Speech over silence

The campus was filled with issues as usual this past week, some garnering more attention than others. Personally, and professionally, one issue permeated my thoughts throughout the week: the alleged sexual assault.

E-mail has flooded my inbox and classmates have whispered about it. And no matter how overwhelmed I become by it, I do not wish for the discussion to stop. When I took my respective position at the beginning of winter quarter, my main goal was to encourage discussion on campus. While I do not relish the subject matter, I am glad to see some of campus recognizing the importance of talking about last weekend's occurrence.

Unlike the authors of the many chastising e-mails I received, I believe events like the one occurring last weekend need to be discussed. I fully understand and respect their desire to protect the unfortunate woman involved in the incident. But this is where the misconception begins. We at The Daily strive to serve our community by providing information while at the same time minimize harm. It was never, and will never be, our intent to print the name of or identify a victim of sexual assault.

As for The Daily's ability to handle coverage of such an incident, I believe most of us have dealt with issues in our personal and professional lives that qualify us to report on these types of occurrences. Daily staff members are students, siblings, children, significant others, etc., just like the remainder of campus. We have families and friends, and we each have our own story.

And just as every other student comes to the UW on a quest for knowledge, the journalists at The Daily pursue that very same mission. The information and knowledge we seek is that of a current and timely nature, hoping to provide a service to our fellow students and readers about events and happenings on campus. Oftentimes, our pages are filled with positive content, like our women's softball team making it to the World Series or Bill Gates making yet another donation to the UW. However, we do not make the news and cannot prevent the negative from impacting the UW.

Sexual assault is a serious issue relevant to every person, not just at the UW, nor in the United Sates, but everywhere. In actuality, we should never stop talking about it. And even though we do not, at the very least, we should discuss it when an incident directly related occurs. As The Daily reported May 12, five to seven rapes have been reported each year in the U-District since 1998. To me, one is too many and more than enough to spark discussion. And discussion does not infringe on the privacy of any party involved.

I fully appreciate concern for the victim and her feelings. I, too, hope that she is recovering from this traumatic event and has a solid support system to rely on. I understand that this is not easy for her and I would never expect it to be. But how can any of us expect the rest of our community to prevent another incident like this from occurring if we do not talk about it? If the public is not informed about events, then it has no way to avoid a future incident.

More than anything else, from all this I would like to see the campus become more aware and treat this issue as the big deal it is. Assault against any person in any manner is not something to be brushed aside. This is not about rehashing events to hurt parties involved, it is about encouraging everyone to offer their compassion to victims and act to prevent harm from coming to others. We are all members of the UW community; we should support each other through good times and bad.

For more information about sexual-assault prevention and support, contact Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Information Service at 685-HELP, saris@u.washington.edu or HUB 204L.