Editor’s Note: This article contains mentions of sexual assault. If you or someone you know is in need of assistance, call Wellness and Prevention Services at 828-262-3148 or the OASIS hotline at 828-262-5035.
Most sexual assaults on college campuses occur within the period between the beginning of classes in September and the end of Thanksgiving break in November. Colloquially, researchers refer to this timeframe as the Red Zone. As a reproductive justice activist, I’ve recited this fact an ungodly number of times. As a rape survivor, I can’t fathom it. It raises a question I’ve heard so many survivors ask ourselves: how can this be happening?
Last year was both my first and junior year at Appalachian. Being a transfer student put me in an odd position. I was 21, so people didn’t feel the need to babysit me at the bar. However, I was also very new to the college party scene, and as a first-generation student, I didn’t have much ancestral insight to work off of.
I was out one night with my roommate, tagging along with her friends as we crowded into a nearby bar. It wasn’t one I was enthusiastic about, but they let in under-21s, and that was good enough for the group. Newly sober, I ordered a Diet Coke and sat around as we feigned an interest in pool. A couple men leered around us, but we didn’t pay them any mind.
After a few groups took turns stuffing themselves into the photo booth, my roommate and I decided we wanted to capture some fond college memories. I left my soda on the table against the wall, behind the back of one of her friends. I figured it was a safe place.
We took pictures, laughed and promised to pin them on the fridge. As we came out, the group began migrating outside, stifling in the heat and reek of the bar air. I grabbed my drink and followed.
We leaned over the porch railing, and I went to take a sip, but something caught my eye as I touched the rim. Pulling back, I made out rust-colored flecks peppering the dark syrup. I got out my phone and turned on the flashlight for a better look. Now illuminated, I could see a bright red powder lining the inside of my glass.
What followed was deeply confusing and oddly mortifying. I wordlessly showed the glass to my roommate and her friends, who ordered me to show the bouncer, who, without question, took the glass from my hand and promptly dumped it into the kitchen sink, walking straight past the bartender. His eventual verdict was that someone had “ashed their cigarette” in my drink.
As he did so, his younger coworker, in a sort of pitiful tone, offered that he’d heard about “a lot of girls getting their drinks spiked lately.” I am still unsure if this was intended to make me feel better. Rolling the words around, something began to settle in my chest. Someone had just…what? Ashed their cigarette in my Diet Coke? Put “something” in my drink? Someone had, someone had…
By an objective analysis of the situation, someone had likely tried to sexually assault me.
I didn’t know what to do with that. After a midnight walk home punctuated by sobbing, a morning spent combing through student resources I didn’t know how to use and a Substack word-vomit about it, I still didn’t know what to do. How could this be happening?
I turned to my faithful companion in all things campus-related: YikYak. This campus gossip app is often scrutinized for encouraging rumors and bullying, but I think people overlook something crucial about it. “Gossip” is what kept women and girls safe for centuries when we weren’t allowed to name our abusers in patriarchal societies. “Gossip” is what it was called, but it was actually a tool for community safety and accountability. In order to keep us safe, we first needed to be kept informed about unsafe situations.
After anonymously sharing my experience, I was met with other students sharing their stories. We all said similar things. We named similar places. We shared similar feelings of confusion, shame and doubt. More than anything, we were unified in our collective sense of “what now?”
I had a similar question this week as YikYak lit up with a sudden observation. Over the past two weeks, at least three sexual assault cases were reported in residence halls to App State police. With this undeniable, public fact in hand, we came together once again. Similar stories. Similar experiences. Similar feelings.
Of course, the inevitable response to this is the accusation of “hearsay,” heresy. “He said she said.” Entire communities recognizing patterns of violence are shrugged off with this casual line. To this, I can only raise a question: in a country that allows an astounding 98% of perpetrators of sexual violence to walk free, sees a sexual assault every 74 seconds and fosters an environment where 80% of female college students never report their rape, what else can we do? When we live in a system and society that refuses us justice, where else can we turn but each other, cloaked in anonymity, searching desperately for the promise that we aren’t alone?
We need more than apology letters from perpetrators. We need more than consent classes. We need a venue, a voice, a way to articulate this happening to help us piece together the why. We need to do this together, in a way that doesn’t demonize our need for anonymity or sacrifice the safety of community. We can’t all be in the Title IX office with each other, but we can sure as hell hold a dialogue.
All organizing starts here, with observations and needs. We deserve safety, transparency and accountability. We deserve to be, rather than to seem. Most of all, we deserve the freedom, that mountain promise, which can’t exist in the snare of the Red Zone.
Charlotte Isenberg
