Dear Rutgers,

TW: abuse, sexual assault, greek life

Rutgers University's offices (OFSA, TITLE IX, VPVA, Student Affairs) held an open forum to discuss how they've conducted sexual violence related situations and although i couldn't speak at it, I sent the following slides in a letter to the admin.

I'm grateful for those survivors RU has found justice and guidance for, although Rutgers prides itself on being one of the most forward and progressive schools with violence, it still has a long way to go:

To whom it may concern,

Hi! I just graduated from Rutgers and was unable to make it to the forum Monday night but did have a lot on my mind to say after a lot of personal experiences and even from my peers’.

TW: The biggest and overall feeling I have had while working with everyone in Student Affairs/Conduct, from The Office Of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs (OFSA) to Title IX was that us students were heavily treated as a case number, not as humans. I get that working behind a desk can be boring or wanting the clock to hit 5 and home is high on your minds but it shouldn’t feel like that to us as survivors and students whether we’re asking for advice or getting help because we’re scared. I’m not sure if CAPS is in on this but that’s a whole other issue to tackle, I’ve never once heard a good experience with that office. In fact most people have left even more upset and worse off. Many people didn’t come to the forum because they felt like this forum was a formality from Rutgers to look like something was being done so why put themselves through the pain of opening up about their experiences for no reason? I get that. Their experiences also consisted of VPVA needing to be more heard of by students, even RAs are not aware of the office, and the exposure to VPVA needs to go past one table at orientation. CAPS has made students feel worse off, and lets their receptionists sign off on mental health checks for students. As in if a student hasn’t been feeling their best and needs a follow up appointment that is required, they walk in, the receptionist has literally said “do you feel like killing yourself / are you suicidal, yes or no” and obviously most people are going to say no. And they just sign off themselves and let the student go. How is this okay??? Why have I heard this by so many people, so many times and not one SINGLE remotely positive experience.

The school also needs to do a better job reforming CAPS but more than anything promoting VPVA and other CONFIDENTIAL resources that can then help guide students to what they’re comfortable doing from Title IX to others. I get VPVA is a small office but it should have A LOT more exposure and promotion done whether that’s hosting mandatory events for every student per semester/year or just making sure the office is even heard of by students. I get it, it’s hard there are thousands of students but if thousands know about football games and hot dog day, I think VPVA’s confidential resources and support system can be promoted more.

After a lot of students as well as myself posted our stories on social media over the past month, and after having a personal blog for two years geared towards interpersonal violence and mental health, I’ve seen and heard a lot of stories at Rutgers, almost 90% (which is still low balling it) of which nothing was done. In fact if I go into my own experiences and show you how I failed several times. Now imagine thousands of students who have gone through those similar experiences. Let’s say Rutgers has 50,000 students. Let’s aim low and even say that there’s 22k students who identify as males and 24k who identify as females, that still leaves 4K who are non binary/chose to not identify. Since 1/4 of women in college have experienced some kind of sexual assault/advances, that means SIX THOUSAND FEMALE STUDENTS have experienced this. That 6,000 doesn’t even include the male and non binary survivors. There’s universities that only have 6,000 students total. And you know it’s much more, because even more survivors chose not to report.

I know this is long I get it, but my entire college career was severely affected by the result of Rutgers services like yours and I don’t deserve it, nobody does. Not because I paid to go here or because I’m someone’s daughter or sister, no PERSON deserves this and I speak for plenty when I say these things.

My freshman year I went to a different university while my perpetrator went to Rutgers. Not only had he raped me right before we went off to college but he also abused me physically and emotionally to the point where I had to choose that out of state school to get away. But he took underaged, compromising pictures of me that I didn’t consent to or even have knowledge of and sent them to my parents, friends and family members for my entire freshman year. Rutgers was made aware of this and still nothing happened. He harassed my Rutgers friends and stalked them and still Rutgers didn’t do anything. It got so bad it took a financial toll on my family and I had to transfer to Rutgers for my sophomore year. Nothing changed, and my previous school put me in contact with offices on campus which made me go out of my way as a new student to have meetings that turned out to be just as a courtesy. They offered their pity and that’s it. This included a random office on Cook Douglas, one on college ave, and Title IX. Honestly I didn’t even know about VPVA until a friend who worked for HOPE told me about them. I get that I’m a small percentage of students who did not have the traditional orientation as a freshman and such but I am a student nonetheless and that one orientation should not be the only time certain resources are touched on.

