The College Fix

Many women who attended Virginia Tech’s recent “Take Back the Night” event — “organized by a campus female activism group and featur[ing] sexual assault survivors speaking about their experiences” — have complained that attending members of the college’s football team acted “disrespectfully.”

The football team was required to show up.

“The players arrived late, said they did not know why they were attending the event and spent much of the time looking at their phones,” many groused to the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times.

Goodness! Shock of shocks! (Maybe these ladies now know how professors and teachers, among others, feel, eh?)

Sports Illustrated reports:

“[T]heir judgmental remarks made it very hard to feel safe,” one wrote. “When survivors took the stage, there was nothing respectful in the way the football team took it, especially in reference to transgender survivors. I am deeply offended and horrified by the disrespectful nature that the players displayed.”

Another person said some players “made snide, mocking comments.”

The athletic department held a meeting Tuesday night to discuss the players’ actions.

“I want to discourage the behavior that happened, but I don’t want to discourage the intent,” athletic director Whit Babcock said at the meeting, according to the Collegiate Times. “I was pleased with the initiative, I just was not pleased with the end result.”

Babcock added that he thought the department “could have done a better job” preparing the players for the event.

Here’s a sampling of the “paroxysm of indignity” missives sent to Tech’s Collegiate Times:

Long story short, VT talks a good game about respecting diversity and equality. But they don’t always walk the walk. The VT football players’ behavior at Take Back the Night is just the most recent glaring example.

An appropriate penalty would be to require every one of them who walked out to work 100 hours of community service, picking up the trash around campus after their football games. — Peg Fisher

It is one thing for people to behave this way in their daily lives, but it is completely unacceptable for them to come to a rally that protests such hate and behave this way. — Sheree Jean

Writing this, I am still shaking with rage that they would dare invade a safe space and disrespect the speakers, the event coordinators and the attendees in this way.

I believe the players should be held responsible for their abysmal behavior. The players who were respectful should call out their teammates and encourage them to sit down, listen and engage. — Meg Gisonda

All of this and more did not bode well with me. I am furious about their behavior. This was supposed to be a safe space for people to share their stories and feelings, but their judgmental remarks made it very hard to feel safe.

I am enraged, and there needs to be serious actions taken toward the team. We will not stand for how they treated survivors, how they refused to clap for a transgender women and how they made us feel uncomfortable. — Marifrancis Hardison

Still more letters are available by those who seem completely bewildered that a men’s football team’s mandatory presence at a self-described female “safe space” resulted in contempt and indifference.

Perhaps Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds puts it best: “Honey, you’re a caricature. Your pointless, politicized event got all the respect it deserved, and then some. Generally speaking, captive audiences aren’t especially appreciative.”

Read the full SI article.

h/t to Instapundit.

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