LET TERS
LACK OF OPTIONS
I was heartened by your cover story
“No Resources” [9/29]. Calling attention
to the lack of options for the unhoused is
important and a much-ignored reality by
those who say “get a job” and “they can
stay at the Mission.” Unfortunately, I was
appalled to read the comment by Janet Per-
ez of Sacred Heart.
“I certainly empathize with CA-
HOOTS,” Perez says. “We too see patients
who come in drug-affected. And we will
care for them, treat them medically, psy-
chiatrically, in the emergency room. And if
they don’t meet that threshold [for a two-
physician hold], then we are bound to let
them go and offer resources and referral to
other places. It is a person’s choice to use
substances.”
VIEWPOINT
I feel the last sentence in this quote is
the crux of this issue: “It is a person’s choice
to use substances.” This shows a lack of
knowledge regarding the disease of addic-
tion. It also causes me to question her defi-
nition of choice, as well as Sacred Heart’s
qualities of compassion and empathy.
Is it the obese person’s choice to eat the
food that may lead to heart disease? Is it the
choice of the person with lung disease to ex-
pose themselves to truck exhaust or perfume
worn by others? Is it the choice of the person
with mental illness to become unstable? These
questions of choice should not dictate the treat-
ment options we receive. Sacred Heart would
serve our community much more effectively
if its staff had better training in addiction.
Vickie Webb
Eugene
WOMEN CANDIDATES
It is great to have so many really smart
and caring women running for elected of-
fice in Oregon and our city! I urge everyone
to make this happen! Emily Semple, Betty
Taylor, Claire Syrett, Sheri Moore, Lucy Vi-
nis, Kate Brown and Hillary Clinton are all
smart and experienced community leaders
we need to give yes votes of support.
This is our chance for change!
Ruth Duemler
Eugene
BERNIE’S WISDOM
Bernie Sanders strongly advises his
supporters and all voters that this is not
the time for protest votes or votes of con-
science. Such third-party votes are in ef-
fect saying, “I want Donald Trump to be
president!” Bernie urges voters to strongly
support Hillary Clinton and all democrat-
ic candidates up and down the ticket. He
emphasizes that only with a democratic
president and Congress do the almost 50
percent of voters that supported his pro-
gressive platform have any power at all to
influence our national agenda.
So don’t make the same mistake that the
well-educated German population made in
electing Hitler to lead their country and then
become its absolute dictator. It demonstrat-
ed the effectiveness of lies told often enough
to become accepted as truth. The backing of
German industrialists and the eventual use
of intimidation by Hitler’s “brown shirt per-
sonal armies” played significant roles.
According to his former wife, Trump
was an ardent student of Hitler, reading
BY L AUR A H A NSON
Believe Survivors
A LETTER TO UO STUDENTS
D
ear University of Oregon students,
You don’t know me. But there are
thousands of people like me on your
campus.
In January 2013, I was roofied and
raped at a fraternity while I was a student at the Univer-
sity of Oregon. The Sunday before the first day of my
last winter term at the UO, I woke up naked with a man
I had never wanted to be naked with, the night flooding
back to me as I tried to find my clothes and leave.
I remembered that I had only drunk two beers, while
everyone watched the Rose Bowl together. I remem-
bered standing up to go to the bar, and then not remem-
bering anything else until I woke up under a guy wear-
ing only my bra and jeans, saying I didn’t want to be
there, saying I needed to leave, asking to let me get up,
wishing I could lift up more than my head.
Then nothing.
I write this letter to you in one more attempt to make
the UO a safer place for rape survivors. God knows I’ve
already tried every other way I can think of.
I want to tell you how I think students can take mean-
ingful steps to make campuses safer places for all stu-
dents, particularly rape and assault survivors, because
my efforts to make your campus (a place that I once
loved dearly) have been fruitless and rebuffed.
My first recommendation is to not rape.
