How?
(Written by the owners of the SPR website, in spring 2017.)
Swarthmore College systematically mishandles sexual violence— the college protects perpetrators while antagonizing, neglecting, and traumatizing survivors, informants, and their allies. How, specifically, does it do so?
Swarthmore’s reporting and hearing procedures prioritizes assailants, retraumatizes survivors and neglects their rights.
- Hearing proceedings are inconsistent and their quality is more or less dependent on the whims of the external adjudicator.
- These proceedings are structured such that survivors must provide opening and closing statements as well as answer intense and inappropriate questions designed to wear them down.
- These proceedings are not regulated and as such may be lengthy, disproportionately difficult on survivors, and infringe on students’ right to confidentiality.
- Recording procedures is prohibited, making legal action or appeal procedures very challenging, if not impossible.
- Sanctions are often disproportionately light, if they are enforced at all (in the case of social probation).
Swarthmore policies and administrative actions protect and support fraternities at the expense of addressing sexual violence.
- Fraternities, despite being the cause of historic and current concern, remain misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and racist spaces on campus.
- Fraternity members are exclusively given college-owned process that allows for disproportionate control of social life.
- Fraternity members routinely break the Code of Conduct but do not experience meaningful disciplinary action.
- Fraternity culture protects and supports perpetrators of violence.
- Deans will not provide the conditions of these buildings’ leases nor information on the nature of fraternity housing.
- When faced with these concerns, administration continues to push ineffective reform instead of meaningful consequences and a restructuring of resources.
Public Safety does not enforce disciplinary consequences and dismisses complaints, apprehensions and concerns of students related to sexual and physical violence.
- Public Safety officials are routinely condescending and inappropriate towards survivors and concerned students.
- Public Safety officials prioritize the safety, well-being, comfort, and joy of perpetrators of sexual and physical violence.
- Pubic Safety does not enforce no-contact orders, designed to protect survivors pending adjudication.
- Public Safety does not enforce social probation, which is used to sanction perpetrators that have been found responsible by the College.
Swarthmore allows perpetrators to retain positions of power (TA, fellowships, scholarships) during and after adjudication and sanctions.
Swarthmore does not adequately educate students on consent, relationships, party safety, or the policies related to such.
After concerted student activism in 2013, as well as a Title IX lawsuit being filed against the college, Swarthmore’s main policy changes have mostly concerned the alcohol consumption policy. Experts know this move is misguided and ineffective in addressing sexual violence.
Swarthmore systematically silences related activism, protest, and education efforts on these issues.
- Swarthmore removed a banner, saying “Swat Protects Rapists,” that student activists hung out of an academic building.
- Swarthmore removed “Swat Protects Rapists” posters while leaving up “Happy Sexual Assault Awareness” signs.
- Swarthmore does not discuss its institutional failures, specifically surrounding the activism of 2013, except to squelch contemporary concerns.
For Prospective Students
(Written by the owners of the SPR website, in spring 2017.)
Ask your admissions officers about how Swarthmore mishandles sexual assault…
Why?
Because, statistically speaking, sexual assault is likely to impact your life and/or that of your friends while you are here. Because the way that the college handles — or mishandles — sexual assault on campus has a profound impact on the experiences and wellbeing of students.
As a prospective student, you have a right to know what Swarthmore has done in the past — and what they will continue to do unless we force them to change their policy and practice. This is not a unique problem to Swarthmore — sexual assault and the response to sexual assault are issues here because they are issues in the larger work. But Swarthmore administrators have the power to make changes, to hold sexual assailants accountable, and to support and protect survivors. As you think about entering this community, we want you to have this in mind. Wherever you go, these are important issues. We hope that you will ask not only the Swarthmore administrators you meet today, but the admissions officers and administrators at every school you visit this spring, about how they handle sexual assault. Wherever you end up, we hope that you will hold the college administration accountable.
The main page of this website outlines the ways that Swarthmore consistently and systematically mishandles sexual assault. If you have questions, you can contact us.
On Swarthmore’s Fraternities
(Written by the owners of the SPR website, in spring 2017.)
Some criticisms of the “SwatProtectsRapists” website have been centered mostly on the mention of fraternities as a part of Swarthmore’s problem with sexual violence. Why do we need to talk about fraternities here at all when fraternities at Arizona State are so much worse? Aren’t we better than the University of Alabama? It’s appalling that so many public proponents of free-speech and productive discourse dismiss these concerns as “fraternities this, fraternities that”. Given the power dynamics we will discuss here, this wish to silence dissent and suppress critical voices is especially effective. There is a reason this essay must be anonymous and why it cannot reference personal details or stories. However, we will address some of these concerns here. Let’s first respond to the myth that Swarthmore is not like other schools and these fraternities are not like other fraternities. Here, we will examine how Delta Upsilon and Phi Psi specifically Swarthmore College facilitate sexual violence and protect sexual predators.
Your ownership of fraternity houses is inherently dangerous. You own these houses, control their operation, create their dynamics, and selectively enforce rules. Your network of alumni bestows even further resources that prohibit meaningful discipline, change, or regulation. This deep inequality, between fraternity members and everyone else, particularly women and marginalized people, is hugely consequential. You decide who can drink and how much. You decide who can play games, who can dance on stage or on the balcony, who gains access to your most private spaces. You interact and develop relationships to Swat Team, Public Safety, and administrators who have decision-making power. Your inordinate amount of power within these spaces makes sexual interactions necessarily imbalanced, potentially coercive, and easily violent.
