I was sexually assaulted by four different men before I knew it was wrong

Content Warning: This Letter to the Editor contains details of sexual assault. If you or someone you know is suffering from trauma due to sexual assault, please consult this list of resources: William Jewell Student Health Center, MOCSA, William Jewell Office of Counseling Services or William Jewell Student Life. Please note that Student Life is a mandated reporter of assault, whereas the other resources listed are confidential. If you need immediate counseling, contact the MOCSA hotline at (816) 531-0233 or (913) 642-0233, or chat online with a trained staff member. 

Growing up, I was taught about consent. I knew “no means no” and that if people touched my body without a “yes” it was wrong. But as I grew up, I started to view my body and sexuality differently. 

I was a late bloomer. I didn’t get my first boyfriend until I was just about 18 years old. We talked about sex, and I knew it was important to him. I was excited to experience what I’d heard my friends talking about. After I lost my virginity (a phrase I am not particularly fond of), I began to think that sex was to be expected. I was there for enjoyment, and even on days when I wasn’t up to it, I let him use me for sex. There were many days where I did not consent and came out of the experience feeling worse than before he started. However, I thought that was how relationships were supposed to be and that as long as he said he cared about me it was fine. 

The next relationship I had was primarily focused on sex. I did not like that, so I told him we needed to stop having sex. I hoped that it would allow us to grow closer emotionally, but every night I would go to see him, he would coerce me into sex. Rarely did I want to, but I believed that my relationship depended on making him happy and entertaining him. 

There was a night I said “no” explicitly, but we still continued, and I allowed it. Afterward, he apologized and said he felt terrible, so I assumed it would be fine. After two relationships where consent was never at the forefront, I was beginning to think it was the same with every relationship. I was very wrong. 

A month before I came to college, I went on a date with a man seven years older than me. He kept asking for me to come over, and I was very uncomfortable at the thought of being alone with him. I decided that we could meet at a SONIC Drive-In. I did not want to go, but I felt the need to appease him. Immediately after entering his car, he was forcing me to kiss him and proceeded to put his hand down my pants. We were in public, in daylight, and his two-year-old kid was in the back seat. I attempted to talk to and play with his kid to try and get him to stop. After a few minutes I made an excuse and left. I did not tell anyone, and I went home feeling empty. 

I thought that he was just an anomaly or that I was somehow to blame. Like, maybe I said something to him that made him think that was what I wanted or that it was just expected out of me. My mom never talked about sex very much and my dad only made jokes about it. How was I supposed to know anything about sexual assault when all I knew were the extreme cases I watched in “Criminal Minds”? I was convinced it wasn’t really sexual assault because I didn’t end up bloody or with bruises or left in the middle of nowhere. 

When I came to college, I thought I would be safe. I knew campus was small and hoped it would be easy to assess which guys to avoid and which ones were keepers. I went to see an upperclassman boy. It was the third time we had spent time together. He wanted me to spend the night, and I did not. He wanted to have sex, and I did not. He continually tried to take my clothes off, and I said “nuh-uh” every time. He continued regardless. I did not want to ruin his fun or be a downer. After a while of repeating “nuh-uh,” I just stopped saying anything. After, he apologized, and I told him it was no big deal. I left feeling empty and swore I wouldn’t tell anyone.

I’m happy to say that I did tell someone. 

That someone is the reason I understand now that I am not something for men to use. My body is mine and is not for someone else’s entertainment. I finally understand that rape is not just the brutal and rough action depicted in crime shows. Rape is every time someone says “no” or “nuh-uh” or “not tonight” or “maybe later,” and the other person proceeds anyway. It took me 20 years to finally understand what rape really is, and it’s heartbreaking that it took that long.

I don’t know if anything could’ve stopped my rape, but I think I could’ve recognized sexual assault a lot sooner if I had been educated on more common forms of assault. I like to think that our generation will be the one to stop rape and sexual assault, but if we refuse to talk about it or don’t educate ourselves in the first place, it’ll never get better.

