An anonymous report of an alleged gang rape of a Spelman College student by four students from neighboring Morehouse College has sparked protests and investigations by both institutions.
It’s also prompted an intense debate on social media over pressures some black women say they feel to protect black men from unfair stereotypes by keeping quiet about assaults.
When the institutions involved — in this case, two elite, historically black colleges that sit side by side in Atlanta — are viewed as sibling colleges, the sensitivities run deep.
That’s evident from the hundreds of tweets being posted this week in discussions unfolding under the hashtags #RapedAtSpelman and #RapedByMorehouse.
The controversy began on Monday, when someone saying she was a Spelman freshman posted a series of tweets under the Spelman hashtag.
The user, who had more than 2,600 followers by Thursday afternoon, said she had attended an apparently off-campus party with friends.
“There were a lot of people there, and it was really fun, so we decided to drink with the upperclassmen,” she wrote. She was drunk, “but that doesn’t mean I forgot about what happened.”
When she emerged from a bathroom, where she went to throw up, she said she was “surrounded by four Morehouse students who took me to another room and took turns raping me.”
She said that after she returned to the campus, the public-safety office sent her to the hospital for a rape kit, and that it took Spelman a month to get back to her. She said an unidentified dean asked what she was wearing and why she was drinking when she was under age.
“The dean also said that Spelman & Morehouse are brother & sister so I should give them a pass,” she wrote. “I never felt so worthless.”
Reporters from The Chronicle and other news outlets have been unable to verify the user’s identity or her account. She did not respond to inquiries directed to her Twitter account, which she wrote was anonymous because she feared retaliation from those at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which includes Spelman, Morehouse, and another historically black institution, Clark Atlanta University.
Spelman’s president, Mary Schmidt Campbell, issued a statement on Wednesday pledging a “full and thorough review of these events.”
“Our hearts go out to this student, and I want to personally offer her our full support and assistance,” she wrote. “We are a family at Spelman, and we will not tolerate any episode of sexual violence. No student should ever have to suffer and endure the experience she has recounted on social media.”
She declined to comment on whether the university had received the complaint described.
The president also provided updates on how the college is dealing with Title IX issues, including expanding the staff and programming and making it clear that “blaming the victim is unacceptable.”
Both Spelman and Morehouse are among the 183 colleges being investigated by the Education Department for potential Title IX infractions in their handling of sexual-assault cases.
Morehouse’s president, John Silvanus Wilson Jr., issued a statement on Wednesday saying the anonymous Twitter posts were the first that Morehouse officials had heard of the alleged incident.
“Now that we are aware of these allegations, we are determined to pursue the investigation to the fullest extent possible,” he said.
“Morehouse is determined to create, shape, and maintain an environment where victims are supported and feel free to report any incident of sexual assault, trusting that they have Morehouse as an ally,” he added. “We are determined to change the culture on and around campus, and ‘get right’ a problem that has confounded the industry of higher education and the country.”
Students staged demonstrations at both campuses on Tuesday and flooded Twitter with reactions to the allegations. The posts were overwhelmingly supportive of the alleged victim, although a few said Morehouse’s name was being unfairly tarnished by the unproven accusations.
In an essay published online on Wednesday by Ebony magazine, Jamilah Lemieux, a commentator and cultural critic, wrote that similar complaints have cropped up at her alma mater, Howard University.
“It’s maddening to know that a young woman can tuck her hopes and dreams into a Spelman or Howard backpack, only to be violated by a classmate and then be re-violated by the school that is supposed to protect her,” she wrote. “It’s nauseating to know how many of her peers would blame her for what happened or prefer that she just remain silent in the interest of protecting the reputation of said institution and/or young black men.”
Dismissing allegations of rape against black men in order to protect them from unjust stereotypes would, she wrote, “reduce them to perpetual adolescents who are incapable of treating the opposite sex with respect.”
The Atlanta Police Department released a statement on Thursday saying that it “does not have any knowledge of this incident and is not currently investigating this case.”
Meanwhile, the issues it has sparked continued to reverberate on social media.
Among the faculty members weighing in was Mark Lamont Hill, a professor of African-American studies at Morehouse who urged students not to let their concern for the college’s reputation eclipse the need to prevent assaults.
The debate was joined by students at other colleges, including Shyra Lynch, a sophomore at Georgia Southwestern State University.
“Women in my family have been raped by black men, and they were told to keep quiet because black men are already put down by society,” she said in an interview on Thursday. What’s happening at Spelman, she said, “reminded me of a common trend that happens in the black community.”
Last year students at Spelman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta jointly issued 13 demands aimed at keeping students safe from sexual violence.
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
