Technique continues annual tradition of wildly missing the mark on discussions of sexual assault
October: a time for throwing on your favorite flannel, sipping your favorite pumpkin-spiced drink, and promptly doing a spit-take with that drink when you read up on how the Technique has wildly missed the mark this year when discussing the topic of sexual assault on campus.
For the past three Octobers including this one, the Technique has, intentionally or not, established a brand new Georgia Tech tradition: when the leaves start turning red and gold, Tech students have come to expect content from the official school newspaper that is 100% tone-deaf on the subject of rape and sexual assault.
This October tradition, which is now as familiar to Tech students as the football team swooning after a perfect start to the season, began on October 30, 2015 when the editors at the “Nique,” as it’s lovingly called by absolutely no one, in their infinite wisdom chose to publish a wildly controversial “present the other side” interview with a student who had been expelled by OSI due to sexual misconduct allegations. Against the better judgement of everyone except for the people responsible for writing and editing the article*, it included a fairly visceral description of the allegations made against the student in question. Because The Crouton has slightly better judgement than the Technique, we have decided not to include a quote from this article or a link. If you desire to read it, you do so at your own risk. It can be found in Technique Volume 101, Issue 13 - unfortunately, finding the article might be difficult since The Technique’s editors chose to erase it entirely from their official website.
The only October tradition that regularly horrifies students more than the football team losing to Miami continued on October 28, 2016. One of their current editors decided to write and publish this absolute gem of an opinion piece titled, “Fighting for Assumed Innocence Instead of Guilt.” This piece of editorial gold really pushes all the boundaries (of decency) by suggesting that “presumed guilt” in rape cases makes it “inherently harder to create a fair trial for both parties,” a statement which assumes that “presumed guilt” is 1) statistically significant, and 2) lays out its consequences in real life whilst providing about as much hard evidence as a freshman engineer's first paper in a required humanities class (which is to say none). Despite the fact that the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimate that only 15.8 to 35 percent of sexual assaults are reported to police, a fact that has led researchers to believe that most victims of sexual assault are fearful of reporting their assaults because they believe authorities and the general public will assume that they’re lying, this magnificent article forges on, using logic and a firm understanding of the law to discuss an issue that the author never proved even existed in the first place.**
The Technique decided to surprise its non-fans earlier in the month than usual this year with a poll that asked students to contribute their opinions about the term "consent," a word whose definition isn’t really up for debate in the minds of human beings with souls. To The Technique’s credit, despite the overwhelmingly negative responses they received, they did not take the survey down but valiantly left it up in order to ensure that future Technique editors will have a template to look back upon when deciding how to continue the tradition.
The poll in question was posted to the Technique's official facebook page on October 18, 2017.
The Technique and wildly missing the mark on discussing rape and sexual assault on campus. Name a better duo. I’ll wait.
* Our investigations have led us to believe that this power falls under the purview of the editors
** U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, M. Planty and L. Langton, “Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010,” 2013; Wolitzky-Taylor et al, “Is Reporting of Rape on the Rise? A Comparison of Women with Reported Versus Unreported Rape Experiences in the National Women’s Study Replication,” 2010
Disclaimer: Though the referenced articles are in fact very real and have all been published in either the print, digital, or facebook outlets of the Technique, the premise of the article is satirical in nature. We sincerely hope that this will NOT become a yearly October tradition for the Technique and that the appropriate changes in tone will be made in future discussions on this topic.