Everyone needs something different when it comes to trauma, so it’s important to respect boundaries. However, the only way to make the world a better place is to open up about our experiences and hope that someone will be there to listen and understand and help you through it all. It’s our job to be the understanding ones. The ones who want to help. The ones who will teach their friends, family and children about different forms of sexual assault and that their voices matter. No matter your story, no matter how much you think someone won’t listen or that you’re alone, there will always be someone who cares. Speak up, and act now.

If you or someone you know is suffering from trauma due to sexual assault, please consult this list of resources: William Jewell Student Health Center, MOCSA, William Jewell Office of Counseling Services or William Jewell Student Life. Please note that Student Life is a mandated reporter of assault, whereas the other resources listed are confidential. If you need immediate counseling, contact the MOCSA hotline at (816) 531-0233 or (913) 642-0233, or chat online with a trained staff member.

If you would like to submit a letter to the editor, please email monitor@william.jewell.edu.

“I don’t know what the language requirements are currently at Jewell,” Dr. Hoffman begins, as he proceeded to share his story as to how learning Spanish transformed him to who he is today. When hearing this starting phrase, the current students looked at each other, some with smiles, some with concern. These looks were exchanged because in November 2017, we were told that William Jewell College will no longer offer foreign languages and art as majors, and perhaps, foreign language may not even be required for students earning a bachelor of arts. In most recent news, Jewell will still offer a few foreign language classes but not enough for students to earn a degree in their foreign language of interest.

Prioritizing certain majors over others creates a hierarchy, and we cannot allow this. STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is exciting and cutting-edge, but these fields are not enough. Business, accounting and education are directly applicable majors to jobs, jobs that are necessary for our world to be sustainable and innovative. However, these fields are, again, not enough.

The above majors answer how the world functions, but humanities give us purpose and the answers to why we care about the world. Art and foreign language vastly broaden our communication and relationships with people around the world. Emotion is universal, and we can build relationships with people through the expression of visual and audio art. Learning multiple languages directly increases the number of people with whom one can communicate. If we expect WJC students to leave the Hill open-minded and learn about other cultures and traditions, we first must have the skills to adapt to languages other than our own.

The decision to cut these majors is not unique to Jewell. According to the US News and World Report, “[f]unds have been cut in more than 80 percent of U.S. school districts since 2008. The very first programs to go are often disciplines such as music, art and foreign language” (Boyd 2014). However, this does not make it permissible or without consequences for Jewell to join this bandwagon. If primary and secondary public schools are already cutting art programs, this limits the number of students that will have the resources to achieve their artistic potential. When these few students reach the end of their high school careers, and they see that well-respected William Jewell College does not offer art or foreign language as majors, it will reinforce that their preferred field is “unimportant.” This is dangerous because without the opportunity to study the history and creation of language and art we develop a hierarchy of fields of study. The humanities give us purpose, help our world flourish and maximizes our global communication.

Jewell did not cut art and foreign language majors because they wanted to; they cut the courses because, unfortunately, they felt like they had to in order to keep WJC financially afloat. We, as students, have to trust this is the best option, and WJC will recover. Once Jewell overcomes this financial challenge, I hope to see Jewell re-establish prestigious art and foreign language curricula so that the school can reclaim its title: The Liberal Arts College of the KC Metropolitan Area, or as some say, the Harvard of the Midwest. Until then, Jewell students will be missing key resources and skills on how to pursue meaningful lives.

Now, ten years older and nearly done with a degree in biochemistry, I think about that moment with more than a little bit of regret. I often wonder why my teacher didn’t take the opportunity to discuss scientific facts, the invisibility of CO₂accumulation, or how our society’s advancements are often ushered in by experts and not just-turned-12-year-olds. But, this was in the same middle school in which we watched a movie about the foretold 2012 Mayan apocalypse and watched a movie questioning the moon-landing. It wasn’t until eighth grade our science teacher drew a CO₂ molecule on the board and explained the principals of spectroscopy to us; light interacts with some types of gasses, like CO₂. If there’s more CO₂ there are more interactions, and thus more energy is absorbed in the form of heat. That made sense, but that night I saw a politician on TV say how climate change is fake and scientists can’t agree on it. The cognitive dissonance was real.

