As a former student at MSU, I continue to participate in and support activities on campus that have relevance to me. I frequently read The State News and opened the Opinion Page today to see the headline “Embarrassed” (“Our voice,” SN 4/25). It described the nonsense going on with David Jaye.
Embarrassed is also appropriate for how MSU should feel at the behavior of some of its students. A few more feelings that come to mind are shame, fear and concern.
On Friday night I participated in the Take Back The Night march. As we progressed through campus, a few onlookers joined in the march. Many stood by with looks of confusion; some in cars honked their horns in a show of support.
What was appalling, shameful and disconcerting was the heckling, name-calling and misogynist behavior of the men in Cedar Village, in the dorms we passed and in the fraternity houses along Grand River Avenue.
If this behavior represents what MSU is sending out into the world today, you should be ashamed and we should all be very afraid. During the years, I have attended Take Back The Night marches around this country and never, ever was I called a “bitch,” let alone so many times and so viciously. One group of so-called “men” even took it so far as to turn their music up as loud as they could to show us they weren’t going to listen to what we had to say.
Apparently, these people don’t have sisters, mothers, grandmothers, nieces, female friends or girlfriends. And they think rape could never happen to them. If they did, they would be out supporting a woman’s right to walk down the street and feel safe, go to a party and not fear for her life because of date-rape drugs or men who can’t understand that no does indeed mean no.
I would like to commend the behavior of the young women involved in the march. Not once did I see an act of aggression toward a heckler. Cards were given out describing what we were doing and why. Every effort was made to keep the marchers safe from traffic and from the hecklers. There was fear in the eyes of some of the marchers as we were being yelled at and it must have been difficult for some of them to even be there.
So while it seemed for a while that we might have learned something from the riots over a basketball game, apparently we have not learned to respect women in this community. To those of you who just don’t get it, I say to you: Hey mister - keep your hands off my sister.
C. L. Alwood
1997 graduate
