I Stand With Justice

I can't stand it anymore.  I have to post this somewhere. I have to get all these thoughts off my chest.

This "Stand with Landen" thing at my university is growing widely out of control.  Everybody needs to calm the hell down.

First of all, sometimes I want to obliterate the idea of retweeting and sharing and all the click-and-the-whole-world-knows functions on the internet.  Yes, they're great when you're sharing an amusing grumpy cat meme, but when you think you're propagating a social movement when actually you're mindlessly pretending to stand up for a cause, it becomes a very bad thing.

Suddenly everyone is ashamed and disgusted by this rapid rape culture at UNC.  This is obscene.  UNC doesn't have more rape culture than anyone else. I do wholeheartedly agree with changing rape culture, but pinning the entire issue to this insane case is not the way to eliminate rape culture. It's just a way for a million facebook users and UNC students who don't even read the Daily Tar Heel to pretend they're fixing UNC.  People like to get up in arms over stuff, especially when they have no idea what they're talking about.

That's the problem. NOBODY knows what they're talking about.  The contents of the honor court hearing are sealed.  Nobody, besides Landen herself and the people in the court, know what happened that day. Of course, we have Landen's version of events spewed all over the media.  While her accusations should be taken seriously, they should not be treated as the gospel.  She is one person, and she is hardly objective (understandably) in this matter.

I just want somebody to step back and look at this.  Why are we assuming the UNC administrators are trying to ally themselves with rapists?  Why can't we give them the same complete trust we're giving Landen?  Why can't we assume everybody is doing their best?  Or at least assume everyone is doing their worst?  This isn't black and white, good versus evil, honor court vs little girls.

What if there actually wasn't enough information to convict the guy accused of rape?  You can't convict people of rape lightly!  Nobody knows why the honor court made that decision, so nobody should assume it was wrong. 

The media keeps reporting that UNC is going to expell this student for saying she was raped. THAT IS NOT TRUE.  She received a form letter stating that she was being accused of an honor code violation, the same letter everyone gets when accused, that says that expulsion is possible because expulsion is always possible when facing charges.  She HAS not been formly convicted of those charges, and is not anywhere close to being expelled.  UNC IS NOT EXPELLING RAPE VICTIMS TO PRETEND RAPE DOESN'T HAPPEN.  Landen has made it very clear that her ex-boyfriend, who many friends and acquaintances surely know she dated while at UNC, still lives on campus. He can VERY EASILY be identified. So the fact that she has not formally identified him does not mean that he has not been harassed.  He was never convicted of raping her.  He has not lost the privilege to attend this university.  There is some validity to those charges.  I think it was unwise to level them anyway, but what is done is done.

I believe in the power of students to make positive and lasting change in their universities. But they need to make informed, rational decisions.  Sticking the entire student body's nose into something they don't have the information to properly understand is not productive.  UNC deserves a lot of the bad press it gets, but this is not one of the reasons.

I'm sorry if Landen was abused and raped.  I'm sorry if the honor court has failed her.  But this was not the proper way to handle the situation.

The real fix here is for the university to let the real court system handle sexual abuse cases.  The university should continue to Haven and OneAct train its students to properly deal with this when the behavior is exhibited.  If a student close to Landen and her ex-boyfriend had been able to identify the signs of an abusive relationship while these events unfolded, maybe it could have been prevented in the first place. If Landen had the resources to deal with her mental issues, maybe she would have been able to leave a toxic situation before it became criminal. 

Maybe everyone needs to worry about the real cause of problems instead of becoming facebook activists. I don't know more about this situation than anyone else. I just want people to act according to their ignorance and not baseless assumptions.

I want to believe in my university and I want to believe there is justice in the world, and I want to believe there are better ways to achieve it.

50 Years

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Sylvia Plath's suicide.

I've been calling Sylvia my favorite writer for years now.  People who aren't English majors return the name with blank stares, and English majors look a little concerned, especially if I footnote it with "Viginia Woolf."

But I can't help it; I just love the crazy ladies.  There's something so completely honest and brave about their writing.  Their deeply introspective melacholy just rings so true.  Though fifty years seperate me and Sylvia, Sylvia and thousands of people like me, her words still have the power to pierce me through the heart, to tie up exactly how I feel, to put into words those misty foggy feelings that are so hard to capture.

I don't find it so alarming that I can relate to Sylvia.  I'm not clinically depressed, but I do have a tendency toward melancholy, and sometimes that makes me feel utterly alone.  Nobody cares enough to listen to my spiraling thoughts of sadness, and I don't really expect them to because such things are inherently illogical, so I just end up being lonely.  Somebody else can't really understand the throught process because it's not rooted in any of kind of transmutable logic. 

Though I understand that intellectually, I can't help but want to tell somebody about it.  But the words don't seem as important out of my mouth as they do in my head, and people don't care, so I just end up feeling worse after. 

I think a similar compulsion spurred Sylvia to write so much: a huge mass of journals, tons of poems, scraps of novels, and one beautiful gem of a complete novel.  There are all shades of the same kind of sad introspection, attempts to feel the emptiness.  A place to talk where nobody had to listen.

But we are listening to her now.  She's given me so much, including peace of mind.  It seems wrong that somebody who stuck her head in an oven can provide peace of mind, but she does.  There are Sylvia quotes written all over my life, both physically and mentally.  A little companionship, even with a dead author from fifty years ago, can go a long way.  I wouldn't be leading the life I lead if I didn't believe in the power of written word, and Sylvia personifies that power for me in a very real way.

I'm so glad I picked up The Bell Jar because it was on sale at Barnes and Noble however many years ago.  I hope one day I can write something, even if it's just a page, that echos with the transcendent, cerebral, relatable, and beautiful words Sylvia gave to us.