According to Dartmouth, if you receive a rape threat as a result of protesting rape, it’s your own fault for inciting the rapists.
In a campus-wide email sent out on Friday, Dartmouth College’s Board of Trustees Chair Steve Mandel appeared to equate the actions of sexual assault protesters with the subsequent death and rape threats made against them by several other Dartmouth students on anonymous online forums and message boards. [...]
Dartmouth took the uncommon step of cancelling classes on Wednesday to address the growing crisis and the Board of Trustees released their latest email on Friday night as a follow up.
The email seeks to assure the student community that “established policies and procedures” regarding disciplinary action will be taken against both the protesters and any students who made the anonymous threats.
Shutting down classes to announce that both the victims and the assailants are equally culpable and that disciplinary action will be taken against both of them is a really bad look for the school.
The idea, expressed in a poorly written email, seems to be that those who are protesting sexual assault are somehow responsible for inciting sexual assault, which makes this nothing more than victim-shaming that shields those who are issuing threats. Because both sides are the same, right? If they weren’t protesting assault, they wouldn’t be receiving threats.