Your right to these spaces is mythical. You pay dues, yes, but you alone are given the opportunity to exchange a few hundred dollars for social power, space, and access that you do not deserve. You provide visitors beer and a place to dance twice a week and so you believe you are doing the community enough of a service. You believe this disqualifies you from accountability and standards of behavior. You believe that because you and people like you have owned this space before, you will always be able to pay for infinite and unconditional access to it. Despite repeated disciplinary infractions, these spaces remain fundamentally yours. No one else is offered this contract nor can this exchange ever be fair or just.
This structure is inherently dangerous but your actions within it prevent the imaginability of improvement. You create and maintain a distinctly hypermasculine culture through the language, behavior, and values you normalize. You structure the physical space such that you center yourselves, literally and figuratively, whether playing games or surveying visitors. This is you actively enacting power and creating an environment that centers only your joy, comfort, and safety. Your hazing and initiation processes encourage harming others, pushing physical boundaries, and aggressive behavior– it implicitly defines masculinity and friendship along these lines. You knowingly hold sexual predators within your ranks. They are your friends, leaders, and brothers. You don’t hold these members accountable and instead ignore their actions, bypass their disciplinary restrictions, and render their behavior socially acceptable by virtue of your silence.
We know these realities through the experiences of ourselves and others.You use slurs, grope women, ignore and marginalize students of color, berate queer couples, and intimidate partygoers. You bring incapacitated women to your bedroom, pull them into your brothers-only sanctum and call this consensual. And if you don’t, your brothers do and you watch and stay silent. Sexual assault happens within your fraternity, by fraternity members, and is enabled through fraternity culture.
We know these realities through history. From their inception, fraternities were designed to be exclusionary pockets of prestige and power. Fraternities will never be equitable, fair, good, even safe, for women or people of color or queer people. They are not meant to be. The experiences shared here are from those who have felt, perhaps naively, comfortable enough to enter these spaces in the first place. There are students on campus who do not feel safe enough to even enter a fraternity party. The very recent history of Swarthmore reflects that time and context has not alleviated these dynamics. It is just 4 years after a queer man was told there were “no fags allowed” in Phi Psi. It is just 4 years after a Title IX investigation was initiated against Swarthmore College for its mishandling of sexual assault, partially concerning fraternities and fraternity brothers. It is just 4 years after the emergence of vicious backlash to this activism, including intimidation, death threats, rape threats, intrusion and harassment. Before you dismiss activist efforts in 2017, familiarize yourself with our very recent history.
You must listen. You may not recognize yourself in these descriptions. However, the multitude of students who have experienced discomfort, harassment, and violence in these spaces and because of them certainly will. We are your peers, classmates, and fellow community-members. Take these experiences at face-value without rushing to the uncritical immediate defense of your organization, team, or friend group. Violence you have not identified as such does not make it any less destructive.
We must see ourselves in this violent system. We have all likely been a perpetrator, bystander, survivor, ally, or any combination of these identities. Creating a climate free of violence requires listening, believing, and identifying. These dynamics emanate outwards and emerge from a variety of sources in different ways. You are not exempt because you are not in a fraternity. You are not exempt because you are not like other men. Your complacency allows these dynamics to persist.
The amount of social power you hold continues to prevent the private or public articulation of concerns, whether through Title IX complaints or non-anonymous op-eds. No amount of workshops, feedback forms, or event descriptions will change the intrinsic and entrenched power dynamics of space, ownership, and entitlement. These are not neutral spaces, these are institutionally violent spaces. Fraternity members will likely not give up their undeserved, unearned and dangerous power. Swarthmore College must act and make them.
The question at hand is not “why are we talking about frats when we’re talking about sexual violence?” but “how can we not?”.
On Triggering
(Written by the owners of the SPR website, in spring 2017.)
We have heard some feedback about how we have shared the link to and message of this site, and we would like to respond here. The issue raised is that reading messages like “Swarthmore mishandles sexual assault” and “Swat protects rapists” in public spaces around campus can be triggering to survivors of sexual assault. We want to address this very serious concern, because the mental health and wellbeing of survivors is of the utmost importance to us. In fact, it underlies all of our efforts.
First, we think it is important to note that this line of critique has been used by the Swarthmore administration, disingenuously, to stifle the voices of survivors. For instance, the administration canceled the Clothesline Project which many survivors used to anonymously share their experiences, under the pretense that it was potentially triggering, and denied suggestions by members of the survivor community to modify the project instead of cancelling it. If the administration cared about triggering victims of trauma, they would enforce trigger warnings in courses and other areas on campus. If the administration cared about the emotional well-being of survivors of sexual assault, there would be ample evidence in their policy and practice, but there is not. For these reasons, we deny the legitimacy of any claim made by the administration that they are removing our posters, banners, etc out of a concern for survivors and their potential triggers.
The critique we take more seriously is the one made by survivors themselves. To those individuals: it is not our intention to cause you any pain or trauma, and we apologize to anyone who has had that experience. We hope that it is clear to anyone who has read our platform that our efforts are motivated by concern for survivors. We, the creators of this site, have had personal experiences with Swarthmore protecting rapists and failing to support survivors. We are motivated by these experiences to disseminate the information and concerns listed here.
We understand that “Swat protects rapists” is an upsetting message. It is an upsetting message because it is an upsetting reality.
While we have never intended to hurt any survivors, we do stand by our methods. The administration has been given many opportunities to make meaningful change and has not acted upon them. We have turned to these means out of necessity, not out of a lack of careful thought. We believe that, in any context, a critique must be leveled in proportion to the power of the actors being critiqued — which in this case means that while you may critique us, you must level a harsher critique at the people with power, those who created the situation that necessitated our dissent and our methods. The primary target of your criticisms must be the administration that has failed to protect and support so many survivors. The problem is not that we have said “Swat protects rapists” — the problem is that Swat protects rapists.
