Rolling Stones Article on Rape

The article starts off shedding a negative light on the school, by highlighting University of Virginia’s fight song, which promotes drinking. He then goes on to the Jackie’s rape story. Before the actual rape details, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author, wrote how “Jackie’s orientation leader had warned her that UVA students’ schedules were so packed that “no one has time to date – people just hook up.” This gave the feeling that Jackie knew her an Drew were to hook up that night. The article progressed very negatively when the author starts describing the rape – using “its” instead of her name, description how a pledge shoved a bottle in her, among other gruesome details. At this point, readers feel a strong sense of disgust towards the guys, Phi Kappa Psi, and the university.

My thought was, where is the university? This story seems very one-sided: there are no police reports and no hospital reports, only Jackie telling her story. In the article, the author stated that they reached out to UVA, but they canceled their interview and went so far to forbid other administrators from cooperating. Eventually, the university did speak, but did not give much of their side of the story. Leaving readers to believe the author wrote ethically, because he did ask the other side for their viewpoint.