President Roth, Rape is Rape. It is Not “Having Sex.”

Dear President Roth, I write regarding your recent guest essay in the New York Times titled “The Obvious Step That Could Mean Fewer Fraternity Sexual Assaults.” In this essay you make an argument for fraternities going co-ed. I do not write to engage with the larger content of your essay, but merely to ask a focused question about your choice of phrase in one sentence. You write that “one young man’s Snapchat invitation to a chain of buddies to have sex with an intoxicated woman was like-minded bro culture at its worst.” I wonder about your framing of this as an “invitation” to “have sex with an intoxicated woman.” Have sex with? This was an invitation to rape. Consider an alternate scenario, in which a fraternity staged torture sessions in which they gathered as a gang to physically beat and assault a drugged man. Would you then write that a fraternity man posted an “invitation” to “box with an intoxicated man?” Rape is rape. And calling it “having sex” is bro culture at its worst. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes Willard Long Thorp Professor of Economics, Amherst College Amherst College Class of 1994