The Graduate School and Title IX Office failed to keep me safe
Content warning: The following article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault, domestic violence, and suicidal thinking.
Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of The Princetonian's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query. You can also try a Basic search
28 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
Content warning: The following article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault, domestic violence, and suicidal thinking.
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion Section, click here.
I’m a queer Muslim.
Content Warning: The following essay contains mentions of transphobia.
Content warning: The following article contains descriptions of sexual assault.
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion section, click here.
Since being sent to live with my family in March, I have been trying to keep myself alive. I am gay and have been forced to live with my religiously conservative and homophobic family. I fear for my safety.
The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional. This article is part of The Daily Princetonian’s annual joke issue. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!
As someone with an unhealthy relationship with my own body, I go out of my way to avoid body positivity conversations. Just the thought of being recognized as someone who isn’t skinny is very stressful to me. And over the years, I’ve grown to hate and be very harsh on myself. So yeah, body positivity talks don’t inspire or empower me or cause me to suddenly love myself. And I didn’t feel inspired by this one either. However, this talk had a deep impact on me. Hearing Jessamyn Stanley — who, by the way, is a boss — talk about her experience as a fat woman practicing yoga was a huge wake-up call to me.
A month ago at eight in the morning, I was in my dorm room on the phone, trying to set up an appointment to get my anti-psychotic medication. The person on the line figured I needed immediate help. Two Public Safety officers barged into my room, assaulted me, pinned me down to my bed, handcuffed me, and dragged me out to the ambulance waiting outside my dorm building. My hands were bleeding. My mind was in shock.
Have you ever spent a night in the infirmary? I’m going to take a wild guess and say no, except for an exclusive minority of you. I’m always taken aback by how many students have never been to CPS, who don’t know how to get there, which floor it’s on, or how to take a friend there.
When I first saw you, you were nothing more than a stranger in the crowd . . . kind of like what you are to me now. You told me that when you first saw me, I stood out. I wonder if you’d even acknowledge me today. You told me what you wanted with me, something real, and that differed from what you had wanted in the past. I wanted to think that with me, it was different. I wasn’t like your other hook ups. I thought that I had changed you from your old ways, and for a while, I think I actually did.
Editor's Note: The author was granted anonymity due to the risk of harm to or retaliation against the author.
I didn’t even notice you for a few months.
I always thought I was good at improv. In class, I could win a debate on a topic I knew nothing about or improvise my way through a confrontation with a disgruntled voter when needed.
All I had were questions. What did I want? What would bring me happiness? What would fill the aching void in my chest? Was it even achievable? And — what if I was wrong? What if ‘a person’ wasn’t the answer? All I had were my doubts and my depression. All I had was a deep hole I was trapped in, and the desperate hope that the right person could pull me out.
Editor's Note: This column discusses issues and events that might be traumatizing, or triggering, for some, namely suicide. The author was granted anonymity due to the intensely personal nature of the events described.
I’m ready to be your acquaintance.
Sometimes you’ll see me standing outside, with my head tipped back towards the sky, imploring the clouds to dip down close enough to brush against my face, the same way your words touched my heart. I still tell myself that if I believe hard enough, snowflakes will crystallize on my tongue like candies to remind me of the day we last saw each other.
I used to believe that love worked in a singular, particular way; that I would meet one person and they would be the first person to ever hold my hand, to be my first kiss, my first date, my first time, and that I would marry that one person. My impractical standards dictated that this person would be perfect and that we would live happily ever after. I went to a single-gender school for most of my life, and had very little interest in romance of any kind. All my knowledge of relationships and romance came from TV shows, books, and movies for the first 18 years of my life.