Sex and Drugs in Tea at the Cabin in the Woods

A month ago the college showed a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses. The Great Room was full of students and the discussion after was candid and insightful. I had asked my students to write a reflection about their reactions to the film for extra credit. To my surprise, the young men had a much stronger reaction to the sexual assaults and the overwhelming tolerance of it on campuses across the USA than the young women had. One of the points made and repeated in the papers I received from my students was that the men or women who rape or sexually abused others don’t do this just one time, that it is a pattern of behaviors.

Yesterday we got a notice from the Provost that one of our program directors, a 30 year old male, was arrested. We were told he was suspended from his position and that if he or the media contacted any of us to report it to the Provost, our PR department and the local police. This evening I learned that he had gone for a drink after work on Tues. afternoon - after the all employee end of the semester celebration, at a local establishment and invited 2 female staff members to his apartment. They smoked a little pot and one of women started feeling weird and called her husband to come and pick her up. The other woman stayed at the apartment. The woman who left was contacted in the morning by the police and asked to go to the hospital for blood work. He had drugged them both and subsequently has been charged with rape of the other woman. This is a handsome man, bright and engaging - Why the HELL would he need to drug someone and rape her? That seems to fit the profile of many of the offenders who were high lighted in the documentary, which makes me wonder how many of our students did he assault and how many are going to come forward now? This is very sad and extremely disconcerting. No campus is safe from sexual assault, but ours is small and we can’t tolerate this type of behavior. The worst part is he worked with a lot of young women on a daily basis and now that most the students are away from campus, will we ever know if he hurt any of them? I hope this was the only time he did something like this - but the thought of it will be hard to shake.

Since I have been at this college, one professor was arrested for child porn and endangering a minor (14 year old boys), and one woman (a professional tutor) was charged with molesting a 10 year boy (this was proven to be a revenge move by an ex-husband - claiming she was sexually inappropriate with his son and that it never happened.) I have had at least a half dozen students claim to have been raped - one of them was severely traumatized and completely changed her - she had been a lively and engaged student who withdrew from everyone, suffered depression and began missing classes, making excuses and giving up on herself. She graduated last year and had turned things back around, but she was never the same girl I had gotten to know when she first got to campus. It is heart breaking, the long-term scars left behind after something like this.

We try to educate people, to teach them to be careful and as jaded as it sounds, to not trust anyone. What just happened only confirms this. Who do you trust these days?

Last updated May 21, 2015