away in recog­ni­tion of it’s inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness. I want younger Friends to get a taste of the divine love and char­i­ty that Friends have found for 350 years. We’re sim­ply cool­er than the sweat lodge.

* * * *

And what real­ly is the sweat lodge all about? I don’t real­ly buy the cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion cri­tique (the offi­cial par­ty line for can­cel­ing it argues that it’s racist). Read founder George Price’s Friends Jour­nal arti­cle on the sweat lodge and you’ll see that he’s part of a long-standing tra­di­tion. For two hun­dred years, Native Amer­i­cans have been used as myth­ic cov­er for thin­ly dis­guised European-American philoso­phies. The Boston pro­test­ers who staged the famous tea par­ty all dressed up as Indi­ans, play­ing out an emerg­ing mythol­o­gy of the Amer­i­can rebels as spir­i­tu­al heirs to Indi­ans (long dri­ven out of the Boston area by that time). In 1826, James Fen­i­more Coop­er turned that myth into one of the first pieces of clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture with a sto­ry about the “Last” of the Mohi­cans. At the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new boy scout move­ment claimed that their fit­ness and social­iza­tion sys­tem was real­ly a re-application of Native Amer­i­can train­ing and ini­ti­a­tion rites. Quak­ers got into the game too: the South Jer­sey and Bucks Coun­ty sum­mer camps they found­ed in the nineteen-teens were full of Native Amer­i­can motifs, with cab­ins and lakes named after dif­fer­ent tribes and the chil­dren encour­aged to play along.

Set in this con­text, George Price is clear­ly just the lat­est white guy to claim that only the spir­it of pur­er Native Amer­i­cans will save us from our Old World Euro­pean stodgi­ness. Yes, it’s appro­pri­a­tion I guess, but it’s so trans­par­ent and clas­si­cal­ly Amer­i­can that our favorite song “Yan­kee Doo­dle” is a British wartime send-up of the impulse. We’ve been stick­ing feath­ers in our caps since forever.

In the Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, it’s clear the Quak­er sweat lodge owes more to the Euro­pean psy­chother­a­py of Karl Jung than Chief Ock­an­ick­on. It’s all about “lim­i­nal­i­ty” and ini­ti­a­tion into myth­ic arche­types, fea­tur­ing cribbed lan­guage from Vic­tor Turn­er, the anthro­pol­o­gist who was very pop­u­lar cir­ca 1974. Price is clear but nev­er explic­it about his work: his sweat lodge is Jun­gian psy­chol­o­gy over­laid onto the out­ward form of a Native Amer­i­can sweat­lodge. In ret­ro­spect it’s no sur­prise that a birthright Philadel­phia Friend in a tired year­ly meet­ing would try to com­bine trendy Euro­pean pop psy­chol­o­gy with Quak­er sum­mer camp them­ing. What is a sur­prise (or should be a sur­prise) is that Friends would spon­sor and pub­lish arti­cles about a “Quak­er Sweat Lodges” with­out chal­leng­ing the author to spell out the Quak­er con­tri­bu­tion to a pro­grammed rit­u­al con­duct­ed in a con­se­crat­ed teepee steeplehouse.

(Push the influ­ences a lit­tle more, and you’ll find that Vic­tor Turn­er’s anthro­po­log­i­cal find­ings among obscure African tribes arguably owes as much to his Catholi­cism than it does the facts on the ground. More than one Quak­er wit has com­pared the sweat lodge to Catholic mass; well: Turn­er’s your miss­ing philo­soph­i­cal link.)

* * * *

Yes­ter­day I had some good con­ver­sa­tion about gen­er­a­tional issues in Quak­erism. I’m cer­tain­ly not the only thirty-something that feels invis­i­ble in the bull­doz­er of baby boomer assump­tions about our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. I’m also not the only one get­ting to the point where we’re just going to be Quak­er despite the Quak­er insti­tu­tions and cul­ture. I think the ques­tion we’re all grap­pling with now is how we relate to the insti­tu­tions that ignore us and dis­miss our cries of alarm for what we Friends have become.