Institutional inertia: (n) an institution at rest remains at rest, until acted upon by the student body Despite decades of protests, the university’s response to sexual assault remains inadequate in the eyes of students. BY NATALIE ESCOBAR
Amanda Odasz remembers the night of Feb. 6, 2017 in near-perfect detail. At 8:31 p.m. that Monday, an unexpected email from Northwestern Chief of Police Bruce Lewis landed in her inbox with a startling subject line: “Security Alert: Sexual Assault and Date Rape Drugs.” Two students said they were drugged and sexually assaulted at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon House; the email noted another student at an unnamed fraternity house had been assaulted and possibly drugged. “I remember my first thought was basically, ‘Okay, how do I jump into action?’” says Odasz (WCAS ‘17), the former outreach chair of Northwestern’s Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators (SHAPE). “‘How is SHAPE going to respond to this? And how am I as an individual going to respond to this?’” She got an answer that night. Weinberg junior and now-SHAPE president Asha Sawhney posted a Facebook status asking if anyone wanted to protest outside of the SAE national headquarters at Levere Memorial Temple, the Gothic stone building that has loomed across the street from South Campus since 1930. Over 200 likes and 90 comments later, she created a Facebook group called “Expel SAE” where people posted ideas and questions for action. Soon after, a group of around 15 people crowded into the Center for Awareness, Response, and Education (CARE) office on the third floor of Searle to start planning the protest. They came from all parts of campus – Panhellenic Association and Multicultural Greek Council-affiliated people, non-affiliated people, people of color, queer people. They wanted to make the event as inclusive as possible, says Weinberg junior and SHAPE training chair Sophie Spears. The question was how to do it. They didn’t want to protest
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in the fraternity quad, because survivors might be disturbed by being in that space. They didn’t want to protest in front of the Rock, because they wanted survivors to be able to avoid the protest if they needed to. They talked about including campus police at the risk of alienating groups wary of the police. They talked about what would happen if protestors went into the street, how they would they make sure people could hear the speakers and even who would get the permit from Evanston for amplified sound. The march came on Friday, four days after Lewis’s email. What began as a handful of students in front of the SAE house swelled to a crowd of hundreds of protesters marching down Sheridan Road brandishing posters and bullhorns. But Odasz, who helped lead the march, realized they’d forgotten to plan what to chant through the megaphone. Then, it came to her: consent. SHAPE training had drilled the definition into her. “Repeat after me: consent is knowing, active, voluntary, present and ongoing,” Odasz yelled into her bullhorn. Her words echoed back from 300 voices. After a while, she switched to the three things to say to support a survivor: “I believe you! It’s not your fault! You have options!” “I remember feeling that it was so incredibly powerful to have this huge group of people all affirming these things that are really so important for all of us,” she says. From there, the chants alternated back and forth – “How I dress does not mean yes!” “Education is a right, fraternities are a privilege!” An occasional “Fuck SAE!” or “Fuck frats!” rose out of part of the crowd, met by nervous laughter. Small clusters of people along Sheridan stopped in their tracks to watch – some fraternity members, some faculty, some whispering nervously. After 20 minutes or so, the throng arrived at its destination: the meadow between East and West Fairchild, across the street from SAE’s national headquarters, where camera crews from local news stations were waiting.
For the next hour, person after person stood up and talked. The same themes echoed: the hollowness of SAE’s “True Gentleman” code of conduct, toxic masculinity and the lack of accountability for perpetrators. Survivors talked about their stories of assault – some for the first time ever – while the audience listened in silence. Speakers urged those who were there to not become apathetic, to keep fighting for change and accountability even if things got difficult. But the months that have followed have mostly been a blur of emails, official statements and ultimately, unanswered questions. On March 30, Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin announced in an email to students that the university had closed its investigation into the sexual assault allegations without finding any evidence of wrongdoing. Three weeks later, the university suspended SAE for 17 months for violating its disciplinary probation by throwing parties and serving alcohol to minors. But the student body, apparently, will get no more answers about what happened inside the soon-to-bevacant fraternity house at 2325 Sheridan Road. Sexual assault is disturbingly common on college campuses, but the response from Northwestern students and administrators has rarely been so strong. This year’s protests have come at a time when universities have improved education and resources for sexual assault, but students across the country demand more. At Northwestern, students and administrators have clashed over the best path forward: reforming the alcohol policy, improved sexual assault prevention education, additional resources for CARE, and even abolishing Greek life at Northwestern altogether.
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