Bish, who you foolin’?
The worst example of bystander apathy is the case of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender who was murdered in a Queens, New York neighborhood in 1964. The New York Times claimed that 38 people witnessed her rape and stabbing death from their apartment windows, then closed the shades and turned out the lights. It would take decades for it to come out that this wasn’t true. Very few actually saw her murder, though some may have heard her screams emanating from an apartment hallway. But the name stuck, and Kitty became the poster child for denial and abdication of responsibility.
The current situation at Bishop’s University is a very good example of the bystander effect. When a student has to resort to writing “He raped me. I reported. He’s still in my class. BU take action”, in big letters on the town bridge, it’s clear that their voice isn’t being heard. This is the same bridge that during a very dark era in Bishop’s University and Champlain College’s past (the two schools share the same campus), students complained it was not properly lit, and that they feared for their safety walking back to their dorms at night. In some cases, they’d resort to taking a short cut, a path through the woods by the Lennoxville golf course, but that too was unsafe. In the winter of 1978, a student was found dead there in a snowbank. In both cases – the path and the bridge – it took school administration over forty years to fix or install lights along these routes. Forty years to fix a lightbulb. Yes, I would say Bishop’s has a problem accepting responsibility. The student’s choice of using the bridge to convey their message was rather brilliant, it’s a highly symbolic landmark of Lennoxville’s long history of sexual violence.
If you don’t know that history, you should. I’ve spent the last twenty years documenting Lennoxville’s long association with bystander apathy and victim blaming. In chronicling the events surrounding the unsolved murder of my sister, Theresa, who went missing on campus while a student at Champlain and was found five-and-a-half months later dead in a ditch, I have heard hundreds of accounts of sexual assaults on campus, and school administration shirking. In 1978-79 when this happened, school administration had no issue with blaming my sister as the root cause of her demise. But it went further, the school put students forward as the number one suspects in her death, a convenient lie that allowed police and school administration to ignore the ultimate source of the problem, what today we call rape culture. After 43 years of continuing to do nothing, this is no longer a dark chapter in the town’s history – that’s the book.
Every time this happens, Bishop’s / Champlain props up some school ‘functionaire’ to tell us they finally hear us, some cheap Mayor Larry Vaughn figure saying it’s now safe to go back in the water. This year’s version is Director of Student Services, Stine Linden-Andersen – a woman, that’s refreshing. Yes, but the anchored, powder-blue jacket was a dead giveaway- it’s still Larry Vaughn. She’s telling us everything’s all right, go back to class, grab a slice at Jerry’s Pizza, your property values are on the rise. Bish, who you foolin’?
I’ve witnessed all kinds of community influencers (mostly men) in your local papers and on your Facebook pages whinge effortlessly about COVID and climate change, but whenever this issue of holding Bishop’s accountable comes up – as it always does – they all suddenly lose their voice, lacking the moral courage to address the one problem over which they have direct influence. That’s bystander apathy.