[Rape Culture at Patrick Henry College]

As long as people teach their children to watch out for rapists instead of for rape, rape culture is a risk. When people view rape as something that only rapists can do, rather than as a terrible potential that each and every person has within themselves, it encourages them to believe that as long as they avoid rapists, rape can't happen. Then when it does happen, people are stuck -- is their friend or loved one, a person they consider to be just like themselves, a rapist? Or was the act not rape? Caught between a rock and a hard place, the mind shuts down.

 

Sadly, many people rationalize away the action, and abandon survivors at a time when they need friends the most  --  the alternative,  that a person they viewed to be just like themselves was capable of so monstrous an action, is just too much to bear. In a world of rapists and honest men, to find that a man you have identified as your own is a rapist is to put cracks in the foundations of your own self. If the friend just like you is a monster, then what are you?

 

To my mind, this is one of the times when an education is truly put to the test. My heart goes out to any person who is forced to bear such a burden. I only hope that their education has prepared them to ask themselves some tough questions, and come to the right answers.

[finding the best college for a major]

"Best" is generally whichever school produced a graduate that is closest to your own personal ideals; to answer that question, we would need to know what you expect a college degree in that major to do for the person holding it. If someone said that they went to college and majored in X, what would you assume about them? Who would you expect them to know? How would you expect others to treat them? Where would you see them working? What would you see them doing? How would you expect them to act?