Campus creep?
TRIGGER WARNING: sexual harassment/assault, rape
Sometimes life throws curveballs at you. I feel like this is well-known. Sometimes those curveballs just happen to be in the form of an possible assaulter.
Let's go back...
The weekend of Saint Patrick's day, I'm in my friends' room pre-gaming before we go to the club.
We're drinking Guinnesses out of red solo cups (fun fact: your entire can of Guinness will fit in a solo cup and the foam is perfect if you pour straight down).
Some my friends have better tolerances than others. While some of us are enjoying ourselves, others are on the verge of throwing up.
This is besides the point.
One of my friends tells me that someone in my program will be joining us tonight. I think to myself that this could be the start of a new friendship, at the very least, a networking opportunity.
He shows up with a friend. He's loud, but it's not obnoxious. He laughs at my jokes and relates to my complaints about our classes and assignments. His friend is quiet but it's not off-putting.
We continue the night.
Throughout the night, he places his hand on my lower back a number of times and requests photos of us together. I think nothing of this; he's just being nice since we're in the same program. Besides, he's aware that I have a boyfriend.
At the club, he buys me a vodka cranberry, I'm not a fan, but I drink it anyway. I appreciate the gesture, but he leaves pretty quickly after he buys it for me, so I assume that, too, was friendly.
My roommate/friend walks into the club and my thoughts of my acquaintance from class leave me. We're having fun again, we're dancing.
We lose him during the night, apparently his (not so happy) girlfriend comes to get him.
We head back, but he was fun to party with, so I let him know that we might be going to the bar the next day. He says he'll come.
Luckily, this event never happened...
Flash forward to yesterday late afternoon: I'm sitting at a cafeteria table with a friend from my campus floor and we're eating our lunches. She shows me a post made on a residence building instagram.
The acquaintance has been kicked out of residence and the police are asking for victims to come forward with their testimonies.
Word spreads; he's been accused of two counts of sexual harassment, one count of sexual assault, and one count of rape.
One of my male friends apologizes that he didn't do anything that night when he knew the acquaintance might have been making moves. I say that I wasn't aware and it didn't seem that there was harm anyway.
We talk about it with our friends.
Apparently, he has been removed from residence, but will have to come back to retrieve his things.
He was in journalism. Good luck finding a career.
I guess this is all accused, and if he's found not guilty I will have to admit that all this thinking was for nothing.
But so many girls could have been harmed that night. I could have been one of them.
You never know who it could be.
Be careful.