But that dissonance wasn’t just in my head. Since Al Gore lost the Presidential election to George W. Bush in 2000, a common delineator between the Left and Right of American politics has been the belief or disbelief in the existence of climate change. But, worldwide shifts in the past seventeen years have left the GOP as the only major political party in a developed country to hold a platform denying the existence of or science behind climate change. Republican climate-science denialism comes in many forms. Ten years ago, it came in the form of discrediting scientists by calling climate change a “hoax” based on fear and not science. More recently, most Republicans decided they’d rather abdicate their responsibility to take a position on climate science and how to react to it by simply claiming “I’m not a scientist.” This was a somewhat more amiable approach and seemed like a move towards acceptance of the science. Republicans like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal evenfollowed this statement with something like “I’d leave it [climate change] to the scientists to decide how much, what it means, and what the consequences are…” But, with the election of Donald Trump, who has said “Global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” and the appointment of Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a man who has sued the agency multiple times, it seems Republicans have relapsed into their complete denialism of climate change.

What does this mean for us?

Well, it doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening. But the point of this article is not to convince you that it is. It’s not really up for debate anymore, and if you want to read more about that, then check out this article.

As a scientist, when someone says they don’t believe in climate change, my immediate reaction is to want to explain it to them. I’ve always thought “oh, well somebody just hasn’t explained it well enough to them yet.” It seems that most scientists share this sentiment, as evidenced by the burgeoning amount of literature with titles like “12 tools for communicating climate change more effectively.” and the fact that Yale has a program dedicated to Climate science communication and the public’s perception of the issue. Inherent in this line of thinking is the scientific community’s belief that people aren’t dumb, the idea that a majority of Americans, when presented with facts and data that are easy to understand, will identify a trend and reach a conclusion that is probably right. This seems to be the case as today ~64% of Americans say they worry at least a fair amount about climate change according to Gallup.

But, what about the other 36%, and more specifically, what about the politicians who deny climate science?

As much as each party’s members likes to demonize the other side as being dumb, less intelligent, or illogical, it’s just not true. In example, Senator Ted Cruz went to Princeton for undergrad and then Harvard Law School. He’s not dumb. Yet, he’s called climate change science a “religion” and “pseudo-scientific theory.” To be honest, I don’t believe Ted Cruz or any other Republican leader truly thinks the science is fake or that climate change isn’t happening. I think they’re lying. I’m not naïve enough to think that a man who graduated valedictorian from his high school, went to Princeton, and then Harvard Law School while also garnering multiple national awards for debate is dumb enough to just not understand climate change. Rather, I think Ted Cruz and other Republican science-deniers do what they do because denying climate change exists postpones the discussion on what to do about. They are deftly aware of the economic impact legislation will have on their home states, like Ted Cruz’s Texas, which rely heavily on the oil or coal industries. They know, because their top campaign donors are the oil and coal companies which will be most affected by such policies. Three of Ted Cruz’s top campaign donors have energy, oil, or petroleum in their names.

These companies see policies battling climate change, like progressive carbon taxes and emission limits, as threats to their profits. That’s a valid concern. An equally valid concern is how to replace the coal and oil jobs that are lost due to these new regulations that limit carbon emissions. However, I don’t think buying politicians and telling them to just ignore or deny climate change is the best tactic. Because, then what do we do when Miami disappears into the Ocean because of rising ocean levels?

My point in saying all of this is that I think both Democrats and Republicans need to change their rhetoric sounding climate change. Republicans need to stop actively denying climate change and then create and offer up their own conservative solutions like the recently proposed carbon tax. A potential carbon tax was in-fact part of the reason the company I co-founded last March is engineering carbon-fixing microalgae for value-added compound production, and I’m confident the free-market will create solutions that end up replacing coal and oil jobs that are lost. As a Democrat, I think it’s important we more actively acknowledge the immediate economic cost of climate policies and the long term economic costs of climate change. We should also work on communicating the potential for innovation in green-energy to drive job growth as evidenced by more people working in solar energy than in gas and oil extraction within the U.S. To conclude, climate change denial has to stop. A person has to acknowledge they are sick before they decide which medication to take, and we must acknowledge climate change exists before we can craft the best response. Whether we like it or not, some type of change is coming. We should plan it ourselves. If we don’t, nature will, and that doesn’t end well for us.