From Furious to Fearless: Faculty Action and Feminist Praxis in Response to Rape Culture on College Campuses

• Author: Don E. Lavigne,R. Corby Kelly,Elizabeth A. Sharp,Dana A. Weiser
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12238
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Date: 01 February 2017

E A. S, D A. W, D E. L,  R. C K Tex as Te ch

University

From Furious to Fearless: Faculty Action

and Feminist Praxis in Response to Rape Culture

on College Campuses

In this article, we (four faculty members) draw

on a specic rape-promoting incident on our

campus as a case study for feminist faculty

responses to civil rights issues on college cam-

puses. We critically examine the incident and

share our multipronged response as faculty

members. In so doing, we highlight interdisci-

plinary activism, the importance of strong visual

presence of feminist faculty activism on campus,

as well as our challenges and dilemmas. As a

call to arms, we hope this article inspires other

faculty to recognize their power and to take

incisive action on their respective campuses.

In September 2014, two pictures publicly

emerged from a party hosted by a fraternity at

our university and rapidly circulated through

social media. The rst picture featured the

slogan “no means yes, yes means anal.” The

second picture featured a cardboard cutout of

a woman’s spread legs and a sprinkler head

in the place of her vulva. These images were

rapidly disseminated throughout our community

and soon featured in national and international

news (see Kingkade, 2014a). A considerable

number of students, faculty, and staff were dis-

gusted, angry, and shocked by these images. A

few weeks after the slogan/sprinkler event, the

Department of Human Development and Family Studies,

Box 1230, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409

(elizabeth.sharp@ttu.edu).

KeyWords: Faculty,feminist activism, feminist praxis, sexual

violence.

fraternity published an apology in the city’sdaily

newspaper claiming that they “were mocking

and holding social norms in sarcasm” (Hudgins,

2015), then the same apology was issued in

our university newspaper over 7 months later

(Daily Toreador, 2015). The delay in apolo-

gizing directly to our university community

and the fraternity’s lack of intellectual evolu-

tion on sexual assault issues—as evidenced by

using the same problematically-worded apol-

ogy letter after many months of fallout from the

incident—highlights the necessity for prolonged

and sustained efforts to educate about sexual

violence on college campuses.

We (four faculty members) conceptualized

the slogan and sprinkler incident as a teach-

ing opportunity for students, staff, faculty, and

administers alike, mobilizing and enabling us

to forge campus- and community-wide discus-

sions about rape culture, female objectication,

male privilege, class privilege,and power. In this

article, we use our concentrated and sustained

response to the incident as a call to arms for

all faculty, and especially feminist faculty. We

share our story of how we went from being furi-

ous individual faculty members to a 

faculty collective (beyond the four of us) com-

mitted to elevating feminist praxis on our cam-

pus to combat sexism, harassment, and sexual

assault. (We call ourselves  faculty, a

name that originated from an athletics campaign

at our university titled  Champions.)

In this article, we foreground our response

to the slogan and sprinkler incident and sug-

gest that our model can be transferred to other

Family Relations 66 (February 2017): 75–88 75

DOI:10.1111/fare.12238