My shiny new whistle

Last night for enrichment we learned all about self defense.

One of the officers from the CU police department came to talk to us about sexual assault. He started out by saint that every year there are roughly 40 cases of sexual assault reported on campus. I guess as a general rule only 1 in 10 assaults are actually recorded. Doing the high powered math, that means about 400 times per school year an assault takes place. That's more than 1 girl a day. I was shocked! Then, he said that this was the safest he has ever seen this campus and he's worked here for 27 years. Wholly COW!

He said that it was safe now to be walking around at night on campus.

At BYU my freshmen year we were scared crapless about walking around campus at night and that was BYU, one of the safest places there is.

After his little spiel I raised my hand and asked what the percentage of assaults that involved alcohol was. He said it was upwards of 90%.

After that section we all got up and practiced maneuvers about how to get away from someone who is attacking us.

The first thing we learned was to stick both thumbs into the eye sockets of our attacker and push back them hard enough that they would smear on the back of their skull. I thought that was a bit graphic.

Anyway, someone asked a question about what if you were already on the ground, with someone on top of you.

The person leading the demonstration showed some complex wrestling move with a girl that weighed about 90 lbs.

I just sat there thinking, if some nasty guy was on top of you I sincerely doubt I'd ever be able to do that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in full support of being able to defend yourself and learning all you can to avoid the situation.

But, if somehow I were the victim of a rape I don't know if I'd be like, "man, if I'd only been able to pull that half nelson on a 200 lb maniac I could have avoided getting raped." Like it was somehow my fault.

The thing that I don't think gets stressed enough at these kind of things is the total and complete innocence of the victim. It doesn't matter if she was drunk, alone and passed out in the middle of a dark park under a bush it was not her fault that someone took advantage of her. She is a victim no matter what.