The use and abuse of stories

Rolling Stone is a child of the tumultuous ’60s, born in San Francisco, the heart of hippiedom. Its original journalistic beat was the music scene, later expanded to pop culture, television, celebrities, and social phenomena. Rolling Stone courts a reputation of edginess, but veered too close to the edge in November with a report about the “rape culture” at the University of Virginia. To underscore her theme, writer Sabrina Erdely led off with the shocking account of Jackie, a freshman coed who was invited to a fraternity party in September 2012 and ended up on the floor of an upstairs room, the victim of a gang rape that appeared to be an initiation.

“A Rape on Campus” exploded on the newsstands on Nov. 19 and hurled UVA into a defensive crouch. Alumni canceled their contributions, prospective students pulled their applications, angry demonstrators surrounded the guilty fraternity, and university President Teresa Sullivan suspended Greek Row activities until January.

Then a few columnists started expressing doubts. Some of the details didn’t sound accurate, and it was particularly hard to believe that the victim’s so-called best friends counseled her to keep quiet about it and not jeopardize her social life. In the hyper-feminized atmosphere of the average college campus these days, it strained credibility to imagine that even the female dean seemed ambivalent when Jackie came to her for counseling.

Within two weeks, the story derailed. The Washington Post reported that Erdely had not spoken to the perpetrators—two of whom Jackie claimed to know by name—or fraternity spokesmen, or the dean. The fraternity contradicted three specific details with documented facts. Rolling Stone conceded it had given too much credence to the victim, but at this writing has not retracted the article. Its vague apologies won’t restore the damage to UVA’s reputation. The university may sue, but the story is firmly rooted.

The truth is hard to get at because young women, and the reporters who write about them, are guided by conflicting narratives.

In 1999 a young adult novel by Laurie Halse Anderson became a publishing sensation. Speak narrates the experience of another naïve freshman—high school, not college—who attends a back-to-school party where she is sexually assaulted in the bushes by an upperclassman. Her hysterical response makes her a social pariah and renders her practically mute for most of the school year. Her friends desert her and her clueless parents can’t help. She is on her own until distant role models like Maya Angelou give her the courage to confront her attacker (who is not even named).

Speak is a modern-day classic, appearing on almost every teen recommended reading list. Sabrina Erdely, age 42, wouldn’t have read it in high school but a generation of impressionable teen girls have. Its plot echoes “A Rape on Campus”: Boys can be beasts, adults have their own agenda, and victims are always innocent.

Something traumatic may well have happened to Jackie in September 2012, and some man or men may have acted like beasts. But the truth is hard to get at because young women, and the reporters who write about them, are guided by conflicting narratives. In one, women are shamed, terrified victims who need institutional protection from male predators. In the other, they are strong, confident females, fully entitled to sexual adventurism, who scorn protection.

This leads to confused thinking and imprudent action, like the tipsy freshman girls Erdely describes in her article, promenading along UVA’s fraternity row on Friday nights, angling for invitations. But those who dare suggest that campus “rape culture” owes as much to alcohol and hookups as it does to male entitlement are called “deniers.” When the venerable George Will wrote a column on that theme last summer, activists demanded his head on a pink slip.

When everything becomes political, stories dominate politics, often at the expense of truth. This doesn’t just diminish truth—it also perverts the value of stories. A story is supposed to increase our sympathetic understanding of the facts, not run over the facts. A culture whose sympathies are trampled too many times becomes jaded and cynical, with ears that no longer hear the victim’s cry.

Email jcheaney@wng.org