New Strategies Proposed to Fight Gang Rape on Campus

What’s the worst that could happen to a woman at a college party? She could mortify herself by showing up in the same outfit as her best friend. She could argue with her date.

Or she could be gang raped.

In a report issued two years ago, the Assn. of American Colleges in Washington, D.C., uncovered more than 50 gang rapes on college campuses in recent years, most occurring at parties. As if to underscore the severity of the problem, there occurred at about the same time a much-publicized alleged gang rape at a San Diego State University fraternity party (in November, 1985), then another at the University of California, Berkeley, last September.

Parties Can Be Trouble

The college party has become what the proverbial dark alley once was--a place where a woman had better be prepared for trouble. And now several California campuses are acknowledging that fact by teaching party survival tactics to female students.

UC Irvine has issued a pamphlet, “How to Party Without Regrets”; and the women’s center there is offering seminars for sorority women on prudent party behavior. UC Santa Barbara recently followed suit with a “Let’s Party” bookmark that suggests students take out “party insurance” by adhering to a set of safe party tactics.

At Berkeley, Rape Prevention Education coordinator Roberta Friedman said that “an incredible amount of attention has been paid to the issue of rape since last semester’s gang rape. People got scared and wanted information.”

She said the rape education program is counseling twice as many women as it did before the incident. (The victim in the Berkeley case recently announced she intends to sue the university and the four football players named in the case.)

A Grim Variation

Jacqueline Sherman, coordinator of the rape prevention and education program for UC Irvine, said gang rape is simply a grim variation of a prevalent campus problem: acquaintance rape.

In a typical gang-rape scenario, she said, the victim might have dated one of her attackers, who invites his pals to join in the sexual assault.

“There’s an incredible sense of betrayal,” she said. “Here are all these guys you sit with in class, and they all betrayed you. This leads to problems with intimacy that come up later. That’s hard stuff to get over.”

Mark Stevens, a psychologist in the student counseling center at USC, said gang rape is worse than single-assailant rape because the victim feels more shame, and the conspiracy of the rapists creates a silence “that no one is willing to break.”

The shame of the victim may keep her from reporting the crime; and the brotherhood of the rapists may prevent a confession, he said.

Stevens said his campus has targeted members of sports teams and fraternities as the most likely perpetrators of gang rape. Elements common in fraternity life--male bonding, alcohol consumption and rituals with overtones of violence such as rush week--amount to a prescription for gang rape, he said.

Sherman of Irvine is careful not to single out the Greek system as the sole culprit in the gang-rape problem, although one of the scenarios in the “How to Party” pamphlet, which Sherman helped develop, does take place in a fraternity house.

Male Dynamic a Factor

Sherman said the attackers are often “groups of men who don’t have a real strong sense of self, and who tend to oversubscribe to traditional male roles.” That dynamic can exist in fraternities, or among “jocks,” she said.

Fraternities, which in the past have often reacted defensively to accusations of wrongdoing among their members, seem to be taking a different tack with the rape issue. One fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, has distributed a poster depicting “The Rape of the Sabine Women” with the caption: “Today’s Greeks Call It Date Rape. Just a Reminder from Pi Kappa Phi. Against Her Will Is Against the Law.”

Sherman is trying to interest UC Irvine fraternities in taking part in rape education workshops similar to those she offers for sorority women.

A senior at Irvine, Mike Egan, recently asked his 50 brothers in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity to vote on whether they wanted to meet with Sherman to discuss acquaintance rape. The consensus was positive.

This willingness to talk surprised Egan. Normally, he said, “you talk about rape to a guy and it shuts him up right away. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

‘Might Think It’s All Right’

When asked why the reticence, Egan said that college men might want to avoid the subject in order to head off an unpleasant conflict--their own values may permit varying degrees of force in procuring sex, while anti-rape activists say any forcible sex is rape.

“I think they (his fraternity brothers) don’t know the real definition of rape,” Egan said. “If they’re on a date, they might think it’s all right to get a little forcible with a girl and go ahead and have sex with her.”

