David Lisak, a University of Massachusetts professor, challenged assumptions about rape on college campuses before an audience of some 75 people packed into 105 Dartmouth Hall on Monday evening.
Lisak spoke before the Dartmouth crowd as part of the College's Sexual Abuse Awareness Program.
Lisak, an associate professor of psychology at UMass and the director of the Men's Sexual Trauma Research Project, captured the audience's attention when he played an excerpt of an interview that recalled a situation with which many audience members could relate.
The testimony, portrayed by an actor who assumed the name "Frank," sounded like a typical weekend night at a Dartmouth fraternity -- the story of a bunch of guys hosting an invite-only cocktail party for a group of women.
"We'd always designate some rooms before the party for bringing girls up to," Frank said. "There was a girl in some of my classes who I'd seen before. The minute she walked into the party, I was on her."
Lisak's presentation quickly evolved into an uncomfortable scenario, which he claims is far more frequent than most people realize.
During the interview, Frank goes on to describe raping the girl in an upstairs bedroom at the fraternity before returning to the party downstairs. As in most of the scenarios presented, Lisak said the crime was never investigated.
Many Dartmouth students attending the event did not believe the scenario reflected the reality on campus.
"Once somebody says 'no,' you don't push them to go any further," Mike Hartwick '07, a brother at Chi Heorot fraternity, said. "To hear that there are frats that [act like the characters in Lisak's tape] is kind of disappointing. It gives Greek life a bad name."
Lisak's presentation went on to stress the sizable gap between the thousands of rapes that occur each year and the number of rapists that are convicted or even investigated.
"Rape is something you can get away with," Lisak said, comparing the one percent of rapists that are convicted each year with a 1999 study that found 20 percent of women have been rape victims by the age of 30.
"Most rape victims don't tell anybody about what happens. If you know it's a crime that won't be prosecuted, probably not even reported, you will do it over and over again," Lisak said.
Lisak attempted to break down the stereotypical profile of a rapist as a dangerous "man in a ski mask." Instead, Lisak explained that most rapes fall under the category of "non-stranger" rape -- in which the victim trusts a man or men because they have met in a familiar context.
To emphasize his point, Lisak presented pictures of about 20 different men and asked the audience to pick out the ones who looked like rapists.
The three men Lisak later identified were all Caucasian, dressed in shirts and ties and guilty of raping as many as 14 different women.
"I think he touched on a really good point on how it's easy to downplay acquaintance rape," lecture attendee Elizabeth Sherman '08 said. "Someone very close to me was raped, but it was by an ex-boyfriend. I think the media puts a lot more emphasis on the small minority of stranger rapists."
