"far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations"

I am of two minds about the Brock Turner rape case, and I was very happy (as happy as one can be, talking about such subject matter) to hear it brought up in class. As we discussed somewhat briefly, it is wonderful that Stanford is taking the matter so seriously, especially in the wake of all the controversy involving rape on college campuses across the United States. I can find very little to complain about in the way that Stanford handled the case on its campus as well as the way that it handled Brock Turner himself, but I find myself highly cynical as well. Who is to say whether this was done to protect the victim rather than to protect Stanford as an institution? No one can be certain. Regardless, of course, the correct action was taken; however, it is hard for me to be wholly happy knowing that the intentions may not have been justified.

I suppose it has been this way forever, though, with everything. People who educated women hundreds of years ago didn’t do it because women deserved to be educated. They let women get education because it would make them better mothers and better companions. While I know it is perhaps too idealistic to hope that people will make changes for the right reasons rather than for self-preservation, I can’t help it. Part of me will always want to believe that people want to do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because it benefits themselves.

Even more troubling, I wonder what kind of undercurrents will find breeding ground in institutions that simply “do not want to get caught.” I wonder if it will begin a whole new culture of cover-ups once there are new ways to hide wrongdoing on college campus. I hope that doing the right thing in this respect will carry on into a new generation that does not have the same kind of prejudices we are still struggling with, but it is sometimes hard to see such a future when are still fighting the battle today. I can only imagine what it was like for suffragettes who fought their whole lives for the right to vote, only to die before their labors came to fruition.  I cannot imagine how hopeless it must have felt.