2007-11-05 - 10:22 p.m.
So college

It's weird. I have these moments where I am suddenly very aware of my surroundings. It's almost like I'm observing from the outside, remarking on how very typical the situation looks. It happens sometimes in my classes, when all of a sudden during a discussion I'll feel like "Man, I'm in college, in this class, and this is such a stereotypical moment. This could be in a movie. Or at least an ad for the college". Or when I stayed up for my first all nighter, I kept thinking "Oh man, what a movie montage this would make. This is so college.".

I had one of those moments tonight. Only it wasn't very fun this time. One of my friends in the house came up to Einstein and my room after dinner tonight. And without preamble launched into a story of something that happened to her last weekend. It seems she and a bunch of friends went out bar hopping and got pretty inebriated. Nothing unusual, just a night out with her girl and guy friends. One of her guy friends, a mutual friend actually, had his arms around her as they walked home, a friendly gesture to keep her warm. Or so my friend thought, because she has a boyfriend, something this guy knows because he's my friend's good friend and also a good friend/frat bro of her boyfriend.

When they got back to my friend's place, she sat down on the couch. He laid down with his head in her lap and another girl laid down on top of him. The rest of their friends sat on the other couch. They were pretty drunk, but not wasted. The group was just talking when all of a sudden, the guy started sliding his hand up my friend's skirt. He didn't stop at her underwear and in fact, began to finger her. She didn't know what to do, because she was basically pinned to the couch and didn't want to cause a scene by slapping him or something else. The girl that was laying on the guy is my friend's roommate and an ex of the guy. To say she's not over him yet would be putting it mildly. So my friend, in her drunken state, decides that not upsetting her friend and boyfriend would be better than stopping the asshole who's fingering her.

Apparently, he continued to violate her for over a minute until the girl and the others left the room for some reason. Then she hit him and he asked if she wanted him to stop. She said yes and then he left. He apologized the next day, but they both swore not to tell anyone, especially not my friend's boyfriend.

She was sitting on the floor of our room, telling us all this, with wide, dry eyes. I was sitting in my chair, Einstein in hers, looking down at her in utter shock. I still can't believe that guy did that to her. He's a big guy on campus - super involved, everyone knows him, everyone loves him, everyone thinks he's just the nicest, most angelic yet cool guy ever. I thought so until tonight. Now I want to rip his nuts off. Or at least shame him publicly.

How dare he do that to my friend? And she doesn't know if she'll even tell anybody because she doesn't want to lose her boyfriend, because he'll blame her for what happened. It's just such a sucky and weird situation. The way it happened is so weird. Sitting there listening to her, my horror was abated for just one minute by thinking about just how much like a Lifetime movie it was. Three college girls sitting in their sorority talking about how one of them was sexually harassed by a drunk frat boy and is now not going to tell anyone? Come on.

I didn't really know what to tell her. Other than I was sorry he did that to her and that he's a sicko whom I'm never going to talk to again (I can't believe I thought he was such a great guy!) and that I was there for her. It makes me so sad that he would do that to her and he's not going to suffer any consequences for it. He should at least suffer socially. At least other girls should know what he did. But they won't. Because she's not going to tell and neither am I. It's not my story and other than typing away in here, I'll never speak or type of it again.