Fraternity ‘infantile subculture’
Author: Male definition
of sexuality fosters rape
By Tabitha Hiner
Senior Reporter
Fraternity rape generally occurs in
“infantile male subcultures,” and needs
to be confronted with education and
the end of sadomasochistic rituals, a
rape awareness author said Monday.
Peggy Reeves Sanday, author of
Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Privilege
and Brotherhood on Campus, said the
behavior exhibited in “infantile male
subcultures” fosters rape by defining
male sexuality in biological terms.
“It’s the idea that if boys get drunk,
they can’t control these hormones,”
the University of Pennsylvania an
thropology professor said before a
mostly female audience of about 110
people in the Nebraska Union.
She said that because many young
people don’t know the legal defini
tion of rape, she would give the audi
ence the general wording. Rape is the
penetration of the body without con
sent — with the nonconscnt arising
from intoxication or some other rea
son, Sanday said.
The subculture leads to rape with
some of its excuses, she said.
One excuse is that “boys in the
subculture have the right and the privi
lege to get drunk and get laid” to get
away from the boredom of college,
she said.
Another cause of rape in the sub
culture occurs when boys define their
sexuality by the pornography they
watch, Sanday said.
This definition is called thc“pomo
mode,” she said, and it leads boys to
think that demeaning female sexual
roles are normal.
Sanday gave examples of three
rape cases that were observed by stu
dents who worked with her on her
book.
The first was “working the ‘yes’
/•*_
“ u -—
It’s the idea that if boys
get drunk, they can’t
control these
hormones.
Sanday
author of a book on fraternity
gang rape
-99 "
out.” This occurs when a female is
coerced into saying “yes” to sex, she
said.
One of her students heard frater
nity brothers talking about how “no
means no at the moment, but there
might be some other way of getting
the ‘yes’ out.”
“Working a ‘yes’ out” is com
monly done through alcohol, she said.
“Pulling train” occurs when men
line up like a train and rape a girl who
is either passed out or too weak to
protest, Sanday said. There have been
110 documented cases of “pulling
train” in the past decade, she said.
An initiation ritual that has mem
bers rid themselves of femininity is a
third case in which demeaning sexual
actions arc encouraged, Sanday said.
She read a transcript of a ritual in
which fraternity pledges were blind
folded with maxi-pads, had their scro
tums painted with Ben-Gay and were
submerged in ice water.
They then drank a mixture of sour
milk, hot peppers and squid until they
vomited the femininity out of them,
she said.
A rape-free campus can be en
couraged by enforceable alcohol and
sexual harassment policies, counsel
ors who specialize in rape and rape
prevention and judicial procedures
that deal specifically with sexual abuse,
Sanday said.
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Admissions
Continued from Page 1
“Pan of what disturbs me about
this is that there are a variety of ways
of judging students. Bad grades in
high school do not always mean
someone is not able,” he said.
McShane said there are political
as well as academic concerns involved.
“The political support for this in
stitution will not be served in the long
haul by telling more and more people
in the state of Nebraska that they
cannot come here,” he said.
NU Regent Rosemary Skrupa of
Omaha was more receptive to tougher
standards.
• “I’m in favor of raising academic
standards, but not to the point it be
comes exclusionary,” she said.
“I hope it (the debate) sends a
message to high schools that they
need to send us better-prepared stu
dents.”
UNL currently is admitting “quasi
rcmcdial” freshmen, Skrupa said.
She said that requiring competency
tests in English, writing and math for
admittance to UNL would be an ap
propriate standard.
Higher standards would not turn
UNL into an elitist institution, Skrupa
said.
“Harvard or Yale standards would
be elitist. We need reasonable stan
dards done fairly, thoughtfully and in
an organized way.
“College education is not the end
all of our society any more,” she said.
Regent Margaret Robinson of
Norfolk agreed.
“I approve of higher standards,”
she said. “We have to make sure our
J
students arc prepared to enter the
world.”
Robinson said she sees a need for
the kind of education that will pre
pare people not for the past, but for
the future.
“We need to move with the issues
that arc important to the 21st cen
tury.”
Regent Charles Wilson of Lincoln
said he is concerned about the issue of
raised standards.
