Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Langella, of Moretown, a former college and minor-professional ice hockey player and current high school and college educator. The names have been changed for discretionary purposes.
[W]hen I was a first-year college student, I was at a dorm party with my new hockey teammates playing beer-pong. A friend and I were partners and we kept winning, so we stayed at the table until it was early the next morning. Only the stragglers were left: students who lived in that particular dorm, and the people too drunk to have already made their way home.
More time passed and the party dissipated, slow hip-hop blaring out to an almost empty room. We finished our last beers and left in a group of eight to find sleeping arrangements for the night. The guys who lived in that dorm keyed us into the elevator, and we all stumbled into the lift together.
Six hockey players and two sophomore girls.
Ryan and Amy were making out in the corner. Chris was talking dirty, trying to get Amy to make out with him, too. She laughed him off, still kissing Ryan.
When we got to the third floor, I followed Jenna and a few of the other guys to her suite.
I just wanted a couch.
I just wanted to sleep.
Ryan and Chris stayed with Amy for the journey to the fifth floor and her room, silly, drunken grins creeping across their faces.
The elevator door soon closed, and those of us who’d gotten off entered Jenna’s place. The night ended quickly with my head on a spinning pillow.
Brunch the next afternoon in the dining hall was full of energy, the word “threesome” being greeted by high-fives and whoops and hollers from some of the fellas.
I didn’t say anything because blissfully ignorant people can be immensely idiotic.
Two parts of the three smiled proud smiles, eager to spread the news of their experience to more teammates, more dining tables, more sections of the school.
I hadn’t read “Inexcusable” by Chris Lynch. I hadn’t read “Missoula” by Jon Krakauer, either, not by a long shot. They weren’t even published yet. I’d never heard the name David Lisak before. The Stanford victim and her powerful, viral letter wouldn’t exist for over a decade.
I just didn’t know anything, really.
And so, a few days later when the one part of the three told the dean that she was raped by my friends, I didn’t believe her.
I didn’t make her life hell like some of my other “friends” did, but I bought the whole story that my teammates told.
I didn’t say anything when people gave her dirty looks.
I didn’t say anything when people stopped talking to her.
I didn’t say anything when, after Ryan and Chris were expelled, everyone called her the girl that cried rape because she actually had a boyfriend back home and didn’t want to be thought of as a slut and a cheater.
I didn’t say anything because blissfully ignorant people can be immensely idiotic.
I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t make my mind realize that the three people who were in that room that night are the only people who know what really happened.
I passed out blind trust because a couple of guys played a game with a stick and a puck.
I took the “locker room talk” as gospel, accepting every denial and apology that came with it.
I will never know the truth, but I think she was probably telling it.
Locker room talk should never be an excuse for something this serious, from groping to rape to the whole spectrum of sexual assault that exists in the middle.
Never.
