Rape Is Rape. And It's Always Wrong. Always.

The Vancouver police have a great series of
 Don't Be That Guy posters. Click
 to see more.

Is it that hard to understand?
No means no.
Too drunk to say "no" is too drunk to say "yes."
"Uh" is not "yes."
"Don't. Stop." is not the same as, "Don't stop."

Too many people with power ~ politicians, DA's, police and the media, cannot seem to grasp the concept that rape is assault. Rape is a crime of power. It is violent (usually physically, always emotionally). It is a violation. Rape is always, always, always wrong. Repeat after me: Rape is wrong. Keep saying it until you get it drilled into your skull. No one asks for it. No one deserves it.

Recently, I learned about the Red Zone. Not the football term, exactly, but there is a frightening correlation. In football the Red Zone is the twenty yards before the end zone, it's where the offense asserts its will over the defense so they can score. On college campuses, Freshmen Orientation to Thanksgiving break is known as the Red Zone because of the frequency of campus rapes, particularly against freshmen.

A freshman at Hobart William Smith made it two weeks before she was raped by football players. And then the school violated her all over again. She is a brave, strong woman who is speaking out against the culture of rape. I read her story in the New York Times and alternated between nausea and fury when I read how the college handled her case. Rape is a violent crime. It should never be handled by campus disciplinary boards ~ violent crimes should always be handled by the police.

Wesleyan University had a fraternity so bad it was known as the Rape Factory. In March of 2010, school officials warned students to avoid the building because they could not guarantee students' safety. In the fall of 2010, incoming freshmen were not told of the warning and attended a party. A freshman who was raped that October got no help from the school ~ she reported the Saturday night rape but was not taken to the hospital, nor was she provided a counselor. In fact, she was told to wait for her exam until the student clinic reopened on Monday.

In 2013 another freshman at Wesleyan attended a party at a different fraternity. Pledges at that party were required to strip. Hazing is a form of torture perpetrated by coercion, and sometimes violence. Hmmm. . . can we guess where this is going? One girl wanted to leave (who can be comfortable watching people be publicly humiliated?) Instead of being allowed to leave, she was thrown over the arm of a couch and raped while a crowd watched.

Parents, do not send your children to Wesleyan. I don't care how good the academic education may be, the social education is horrific.

The connection between sexual assault & fraternities is nothing new. My freshman year at Wells College (way back when Reagan was president) we were all invited to a ball for freshwomen held at a fraternity at Cornell. The ball was an annual event ~ the fraternity drove to Wells College, picked up the girls who wanted to attend and drove us to Ithaca. The greeted us with champagne. It was a formal dance. It seemed so very grown-up. And that year, unlike past years, they assured everyone there would be rides home. Some girls took the precaution of signing up for the last campus van of the night anyway. I had a friend with a car. I knew to go to the bar and order my own drinks and never let anyone else hold my drink. I was a drinker in high school, I knew my limits. Nonetheless, I ended the evening on the patio, puking in the corner.

I was very lucky.

Months later, a friend shared the information she'd heard ~ there were two sets of bottles. One for the frat boys & their dates, another for the "guests". Ours contained Quaaludes. Apparently, I have a sensitivity to 'ludes, and I'm very happy about that. Another friend then explained how she had been molested, two others ended up having sex with guys they didn't know and didn't really remember consenting to. Of the seven girls I had known at that party, at least three were sexually assaulted.  No one told either of the colleges, or the police, or even their friends for a long time. They were so ashamed. They'd been drinking. They were at a fraternity.

Here's the deal: they made have made themselves more vulnerable ~ but they did not deserve to be raped. No one ever deserves to be raped. Nobody. Deserves. Rape. EVER!

When headed off to college, one should worry about making friends, doing well in their classes, making sound financial decisions. One should not have to worry about rape. Longwood University gets it, as you can see by their page on sexual assault at their student health webpage. They are very clear about consent ~ they even have good info for victims. They specify that the police will take you to the hospital and the state will pay for the rape exam. Some victims refuse the rape exam because they worry about the bill.

So what can we do? How do we destroy the Red Zone? We destroy the myth that rape is about sex ~ rape uses sex as a weapon, it is about power ~ rape may be the ultimate bully act. We stop blaming the victims. We start blaming the rapists. No one should be shamed into leaving school for reporting an assault; the perpetrator should be shamed into leaving school. They should be tried by the courts, not the school's disciplinary board.

We can watch out for everyone. There are no limitations to who can be a rapist, or a victim. If you see someone who looks too far gone and get a bad feeling about the person helping, speak up. If you're getting nowhere (or you're afraid for your own safety) ask for help. Call 911. Don't ignore that sick feeling in your stomach.