“I think the whole state should be
concerned about it,” he said. “We
don ’ t want to become or be thought of
as an elitist institution.
“What’s happening right now is
Scott Maurer/Daily Nebraskan
the whole issue is being raised again
by the budget squeeze. It magnifies
the conflict between access and qual
ity.”.
Wilson said the university must
make a tough decision between open
access and declining quality or high
quality and limited access.
Joe Rowson, NU director of public
affairs, said NU President Martin Mas
sengale has announced he will form a
committee to review standards on all
four NU campuses.
Rowson said it has been a long
time since the university reviewed its
standards and it is probably time they
were looked at again.
Rape panel points to UNL liability
By Alan Phelps
Staff Reporter
The University of Nebraska-Lin
coln could be held responsible for
rapes in unsafe areas on campus,
members of a Monday afternoon panel
agreed.
Paul Campbell, a professor of crimi
nal justice at Wayne State College,
said that a college or university can
be held liable for rapes that occur on
campus.
“If you identify a rapist or a dan
gerous building or social situation,
then the college must by law do
something about it,” he said. “If this
was a shopping mall and somebody
was raped in the parking lot, then the
next victim owns that shopping mall.
They arc liable.”
About 70 people attended the panel
discussion as a part of a women and
violence workshop in the Nebraska
Union. The workshop was held in
conjunction with “Violence Against
Women Awareness Week.”
“It’s not the victim’s fault if she is
in a situation that’s high risk,” Mar
cee Metzger of the Lincoln Rape/
Spouse Abuse Crisis Center said.
“We need to hold the perpetrator
accountable.”
Metzger said that from 1984 to
1986, a campus security advisory
committee at UNL sent surveys to
women faculty members and some
women students asking them which
campus buildings they thought were
unsafe. All but one building, Metzger
said, was identified as unsafe. Only
two of the buildings have since been
brought up to the safety standards
recommended, she said.
Also in the report, 80 percent of
the women surveyed reported some
form of sexual harassment, and 25
percent of the cases would qualify as
sexual assault under state law, she
said.
UNL administrators have not re
leased the report, Metzger said.
Judith Alexander of the UNL
Women’s Resource Center called on
audience members to ask UNL In
terim Chancellor Jack Goebel to make
the report public. Those attending
also were urged to sign a petition as
they left the room.
“In the past four years I’ve heard
of rapes occurring at an alarming rate,”
Alexander said. “I’ve run into a lack
of concern on part of the administra
tors.”
Alexander said this lack of con
cern appears in many sectors of the
campus.
“When we were going around
asking groups for funding for this
event, we got little financial support,”
she said.
Zariski
Continued from Page 1
of the political science department
at the University of Califomia-Los
Angeles, as one former student who
keeps in touch.
“That’s a case of a student who
outdid his professor,” he says with a
laugh.
His own days as a student of
political science were sparked by a
passionate interest in the New Deal.
The period inspired him because
it seemed like it would produce a
better world.
“In many ways, I liked political
science more because of my values
----
than because of an interest in the
discipline.”
He says his father was another
major influence on his career.
His father was a mathematics
professor, he says, and a good one.
“He once wrote that mathematics
was a lovely lady that would never
desert him.”
Has political science been that
lovely lady for him?
“Well, an interesting one, at
least.”
Leaning back in his chair,
Zariski says he has enjoyed his
career but regrets not achieving
more earlier in life.
“When you are younger you
don’t think about life as much,” he
says. “But as you enter your 60s,
you start to ask if you have done
everything you could have.”
This from a man who by age 31
had received his undergraduate,
master’s and doctorate degrees from
Harvard, been awarded a Purple
Heart in World War II and had his
first journal article published.
Still, Zariski says he thinks he
hasn’t yet fulfilled his creative
abilities.
“I’ve done my best work since I
was 55. I’m 65 now, and I’ll
certainly go to 70 — maybe even a
little longer.”
When Zariski docs decide to
retire, he will have plenty of time to
catch up on his reading.
“I suppose I do have a lot of
books,” he says, laughing.
“But when you divide the
number by 30 or 40 years it’s not so
many a year.”
[ Work at the , , » .
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