Sam Franks

Artifact Analysis

Advanced Composition

April 14, 2016

Till it happens to you, you don't know how it feels, how it feels

Till it happens to you, you won't know, it won't be real

No, it won't be real, won't know how it feels

-Lady Gaga, Till It Happens to You

Artifact Analysis- Song: “Till It Happens to You”

            For my artifact I decided to choose the Oscar-nominated theme song from The Hunting Ground by Lady Gaga titled: “Till It Happens to you,” which was performed at the 2016 Academy Awards. Both Sofia Karasek and Annie Clark were two of the fifty-one women who joined Gaga on stage as she sang the song live at the Oscars after being introduced by Vice President Joe Biden. The song “Till it happens to you” was specifically written for Kirby Dick’s film The Hunting Ground, as Lady Gaga thought it was important to “bring to light the epidemic of sexual assault by athletes on college campuses” (The Washington Post). The performance by Lady Gaga and the 51 survivors of sexual assault was a moving act of protest that left the likes of Leonardo DeCaprio and Rachel McAdams in tears. During the performance, survivors took the stage with “sharpie-d” statements on their arms such as “they blamed me, not my fault, and they didn’t help.” All of these statements were subtle remarks to the colleges and universities who had failed to properly act when faced with reports of sexual assault.

Sofia Karasek, who was raped at the University of California-Berkley in 2012, was shocked to learn that her rapist (who was on the football team) had only been sent to counseling after being convicted of rape by an academic panel. Of her rape Karasek says “It was particularly disturbing because I heard from other students that this was a recurring problem that sexual assault wasn’t taken seriously. He had raped two other girls before me and yet the university was still systematically sweeping sexual assault under the rug as they have been for decades” (The Washington Post). At the 2016 Oscars performance Karasek also stated “I would much rather give up the Oscars performance and not have gone through everything I’ve gone through, I would much rather have not met Lady Gaga if it meant I didn’t have to experience what I have. We’re not lucky — we have survived and that’s why we were there” (The Washington Post).  This protest on the night of the Oscars allowed women who were survivors of sexual assault by athletes to have a group to not only relate to, but also to identify with. In the scholarly article “Discriminant analysis of risk factors for sexual victimization among a national sample of college women”, Laura Dunn, a college freshman at University of Wisconsin in back 2004, admits to being raped by a basketball player but not reporting it because she felt she had “no where to turn.” On the recent campus protests and also Lady Gaga’s performance she says “its great to have people you can relate to and people who understand you. We don’t need to be alone anymore, now we can stand together and demand for fair and equal treatment from our schools” (Koss, Mary).

            Arizona Public Media broadcasted a recent piece “Campus Rape Victims: A Struggle for Justice,” that mentioned how the findings of the Center for Integrity and NPR News Investigation revealed that still to this day, colleges almost never expel athletes who are found responsible of a sexual assault. “Reporters at CPI discovered a database of about 130 colleges and universities given federal grants because they wanted to do a better job dealing with sexual assault. But the database shows that even when men at those schools were found responsible for sexual assault, only 10 to 25 percent of them were expelled” (Arizona Public Media). During the investigation it was also discovered that:

·      Fifteen percent of schools are using a higher standard of proof than what the U.S. Department of Education recommends for adjudicating sexual assaults, which is the preponderance of evidence.

·      Approximately 19 percent of institutions in the national sample reported that they do not impose orders that would require the perpetrator to avoid contact with the survivor of the assault.

·      Most institutions also fail to provide access to a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), a specially trained nurse who can provide medical and other services to survivors of sexual assault. Only 15 percent of institutions in the national sample have a SANE available on campus. Approximately 42 percent of the nation’s largest public schools and 21 percent of the largest private schools have a SANE.

·      More than 30 percent of schools do not provide any sexual assault training for students. At institutions with fewer than 1,000 students, 53 percent provide no training at all (Arizona Public Media).