WARNING: This post may be trigger-ish for former victims of rape and other violent sex crimes. This is not a happy post, people.
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If you have not yet heard of what happened during Frosh at the Sauder School of Business (Sauder) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), then please check out these articles:
http://globalnews.ca/news/825544/ubc-investigates-after-students-led-in-chant-encouraging-rape-of-underage-girls/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/09/07/bc-ubc-frosh-pro-rape-chant.html
This is not surprising to me. At all. This type of shit has been going on for years, since at least 2005 which was when I was a freshman at Sauder. I didn't go to Frosh because my parents didn't let me. Looking back on it now, it was for a good reason because Frosh is just an excuse to party. And not just partying, but dangerous partying.
From what I heard, there was under-age drinking, and quite a bit of it. The legal age to drink in British Columbia is 19 or older. The average freshman would be 17 (if their birthday is in September-December) or 18 (if their birthday is in January-August), typical if a person goes straight into post-secondary education right after high school.
The Frosh leaders bought beer and offered it to the new students to give them a taste of what university life would be like. The new students were under no obligation to accept, but a bunch of impressionable teenagers would be highly susceptible to peer pressure, especially if it comes from a Frosh leader.
Might I just remind everyone:
"Minors are also allowed to drink under the supervision of their parents, but supervision by a non-parent adult is not sufficient."
"It is against the law to buy alcohol for those under the legal drinking age." (x)
Also, I don't know how, but the Frosh leaders in 2005 managed to get everybody into a club. Every. Single. Person. Especially the under-age ones.
So there's Frosh, and then there's orientation (ie. the first day of school). Now orientation I did attend (because it was mandatory), and I fucking hated every second of that day. My leader was useless and didn't know anything, all she did was take us around the campus and point out what buildings are which. No points of interest, no history of the school, no helpful advice about classes, and etc. We were also made to attend these pointless presentations on work-life balance from senior students and faculty who basically said, "Study hard, exercise, eat healthy, and remember, you guys are the cream of the crop."
"Cream of the crop." "The best of the best." "The top tier." "The echelon of education." These are the type of words that are used at the start of every course term to brainwash the students into thinking that they are above everybody else. What's worst is the faculty actually believes this. I understand that business is a dog-eat-dog world and you need to give your students every bit of encouragement as you can, but this is not the way to go about it.
This pervasive culture of superiority starts on day one. Freshman BComm students are taught chants about how great the Sauder is as a school, and jeers that put down equally hard-working students from other majors as if we were in India and the caste-system was in.
Students that had a major in the Arts were ridiculed as "unemployed," students from kinesiology were scoffed at as "P.E. Teachers," and any student from Science were shrugged at and sneered "we make more money than you."
I overheard part of an orientation with Science students last week and I wish I had that when I was a freshman. The leader really knew her stuff and told her group what the emergency blue posts mean and that if you press the button, UBC SafeWalk will come help you. Also, if you are getting chased on campus, then you press the button on the next post so that UBC can track you and be able to tell where you are going and send help in your immediate area.
So, this chant about Y.O.U.N.G. is nothing new; just another despicable and absolutely disgusting saying to add to the already muddied list. It's just this time, it went too far.
I'd like to comment now on how the UBC Staff are handling this situation. I've worked at the front lines where my company was the in the middle of a couple of incidents that involved the press and I have to say, UBC is doing a very shitty job.
Randy Schmidt sounds totally bored and disinterested (seriously, where did you get this guy from?) and Robert Helsley has absolutely no fucking right to hide behind the excuse of "I didn't know." Have you never taken at least some part in orientation? What kind of Dean are you? How the fuck could you not know about the chants and jeers?
In an incident similar to this whole fiasco, my company heard the smallest sound of a couple of 20-something year old guys talking about date raping 16-year-old girls or younger and there was an immediate investigation and a 911 phone call to the police. It resulted in a suspension, termination, and a subsequent ban from the premises for those two guys as well as a criminal charge.
So UBC, Sauder, and CUS, get your fucking act together and resolve this issue. Something like this should never have happened and a big university like you should know how to handle bad press a little bit better than what I have witnessed so far. You have just tarred the reputation of this school and your alumni. I am so utterly disappointed and angry. Quite frankly, I no longer feel like it's safe for me to continue my BCS here.
In high school sex ed I learned that 1 in 4 girls experience some form of sexual assault before they turn 18 whether it be harassment, or molestation, or rape, or whatever else. In case you didn't read that:
1 in 4 girls experience some form of sexual assault before they turn 18. That's 25%.
I am one of them and I was only 8.
So don't you fucking dare trivialize this issue. Do not brush this off like it's an inconvenience for you. I came back to this school because as much as I hated it the first time around, I believed that it would be better. But not even into the first week of school and the same old shit comes back to haunt me. Fuck you.
Fuck you and your fucking clique, CUS. Fuck you and your outdated and pretentious ways, Sauder. Fuck you and your money-leeching machine, UBC.
Fix this, or give me back my money!
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