The Red Dress

I was a few weeks into my freshman year when I got the call from a senior I didn’t know, inviting me to a semi-formal party. I told him I wanted to meet him first, so we met on campus and chatted a while, before agreeing he would pick me up the next Friday for the event.

I asked how he found my name and number, and he explained that he and his friends had picked dates out of the book of incoming freshman students. Not FACEBOOK, but a face book, a slim booklet that included each freshman’s head shot, hometown, and campus phone number. I had sent my high school senior portrait in over the summer to be included. Apparently, when a bunch of upperclassmen were combing through the pictures, my face caught a young man named Brian’s eye. On Friday I put on a red silk dress, another holdover from high school days, and went to the party.

Those first few weeks of college had been exhilarating, with the heady intensity of summer camp. There were so many people to meet in my co-ed dorm, classes, campus Christian groups, friends of friends from back home, and during sorority rush. I was seventeen years old, and in those early weeks I had kissed more boys (3) than I had in all of my years of high school combined (1). Going to a party with someone I had just met did not feel strange in any way. I felt flattered, and it seemed like just one more way of saying yes to the college experience.

Things would eventually slow down as some of the early friendships flamed out, and we settled into lasting relationships, some of which are still strong 27 years later. My kissing stats would diminish considerably, too, as I began dating a friend from another college.

But what happened on that date?

Well, I met Brian’s friends. We danced for a while, with me slipping around in my black suede pumps on the beer-covered linoleum floor. It was loud and hot in the party room. If he had asked if I wanted to go upstairs to his room, I would have said yes, welcoming a quiet place to hang out and talk. Yes, talk. Not that I didn’t find him attractive. He was at least 6’2”, blond, and strong—a college athlete. But he never asked, so when the party ended, he walked me home, and we kissed a bit under the buzz of a fluorescent light outside my dorm.

You may have read the Rolling Stone article last week about another freshman girl, in another red dress, at another Virginia college. Her date with an upperclassman ended much differently than mine did. It is a long, difficult read, but it is well worth your time.

It will likely disgust you, and make you think. The story has gained a lot of traction in the past few days and has resulted in UVA suspending all sorority and fraternity activity while the allegations of sex abuse on campus are investigated.

The article made me reflect on my college years and how grateful I am that with all of the parties I went to, no one treated me with anything other than respect. Some of my friends would have vastly different experiences to share. You could say that I made good decisions when it came to alcohol, hung out with the right crowd, and somehow let it be known what my standards were. Maybe those things came into play, maybe not, but they shouldn’t matter in whether someone is sexually assaulted or not.

Sexual assault is wrong.

Period.

The article reminded me of that long-forgotten date, my red dress, and an upperclassman who had picked my face out of a book.  The key difference between the two stories is that my date was not a rapist. He and his friends did not plan and collude how to brutalize me and then go about their college years with impunity.

As a mother, I wouldn’t be thrilled if my daughter went out with someone who picked her from a book  (website) because of her looks, and quite possibly because of her youth and vulnerability. I was only 16 years old when that picture Brian saw was taken. But my daughter and your daughter would have every right to do so and not be harmed! Of course I will try to instill in her the self-confidence I had, the idea spending time with me was worth it because of who I was, not what I could provide physically.  I will tell her to keep her phone on her, to never leave a drink unattended, to use the buddy system.

But I realize it was not my self-confidence or safety rituals that kept me safe. It was the young men I spent time with. And that seems to come down to luck more than anything. I barely knew these guys. They, too, were in fraternities. They, too, were often immature and sometimes ruled by mob mentality—abusing alcohol and at one point taking searing hot coat hangers and branding their skin with fraternity letters.

I don’t know how those young men were raised differently than the ones who rape.

Than the ones who look at women as worthless, but then go home to spend Thanksgiving break with their mothers and sisters.

Who are never held accountable for their brutality, but then go on to get married and have their own little boys and girls to raise. It feels hopeless.

There is so much darkness in these situations, and it can play out for generations.

So I am grateful for the Rolling Stone article, because it will shed light on sexual assault, get us talking, and hopefully send a message to rapists that what they are doing is not okay.

And I don’t think my daughter should have to be counted as LUCKY if she somehow manages to avoid this kind of evil.  It’s what she and every girl deserves.

UPDATE: If you have followed this story in the news, you now know that the article was completely discredited and that the victim in the story made up the assault. I am leaving this post up because the topic of college sexual assault is very real and so important, but I am disappointed that a sham of a story that should have been fact-checked could set victim's rights back on campuses.