The coffee tastes thin and watery, like the kind you get on an airplane, and the headphones press into my ears.
It’s just another typical day in the lab, and with my computer on the desk and the one-way glass in front of me, I’m flipping through old notes and only half paying attention to the current interviewee, a girl named Lily with a pixie cut and light blue dress.
“Do you understand this study is being done on a voluntary basis?”
“Yes.”
“That it will be recorded, and that portions of your interview may be published, although your name will be changed?”
“Yes.”
I chew on the end of my pen and look through the window, thinking her headband is cute. It’s really more of a scarf she’s tied around her head.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Are you currently part of a Greek organization?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been a part of a Greek organization?”
“Yes.”
I shuffle through my papers, trying to find the transcript of an interview we did a week ago with a football player and Sig Nu where he kept referring to women as “biddies.”
“How long ago did you leave?”
“About two years ago.”
“Have you ever been sexually assaulted?”
There is a pause. “Yes.”
I drop my pen and look up.
“By a current or former member of a Greek organization?”
She turns her head and looks at the mirror, at me. After a second, she turns back to Stephanie. “Yes,” she says, her voice barely making it across the room to the mic.
I grab the computer and pull it onto my lap.
STOP, I type.
Stephanie clears her throat, stalling.
I’m so sorry that happened to you, I type, and Stephanie parrots it. If it’s not too much to ask, could you tell me as much as you feel comfortable with about what happened?
Lily shifts in her seat. “Um...sure. So, I was at a party at—at one of the bigger houses three years ago, my freshman year. I’d been there a few times for events. I’d made it into a pretty good sorority, one of the top houses, you know? My mom was a member, and she’s superbig with all the alumni stuff. I didn’t really fit in with those girls, but...but that doesn’t matter. I’m getting off topic. So anyway, I didn’t have that many friends among the girls, like real friends, you know, that would have your back, but it felt like I was safe, right? Because I was with my sisters. So I guess that made me feel like I could get really drunk, you know? But it’s not like I was really drinking that much more than anyone else. I mean it was a frat party, so...”
She exhales. “So we’d had the pregame with them and I’d started drinking pretty damn early. But I didn’t black out.” She holds up her hand. “That’s really important to know, that I remember everything. Not that it would excuse anything if I didn’t. But I’m just saying I remember everything he did, and there’re no parts I’m missing, so this should be good evidence, right?”
Stephanie nods.
“So right. I’m pretty drunk by the time other people start to get to the party. I see this guy I’d met a couple times at other events. He’s older, and seemed pretty nice the other times I’d seen him...
“I’m that level of drunk when you’re feelin’ good but not like superdrunk anymore, and you’ve convinced yourself that you’re gonna sober up any moment so you need to drink more.
“So he starts talking to me, and pretty quickly I ask if he knows if they have any more alcohol, since the kegs were running out. It’s pretty common at these things to have the bad alcohol in the main room, and then people, like upper-tier Greek Life people, they can go into the back rooms and drink better stuff.
“So he nods and leads me off, and I’m thinking we’re gonna go to a room with like ten or twenty people in it, my sisters and his brothers, that kind of thing.
“And then, well, yeah...” She looks at her shoes. “The room was empty. He, uh, he locked the door and pushed me onto the bed and started kissing me, and, ugh, at this point I just, like, think he’s gotten the wrong idea. That maybe I’ve been sending signals that I wanted this, that maybe this is my fault.”
She laughs, and it’s a hollow sound.
“So I kind of start to push against his chest, lightly at that point, and saying things like, ‘Hey, let’s go back to the party’ and ‘I’m not really in the mood’ and ‘I don’t really want to right now.’ Trying to be nice.” The last word sounds like she’s spitting.
“But he keeps advancing and shushing me. So I start pushing harder and saying no, like a forceful no, and I start to realize he doesn’t really care what I’m saying.
“And that’s when I panicked, when I knew what was happening.
“And I yelled, but it’s so loud at those things, people probably couldn’t hear me. Or, I mean, that’s what I’d like to think.”
She wrings her hands. “He, um, he raped me, and then he left. He went back to the party.”
Her face is pale, her lips almost white.
“And I just left, walked across campus alone. I kind of, uh, shut down. I should’ve called the police right then, I guess, or told someone, but I just went home. The pain was gone, but only because I felt, like, nothing. Not like I was okay, but the opposite. Like my mind could not handle what happened and just stopped.
“And I showered, which apparently was a bad move.”
She’s quiet for a long time.
“Did you tell anyone?” Stephanie finally asks.
“Not for a while. I didn’t know how to tell my ‘sisters’ or whatever, you know, because I was this quiet freshman they only put up with because of my mom, and he was in one of the best frats on campus. I mean, maybe they would’ve believed me. In retrospect, of course they would have—they weren’t monsters. But then...” She shakes her head, and tears bead in her eyes. “I was just so confused and so mad I didn’t know what to do.”
The room is quiet.
“And it got pretty bad, and I—I ended up in the hospital, and they made me talk to someone. But she kinda sucked. But they wouldn’t let me quit counseling if I wanted to go back to school, so they switched me to Sasha instead.”
She smiles, weakly. “She kind of rocks. So I ended up telling her, and getting better, you know, and quitting the sorority and finding new friends, good friends, and some of them are in sororities even.”
She touches the scarf. “That really helped, talking about it. Telling someone. I can live now.” Her voice is tight.
She slides off the scarf. “It’s kind of warm in here, huh?”
“Yeah.” Stephanie stands. “We can turn on a fan, if you want. Or take a break? Get some water?”
“No, I’m fine.” Lily straightens her back. “What’s your next question?”
“We really don’t have to—”
“What is your next question?”
“Would you like to see them gone?”
“What? The frats?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t care.”
“Why?”
“Because fuck that. Because I was raped and they want to change his fucking housing to deal with it? Are you kidding me? He wasn’t playing music too loud after hours—he attacked me. I want him in jail. I want him hung, for God’s sake. Not his club disbanded, boo fucking hoo.”
“Some people think frats create misogynistic environments.”
“The world is a misogynistic environment. He was in math club, too. Do you think if they get rid of that, it’ll make up for what happened to me? Getting rid of the frats is a fucking cop-out. Something big needs to be done. It’s not a frat problem—it’s a human problem. It happens everywhere, in the army, at work. Hell, you wanna talk about misogynistic environments, I worked at a tech start-up last summer and let me tell you—”
She stops abruptly and exhales. “Sorry, I’m getting worked up. The point is talking about how abolishing frats like that will get rid of assault or misogyny, it’s...reductive. And kind of insulting.”
Stephanie glances toward the mirror, which she isn’t supposed to do. I frantically type a question—But if there’s a victim that thinks it will help...?—and Stephanie dutifully asks it.
“Then burn them fucking down.”