One month into my time at Rutgers, my perpetrator uploaded my underaged images to pornhub and sent the link to me and my dad. I called VPVA because it was the only number I knew of for immediate help and about two hours later was called back to go to the yellow room. Two hours with child pornography online with my name and face everywhere but it was deemed not an urgent/ immediate matter. I went into this unknown office with people I’ve never met before and shared every detail of the past year or so and everything that led up to this and despite me sharing that none of the 14 offices at my previous school, 3 different police stations, or the 3 offices I already spoke to at Rutgers had helped, yet again nothing happened. I know I could’ve used counseling but what about the issues that were taking place RIGHT THEN? What about a solution to everything that was causing my mental health to go bad?

it only continued to get worse and my perpetrator loved that I was in NJ but nobody helped.

One year later it was my junior year and the day before classes started, I was sexually assaulted by a classmate who was (unsurprisingly enough) in a fraternity. Less than 24 hours after it, another survivor came to me and told me he had done worse to her. In just 24 hours someone I’ve never met before spoke up about him, imagine all the females that came forward after that, and all who couldn't. I fought back and forth with the frat and they gave me empty promises and excuses and then I finally went to OFSA. I went and spoke about the details “on behalf of a friend” because I didn’t want to share my name. Just because I wasn’t comfortable with my name on paperwork doesn’t mean a perpetrator should be able to roam free on campus. If I started an investigation he would’ve physically come for me as I have malicious threats. He sent his frat to come for me too. When I posted about MY experience on my personal blog, he used that to start an investigation against me. After 4 months of fighting with his frat I thought I had the first bit of peace all semester but no. A letter came to my home and disrupted my winter break and I was being called in to be investigated. I can’t believe Rutgers did more for him and gave him more resources than they did for me. But in my article I never mentioned his name frat or any distinguishing features so didn’t that mean he admitted to being the guy in the story? There’s a wrap on your investigation now why is Rutgers still coming for me, the one who’s trying to live with being assaulted. I had to prove myself and meet with student affairs and Title IX and meet with an advisor. Rutgers really just let a perpetrator walk around campus like that. And I was TIRED after the end so no I did not want to fight back and investigate him. But that’s on me, right? It should not be on a survivor to do that much more. Rutgers should still take this into their hands.

When I spoke to title ix and student affairs, I mentioned that other survivors had told me what happened to them and title ix took that as an excuse to go contact those survivors and find their stories in their files. Nobody wanted to be contacted and bothered but Rutgers disrupted their peace. Word even got back to the perpetrator about one small detail of another survivor's story and him and his frat harassed her and scared her till she graduated. They threatened her too. And Rutgers knew there was a predator on campus. It should be him vs Rutgers not me vs him when I have nothing left in me. I along with soo many others have been failed by the school so many times. We’re treated like case numbers and not humans. We’re ignored and have to fight for our peace and sanity while perpetrators walk free because we don’t want to lose more to fight them.

As if the internal fight isn’t enough and having to live with what happened isn’t enough you expect us to try to start an investigation or else nothing happens. But even when the few start an investigation, Greek life and athlete’s words come before ours. What happened to believing survivors. I get there’s a legal route and steps to take but Rutgers should take matters into their hands too. Protect their students more. Rutgers cares more about power outages on busch than sexual assault cases. Rutgers puts more time, money and effort into rupa events than sexual assault cases. Rutgers cares more about Greek life events than sexual assault and it’s a known fact. If Rutgers cared, people would have just as much information as they did about the next hot dog day or basketball game than they did sexual assault cases. Do more, do better.