Editor's Note: This article references sexual assault.

I was speaking to a close friend about the scandal that has engulfed this University, as many of us have probably been doing. He’s positioned in a place of having a platform, like me, to speak up about the failures in conduct and controversy; the word that kept littering our conversation was 'complicity.' Don’t think of it literally. It’s not the complicity held in the men who allegedly gang-raped her for hours, or the complicity the other 50-plus active fraternity members at the time hold. I’m not even talking about the complicity of the University administration or the District Attorney’s office — because the complicity these actors maintain for their lack of proper action, both in voicing concern and seeing through with their punishments, is unmistakable and well documented. 

The complicity is the one we all bear as students — as human beings. 

My friend pondered about what speaking up would look like. He wrapped his head around the formality and tone. He seemed to center his message with the reaction and not the intention, which one inevitably does when their own words hold weight. But the heavier it got, the more he realized his wish was a message embedded in empathy and emotion — maybe even outrage. One that the administration, the DA nor our campus seemingly ever gave to Jane Doe. 

Complicity feels heavy because “the culture of rape,” as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called it........

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