Think of sex like a contract, anyone who can't validly sign a contract cannot consent to sex. Talk about rape; make it clear what rape is and that you are so not okay with it. Create positive peer pressure. If party-goers at the above linked stories had spoken out, maybe those girls wouldn't have been raped. And wouldn't you rather be the person who stopped a violent crime, than the one who stood around watching?

I Love My City, But. . . .

I love my city. I really do. Minneapolis is an amazing, vibrant, cosmopolitan, beautiful city. Four-hundred-thousand people call Minneapolis home, that's big enough to be a full-fledged city, small enough to still feel welcoming. There is an image of Minneapolis as a lily-white expanse of bo-ring. That is the image carried by people who don't know us.

In fact, more than one out of three residents is not white, one in eight is LGBT, and a surprisingly large percentage are not Scandinavian Lutherans. We have scads of immigrants from around the world and we embrace that diversity.

We have an extraordinary cultural life. Only New York City offers more live theatre per capita. Everyone knows Prince, but did you know we also have an orchestra? And we've more polka bands than you can shake a stick at. Oh, that one just feeds the stereotype, doesn't it?

We are the third most literate city in America (although, I'm not sure that's saying much) based on things like bookstores, newspaper circulation, education. We have produced some writers. We have   scads of museums and boatloads of artists. Seriously, everyone in Minneapolis who isn't a writer or an artist, knows one. It's like actors in LA.

There're plenty of sports here. Minneapolis is home to the NFL, MLB & NBA along with the U of M Golden Gophers. We having bowling, golf, tennis, even free public bocci ball courts. Foodies are truly blessed. There is a steakhouse from the 1930's that has a trout stream in the patio so you can catch your own fish, a tiki bar on the river with a double-decker patio, a lobster shack and fifteen places that have been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives. You even have the option of wood- or coal-fired pizza. We have ethnic restaurants like crazy: Greek, German, Indian, Ethiopian, Polish, Japanese, Swedish, Lebanese, Vietnamese ~ and they're good!

And the parks. Oh the parks. We have so many parks (197, to be precise). Big parks & little parks and they're always free (although parking'll cost a buck or two). There are more than a dozen lakes within the city limits, oodles of playgrounds, ballfields and nature sites. There are miles of parkways looping around the lakes and along the river (both sides). Even with all that water, we still have pools in the parks, swimming pools in some and wading pools in most. We have a rose garden, a wildflower garden and a tamarack bog. Don't forget Minnehaha Park ~ with the famous falls and paths along the creek all the way to the Mighty Mississippi.


But, she has her flaws. Her flaws are not small.

The crime rate is frightening, particularly on the Northside ~ known as NoMi. Thirteen (of a citywide fifteen) shootings in the first two weeks of July occurred in NoMi. There have been seventeen murders in Minneapolis between January 1 and July 14. That would be an annual rate of less than ten per hundred thousand ~ not too bad, unless it's you or someone you care about. But twelve of those homicides have been in NoMi, population about 60,000, which puts my neck of the woods at a homicide rate of forty per one hundred thousand, third worst among cities in the US (based on 2012).

After a while, you feel ignored by City Hall. We can't even get rid of the damn mattresses. That is not a non-sequiter. Inexplicably, mattresses are drawn to the streets of NoMi. Mattresses waiting by the alley ~ next to the garbage can, especially around the first of the month, when renters move ~ are understandable. But we get them everywhere. There was one on dumped on a boulevard garden on Dowling Ave (very high-traffic street) that took days for the sanitation department to pick up.  Another was floating in a flooded street last week. There are so many mattresses that many residents have decided St Mattress must be our patron saint.  We just haven't figured out whether the mattresses are gifts from, or offerings to, St. Mattress.

What do the mattresses have to do with murder rate? Everything & nothing. Weird litter does not cause crime. But the number of calls to the city asking to have these frighteningly stained health hazards removed is often absurd. We all know that a dirty futon lying in a vacant lot in South Minneapolis would be promptly removed. Betcha they don't get put on hold by 911 as often as the NoMi folks either. And Betsy "I'm the Mayor" Hodges Tweets quotes from Thoreau while the police chief wants us all to get along.

We're tired of feeling like the forgotten stepchild. Most of the residents of NoMi are good people who care about our neighborhood. We want action. When we call about an upholstered public health issue, we want it gone. No more drive-by policing, if someone calls, the cops need to get out of their cars. Hollering, "everything okay here?" from the driver's seat is not policing. Slumlords need to be held accountable for the condition of their rental property.

It's time to stop ignoring the Northside. We need help from City Hall. We deserve it.