I feel like Brock Turner and his father have made
some people confused about the distinction between
“20 minutes of action” and fucking the body of an un-
conscious woman. Perhaps you are afraid of having a
sloppy night of sex with someone you’ve been crushing
on, and then, a few months later, either getting kicked
out of school or being dragged in front of a judge, be-
cause of drunken — what you believed to have been
consensual — sex from a few months prior.
Let me give you comfort in the knowledge that
you won’t get kicked out of school for raping someone
unless you literally get caught with your pants down.
RAINN (The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)
has published statistics that show that men in the United
States are more likely to be raped than they are to re-
6
October 13, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
ceive any kind of punishment for raping someone. One
in 33 men are raped, while only 6 out of every 1,000
rapists go to jail.
Much more likely than going to jail or getting kicked
out of school is that you’ll have sex with a woman who
is too drunk to consent, or who emphatically does not
consent, and you’ll either be too drunk to hear her or too
drunk to care. After that, after you selfishly decide that
getting off is more important than another person’s right
to only have sex with people they want to have sex with,
your role in the story will likely end.
She will probably experience a variety of emotions
(it differs for every survivor) before either telling a
few people in her circle to try to relieve the burden on
herself, or she will file an official complaint with the
university in the hopes that they will believe her and
protect her from you by removing you from campus.
But the chances are that you will be allowed to grad-
uate and allowed to forget about the harm you did to
another person. Years later, you might even chock it up
to a “mistake you made in college” — if you remember
your victim at all.
I have tried, desperately, to change this state of affairs
at our school. Last year, I came to a settlement agree-
ment with the UO, with the understanding that it would
improve its response to survivors (they have since re-
buffed all of my offers to help). I testified against the
UO’s proposed mandatory reporting policy, which iso-
lates survivors from their community.
I even tried to bring my concerns to our state and
federal legislators, that universities and schools need
more oversight and a mandated, uniform response to
rape, but they told me that most public universities have
independent school boards and there’s not much they
can do.
My current plan, and my hope in writing this letter
to you, is that you, the students, take it upon yourselves
to make our beloved school a safer place for survivors.
And I have a few ideas.
1. You can shun rapists. When survivors come for-
ward with their story, they are frequently rejected for
tearing apart their friend groups, extracurricular or
Greek life communities. They are shunned for causing
trouble and “crying rape” when they regret a sexual en-
counter. Let me tell you: It’s so scary and isolating to
come forward with a “rape story,” that hardly anyone
chooses to come forward, let alone people who aren’t
telling the truth. Help your friends and classmates un-
derstand the difference: Rapists are the ones tearing
apart your communities, not survivors. Rapists are the
ones making your friend group, your dorm, your soror-
ity, your frat “awkward” or “uncomfortable.” Not the
survivor who comes forward with their experience.
Shun rapists. Embrace survivors.
2. Take action, where your school will not. Taking
action in support of survivors doesn’t necessarily re-
quire marching or protesting; you can send one email
to your administration, demanding that they remove
rapists from campus, or more completely support sur-
vivors. Better yet, you can work with your Greek life
houses, club sports teams or academic clubs to remove
members who have been accused of rape. If the UO
won’t remove rapists from campus, you can create poli-
cies within your organization to remove them from your
community, therefore protecting others in your group
from falling victim to future abuse. You’d be telling
rapists that you see their behavior and won’t tolerate it.
3. Believe survivors fully. I cannot emphasize enough
how much of a difference it made to have a few mem-
bers of my community believe me when I told them I
was raped, even while the majority of my community
did not give me that courtesy. I know how demoralizing
it is to be called a liar for speaking publicly about some-
thing that had been done to me. The self-doubt, alone,
was a terrible hell. When one of your friends tells you
that they were raped, all you have to do is mean it when
you say, “I believe you.”
With love and hope for a better UO,
Laura
Laura Hanson is a survivor and graduated from the University of Oregon
in 2014. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She can be reached at
hansonlauraj@gmail.com.