Essay #1

Katie Covey

Eng. 460

2/10/2015

Essay One

Applying Rhetoric to Rape
  
 In today’s society, the media brings attention to various forms of crime; murder, burglary, racist acts of violence.  Unfortunately, there are crimes that lack attention that is truly deserved. One crime that is extremely overlooked is rape on college campuses. In today’s world, the inadequate amount of knowledge that takes place when it comes to such a brutal crime is frustrating and hard to understand. Didn’t the older generations that took control over this society teach the young the gravity of this situation? The lack of resource, among the meager amount of knowledge can lead to a lifetime of healing for many young women who face the threats of rape everyday. The questions that need to addressed are where are the weak spots in these cases? What common occurrences are underlying issues? By applying stasis theory and finding the commonplaces among the culture of rape, society can begin finding the answers that are vital in helping make rape preventable.
    Throughout the duration of this essay, stasis theory and commonplaces will be applied to two different articles that tell two unfortunate stories of rape. By using two different stories, commonplaces will be more identifiable as well as allowing to apply stasis theory more effectively. In the first article, stasis theory will be the story of the recent reports of the Vanderbilt case. In this story, four Vanderbilt football players are facing charges of rape and aggravated sexual battery after raping an unconscious female student in a dorm room. Apparently, one of the boys brought her back from the bar and raped her in his dorm room. Brandon Vandenburg’s and three other football players were found guilty of these charges. In this particular case, the boys had been drinking and claimed that they don’t remember the act or crime. However, when waking up the next morning, Vandenburg found photo and video evidence on his phone that the crime had occurred. (New York Post) The boys then attempted to cover up the crime. When applying stasis theory to this specific sexual assault, four questions need to be applied. 
Conjecture: Does it exist? Did it happen?
Definition: What kind of things or event is it?
Quality: Was it right or wrong?
Policy: What should we do?
The conjecture to this scenario is the act of rape. It was clear through photo and video evidence that yes, this act of sexual violence did occur. When it comes to definition, it needs to be sure that this particular crime falls under the act of rape. According to the State of Tennessee, where Vanderbilt is located, rape is defined as follows:
    “unlawful sexual penetration of a victim by the defendant accompanied by any of     the     following circumstances: (1) Force or coercion is used to accomplish the act; (2) The     sexual penetration is accomplished without the consent of the victim and the defendant     knows or has reason to know at the time of the penetration that the     victim did not     consent; (3) The defendant knows or has reason to know that the victim is mentally     defective, mentally incapacitated or physically helpless; or (4) The sexual     penetration is     accomplished by fraud.” (Scheb II)
According to the above definition from the state of Tennessee, rape is exactly what occured. The third question, “Was it right or wrong?” is obviously an easy question to answer. This was an act of sexual violence, which means that it was wrong. This means that, as a society, has agreed that the act of rape is wrong therefore, quality is agreed upon. The fourth stasis, policy, may face controversy depending on evidence and under what circumstances rape took place. “What should we do?” in Policy is an unfortunate way to end copious amounts of sexual assault cases. In reality, rape is a crime that will go unreported for a long duration. When victims do not report this immediately, the physical evidence can be hard to come by and in the meantime, the offender can repeat the same act. In this case, two of the men were convicted of five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of sexual battery. The other two men involved have yet to stand trial. Within each of these stasis, more questions can develop and follow. For example, other questions of conjecture can be, “Is it true? How did it begin? What is its cause? Can it be changed?” Questions like these vary from case to case in different acts of sexual assault, however, some of these questions can share the same commonplaces.
