Dear Editor,
Recently, there have been several sexual assaults in the Somerville area. We were notified via email by the Tufts University Police Department, whom I contend do an upstanding job at tirelessly protecting the Tufts community. However, I take issue with their recent notification, which included certain details about the attacks. In particular, we were told that "the target is typically a lone female, usually wearing a skirt or dress."
The inclusion of details about what clothes were worn by the young women attacked strikes me as reflective of a painfully archaic attitude toward sexual violence. There is simply no link between what a woman wears and whether or not she is assaulted. Moreover, there is an implication here that to some extent the women attacked were partly responsible for the incident by virtue of their clothing. For most of us, the woefully incorrect "you-were-asking-for-it" notion is sickening. More objectively, it is stated that the women were usually wearing a skirt or dress, further calling into question the relevance of this detail.
This story was printed in Sunday's Boston Globe, which included the excerpt from the Tufts Police Department's email about what the women were usually wearing at the time of the attacks.
Sexual violence is a terrible crime with only one guilty party: the attacker. Let us create an environment that fosters this attitude by excluding these irrelevant details in the future.
Sincerely,
James Gaylor
Tufts Post-Bac Premedical Program 2012