Even Egan, who grew up in what he describes as a conservative household in Long Beach, said the message he got from society as a youth was that it was permissible under certain circumstances to force a woman to have sex.

“It’s culture, I guess,” he said. “It’s the way people are brought up.”

He attributes his recent dabbling in anti-rape activism to the fact that, at 28, he’s outgrown some of the beliefs held by his younger fraternity brothers.

“As you get older, you see things in a different light.”

Women Also Ill-Informed

The sorority women that Sherman’s program has reached may be just as ill-informed as the men about the true definition of rape.

“They’re bright and they get it fast,” Sherman said. But misinformation abounds--for instance: It’s not rape if you know the guy .

Sherman starts off discussions of campus rape by asking women students to talk about the elements that make up a party.

“Music,” someone will say. “Guys.” “Booze.”

Then she encourages the women to talk about the overt decisions they make before going to a party: what to wear, whether to get their nails done, who to go with.

Covert Decisions Important

Then she asks them to consider covert decisions they may make before a party. Sherman said these are harder to elicit from students, but eventually someone will say something like: “I want to get a ride with Ellen so I’ll have an excuse to get Dave to take me home in his car.”

What Sherman tries to get the women to see is that certain covert decisions could lead to a setup in which a woman is vulnerable to assault. She could be separated from the friends who would look out for her; she could be intoxicated and exercise poor judgment.

(Reports said the women in the San Diego and Berkeley cases were inebriated when they were attacked.)

Sherman urges the women to build a safety plan into their party plans: Identify a support system; have a buddy at the party who’ll keep an eye on you if you’re drinking too much; learn what your sexual limits are, and learn to say no-- clearly.

(When Sherman conducts this workshop with fraternity men, she expects discussion to center on communication: how to determine whether a woman means yes or no, and how to communicate your own expectations.)

‘Why Are You Talking to Us?’

“Every single time we do this program,” Sherman said, “the women say: ‘Why are you talking to us? Why aren’t you talking to the guys?’ ”

Sherman wants to make clear that by counseling female students in party safety, she is in no way blaming the victims of gang or acquaintance rape.

“Men are responsible for rape. Period. Individual men--that doesn’t mean all men.”

The often-used analogy is: If you leave the keys in the car and someone steals it, it’s still an auto theft in the eyes of the law. In the same way, Sherman said, if a woman dresses provocatively or gets drunk and out of control at a party, it’s still a crime to rape her.

Sherman and associates are developing a companion pamphlet to “How to Party Without Regrets” that will be aimed at male students. The men’s pamphlet will include real-life scenarios in which gang rape has occurred. Male readers will be asked to challenge their own attitudes and beliefs in regard to the scenarios. They’ll be asked to think about what instigates gang or acquaintance rape, and they will be urged to take responsibility for making the campus a safer place for women.

Can Happen Anywhere

Lamia Gabal is a 19-year-old biology major at UC Irvine and a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority. A group of about 100 women from Gabal’s sorority recently met with Sherman.

“It’s hard to tell how needed (a gang-rape prevention program) is here,” Gabal said. “The Irvine campus is pretty tame compared to some.”

Sherman said that just because there have been no reported gang rapes at UC Irvine doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, or that it hasn’t already happened, since most acquaintance rape goes unreported.

Furthermore, she said, the Assn. of American Colleges report showed that gang rape has occurred at public and private, rural and urban, religious and secular institutions. “It happens everywhere,” Sherman said. “We’re not waiting until it happens here.”

Sorority member Gabal said that she is a little sister to a fraternity and that she is certain the men in the fraternity would never harm her.

‘Close Friends’ With Men

Why is she so sure?

“Because I’m close friends with all of the guys,” she said. There are 90 men in the fraternity.

Gabal said she has discussed the gang rape workshop with some of her friends in the fraternity. One man in particular thought the prevention program was a good idea.

“He has a little sister in a sorority,” Gabal said. “He doesn’t want that (rape) to ever happen to her; and, obviously, he doesn’t think he’d ever do it (rape a woman).”