    Besides conjecture, rape cases can carry many consistencies. These would be called commonplaces. Commonplaces are any statement or bit of knowledge that is commonly shared among a given audience or a community. In relation of rape, there could be many repeated commonplaces that we can find through a various cases. In the Vanderbilt case, it was public knowledge that these players had been drinking, as well as the victim when the attack occurred. With this bit of knowledge, alcohol could be identified as a commonplace. During this particular crime, the defendant blamed that he drank too much, and stated that he was “too drunk to know what they were doing and that a college culture of binge drinking and promiscuous sex should be blamed for the attack.” Alcohol is present in most of these cases. However, it may not just be the attacked who has been drinking, it can also be the victim who is raped. Unfortunately, in some cases, the victim will be unconscious and have no recollection of what had happened. That was true for the Vanderbilt case, as well as a recent case that just occurred in the middle of January. Stanford freshman swimmer, Brock Allen Turner, was caught mid act and tried to flee when two men on bikes saw what was happening. The victim was unconscious and being violated outside of a fraternity. Although, it is unstated if the freshman swimmer was drinking, the victim was clearly too intoxicated to give consent, which means that Turner committed rape. (Murphy)
    Another commonplace that lies within these two stories is the location. According to Crisisconnection.org, more than 60% rapes occur on campus. (College Campus Rape) Meaning that the lack of supervision among campus entities, including dorms and fraternity houses is flawed and absent. In the Vanderbilt case, the woman was brought back to Vandenburg’s dorm room and sexual violated. In this Stanford case, this woman was being sexual assaulted outside of a fraternity house. This, however, is not the first fraternity house incident to hit headlines in the last year. Multiple cases including University of Virginia and Hobart and William Smiths College in New York were addressed to the public when two young girls were gang raped in fraternity houses. The commonplace of unsupervised frat houses or dorm rooms, should be an eyeopener for many to start comprehending the dangers behind college campus rape.
    Today, society has been trying to come up with alternatives to college campus rape, however, the numbers that are reported tell a different story. Recently, an article was published by the New York Times asking why don’t sorority houses have the parties? During the article, many women were up for the idea, stating that they would feel more protected and that they have “home-court advantage.” However, many believe that it would be hard to change the tradition now. National sorority organizations have banned alcohol in their houses for decades. Officer Julie Johnson from the National Panhellenic Conference prefers to keep the calm of sorority houses and let the frat houses assume the cost, risk and clean up of house parties. (Schwarz) Although this article is still fresh, many don’t take it seriously. On the bright side though, at least the discussion of rape is finally becoming more of a public issue.
    People say that college can be the best time of a person’s life, but what if it’s not? The seriousness and perturbed truth behind rape is that it can happen to anyone. College campus rape is becoming much more of a serious issue and there are for sure signs that begin to materialize when dangers are present. When applying stasis theory and commonplaces to these incidents after the fact, it is easy to see where things went wrong, but the real question is, what does it take for young college students to start seeing the dangers themselves, before things can make a turn for the worst? As a society, the need for resource and support is at an ultimate high and things to need to change when it comes to the increasing numbers of college campus rapes. 








Works Cited
"2 Ex-Vanderbilt Football Players Convicted of Raping Student." New York Post 27 Jan. 2015.     Web. 4 Feb. 2015. <http://nypost.com/2015/01/27/2-ex-vanderbilt-football-    players-convicted-of-raping-student/>.

"College Campuses and Rape." Crisis Connection. PSC. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. <http://    www.crisisconnectioninc.org/sexualassault/college_campuses_and_rape.htm>.

Murphy, Kate, and Tracy Kaplan. "Stanford Swimmer Arrested, Charged with Felony Sex     Assault." San Jose Mercury News 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. <http://    www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_27404357/stanford-swimmer-arrested-    suspicion-attempted-rape>.

Scheb II, John. "An Overview of Criminal Offenses under Tennessee Law." University of     Tennesssee, Knoxville. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. <http://web.utk.edu/~scheb/overview.html>.

Schwarz, Alan. "Sorority Anti-Rape Idea: Drinking on Own Turf." The New York Times 19 Jan.     2015. The New York Times. Web. 10 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/    2015/01/20/us/sorority-anti-rape-idea-drinking-on-own-turf.html?_r=0>.