To the Colby community:

A professor uses a camera hidden in a bathroom to spy on a naked student. An aroused party-goer gropes an inebriated reveler. A jocular group rates the appearance of passers-by on a warm spring day.

Yes, these actions (all carried out this year by Colby men against Colby women) represent different levels of injustice, and thus provoke different levels of outrage. But they do share a common feature: they come from a deeply embedded feeling of entitlement, from a longstanding tradition of male privilege.

On this campus, like almost everywhere in the world, men have become accustomed to a set of personal freedoms and advantages that women do not enjoy. Consider the fact that sexually active young men tend to be regarded as “players” while their female counterparts are instead called “sluts.” Or consider the fact that, in many classrooms, men share their opinions with confidence (without feeling obliged to raise their hands) while female students often remain studiously mum.

Male privilege is subtle, and it is insidious. It can lead us, in small and large ways, to assume we have a right to violate the privacy of women, to impose our will on women, to objectify and thus demean women. We saw this most recently in the “skirt day” incident on campus, when a group of men thought they had the right to tell women who were not dressed in ways they desired to “go home and change.”

We believe this behavior was a form of sexual harassment. It also violated Colby’s stated values, which include “respect for ourselves, respect for others,” and a conviction that “all members of the campus community are responsible for fostering a safe and supportive environment in which individuals are free to study, to think, to speak, to work, to learn, and to thrive."

So how should we, as men, respond to such examples of injustice, all of which stem from the reality of male privilege? First of all, we should not become defensive when women complain about being victimized. They have been victimized, over and over again, by a culture that degrades them. At the same time, however, there is no need to drown in feelings of guilt or shame. Women need us to be allies, not co-victims. To forge this alliance, we can, for example, join our sisters in Pulver (and then Miller steps) on Thursday evening for the “Take Back the Night” rally. And we can join them on the quad on Friday afternoon for a “Take Back the Quad” event.

In general, we ought to stand up and speak out when other men engage in acts of abuse, assault or harassment. We must challenge one another to be better. We should understand that an injustice against one of us is an injustice against all of us.

Walter Hatch, Government
Mark Tappan, Education
Adam Howard, Education
Maple Razsa, International Studies
Cyrus Shahan, German and Russian
Peter Harris, English