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Men’s tennis aces doubleheader
Trinity defeats Hardin-Simons 9-0 and Laredo Community College 6-3.
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Spotlight features best of Trinity talent
The annual talent competition, hosted by SPB, featured dancing, bird calls, and more.
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Catch our Fiesta how-to guide and calendar
Know where to go, what parades to see, and how many oysters you should eat.
theTrinitonian Volume 111, Issue 23
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www.trinitonian.com
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Serving Trinity University Since 1902
• April 04, 2014
Agrawal and Brown collaborate on rape research The pair investigate questions about rape culture in India; compare to U.S.
by Cassandra Watson NEWS REPORTER Earlier last month, senior Trinity student Nupur Agrawal and C. Mackenzie Brown, professor of religion, presented their research on rape attitudes in India at the American Academy of Religions in Dallas, Texas, on March 9. Agrawal spent last summer handing out surveys and interviewing college-aged men and women at several universities around India about their views on rape. Questions gauged students’ opinions on various contexts and situations in which rape happens. “One of the questions we asked was if rape could result in pregnancy. That question was inspired by Todd Adkins’ comment in the U.S. I was surprised that over 30 percent of Indian women said that rape cannot result in pregnancy. If this were a more general population, I could’ve come to terms with it, but this was a college-going population,” Agrawal said.
photo by Jennie Ran C. Mackenzie Brown (left) and Nupur Agrawal (right) hold a poster which describes their recent research, entitled “Rape that Woke India Up!”
Men were around two times more likely than women to realize that rape can result in pregnancy. “I think thats because the men are simply more worldly and the women are very sheltered and sex is not really discussed with them,” Brown said. Other questions with responses that stood out to the team included a question
asking if marital rape was possible and if women enjoyed being raped. “Very few women, around five or six perecent agreed with that, but with men, somewhere around 15 percent thought that women enjoyed being raped. With the issue of marital rape being possible, around 33% of women thought that it was not possible. If that seems
really outmoded, in 1973 in this country, marital rape was not a crime,” Brown said. Brown was in Delhi, India in December, 2012 when protests in reaction to the rape and death of Joyti Singh Pandey erupted across the country. Being present during the nationwide unrest and his research in Hinduism inspired him to inquire about the ways people in India perceive rape.
“There was a prevailing attitude - not universal, and on these things I have found that universality and total consensus is not going to happen - that the code was too strict,” Brown said. “This led to, on the one hand students feeling thoroughly browbeaten by the honor council and faculty sometimes not reporting because they were concerned the punishment would be far too harsh.” There are now four classes of violations of the honor code with corresponding repercussions, rather than the previous generalized sanction resulting in the deduction of two letter grades for the class and an F on the assignment in question. According to Nupur Agrawal, senior psychology and religion major and external chair of the AHC, the four classes, all of which result in a finding of responsible to committing an AHC violation, are as follows: Class 1: Negligent and careless scholarship. There is no clear
evidence of the intent to cheat and the majority of assignment is done appropriately.
contributed significant original material in the assignment. Class 4 - Major Violation. Same as above and the student has not or has hardly contributed any original material in the assignment. “It provides for a more effective system and a more effective judgment. Our judgment in the amount of academic theft is now more parallel, so to say, it’s more in tangent with each other than it was before,” Agrawal said. “Your consequences to what you’ve done are more comparable, where initially in some cases they might not have been, but now that’s not the case. It allows for more people to come forward and it allows for a more justified system.” Within this amended system of sanctions, the professor brings a violation and can suggest the level of responsibility which they believe to be applicable to the situation. However, the AHC is not subject to adhere to this recommendation.
“I think the women’s movement, social media, the brutality, that it happened in the capital city, that it made it’s way into international headlines has really made this much more of a wake-up call. I began to wonder, what is the portrayal of women in scripture and so forth that leads to rape-tolerant attitudes? Were these still persistent themes?” Brown said. After coming back to the states, Brown asked Agrawal if she’d be interested in being a part of this research project. “He asked me if I would want to assist him in looking at rape attitudes among men and women. I know four Indian languages and am fluent in written and spoken languages, and being a woman, it also made sense. I could not give up an opportunity like that,” Agrawal said. This past fall, Agrawal peer-tutored the class “Rape in India, Rape in America, and Rape at Trinity” taught by Brown. The class looked at the differences in the contexts that rape occurs and the pressures that survivors face in these different places.
see AGRAWAL Page 6
Academic Honor Council stratifies levels of honor code sanctions The AHC amends sanctions and defines violations in terms of severity
by Faith Ozer NEWS REPORTER After being passed by the general faculty and Student Government Association, then later approved by the faculty senate last fall, the Academic Honor Council (AHC) will implement a different system of determining levels of honor code violation beginning this spring semester, marking the first changes since the code was adopted in 2004. According to C. Mackenzie Brown, professor of religion and one of the two academic advisors to the AHC, responses to campuswide surveys were partially responsible for the change of sanctions and added flexibility.
“On all accounts [the new sanction system] makes cases easier to manager, including serving justice.”
C. Mackenzie Brown Professor of religion and AHC advisor Class 2 - Minor Violation. The offending material is minimal on the part of the assignment and would not substantially impact the assignment if taken out. Class 3 - Substantial Violation. While the offending material was substantial and critical to the assignment, the student has also
According to Brown, dividing violations into classes also enables the AHC to reduce the impact of mitigating – namely extenuating – circumstances, which were previously weighted in order to possibly change a student’s finding of responsibility, and as he asserts, often embellished. These extenuating circumstances will no longer be able to stand alone as evidence in determining responsibility by the AHC. In addition to this, the AHC is now utilizing letters of reprimand in order to warn students of behavior that could possibly violate the honor code. “The letter of reprimand is written by the honor council to kind of let the student know. It’s a warning letter to the student,” Agrawal said. “It’s a finding of not responsible, but it makes the student aware.”
see AHC Page 6