Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

[Katie Gentile <>]

This is awful and re-victimizing. That these constituents on your campus 
could not respect your voice, authority, and expertise enough to listen to 
your objections is just a perfect example of the problem. 

Katie Gentile, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Counseling and Gender Studies
Women's Center Director
Deputy Director, Gender Studies Program
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
445 W. 59th Street
NY, NY  10019   212-237-8110
http://tinyurl.com/Creating-Bodies
________________________________________
From: Viento, Wanda L 
[]
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 5:09 PM
To: 
;
 

Subject: Follow up on Adam Ritz

Hi All,
We’ve had several conversations recently about a convicted sex offender 
speaker out on the campus circuit. Adam Ritz was here on our campus last 
Thursday doing a presentation entitled “Are you Invincible?” I thought I 
would post for you what happened on our campus.
Our student government wanted to bring him to campus and asked us to 
co-sponsor some weeks ago. We had researched him and said it was not 
something we would support. We explained all the reasons why. They then went 
on to get a fraternity to support it and they asked our Men Against Violence 
group to support them. The MAV group has our violence awareness coordinator 
as their advisor and she spent a lot of time talking to the president about 
these concerns. He said it would be good publicity for them to sponsor 
something with student government and went ahead with it against our advice.
As students began to learn of Ritz’s background and message, we had them 
showing up in the Women’s Center asking questions, being angry, and even 
crying. We encouraged students to use their voices. They met with our conduct 
officer to make sure they understood campus rules and decided not to hold an 
outside protest but to hear what he had to say and then ask questions. The 
organizer told us there would be a question and answer period at the end.
The student government rep introduced Ritz and said there would be Q & A at 
the end and he proceeded to read parts of the student code of conduct about 
civil behavior. He started his presentation by reviewing his college career, 
being an athlete at Purdue, growing out his hair, and dropping off the 
football team in junior year to sit with “the Chinese” in the stands. He 
displayed numerous pictures of (male) athletes who got in trouble while drunk 
and lost their careers because of it. His message was that one bad choice 
because of drinking can ruin everything you want in life. He presented staged 
“newscasts” with audience members reading copy for him about these stories. 
Toward the end of the program he read a “newscast” that was about him being 
arrested for sexual assault. His expectation was that the audience would be 
shocked to learn this about him. He showed actual clips from news shows that 
were reporting about it, including footage of him running away from 
photographers and claiming “I am not guilty of rape.”
He then stood there and said he is despicable, deplorable, etc., etc. He said 
he was too ashamed to look us in the eye. He said he wasn’t here to talk 
about what happened or the case, but proceeded to talk about spending six 
months in prison (he pled guilty to a lesser charge). He talked about how “no 
one wakes up thinking they’re going to die today” and that he would never 
have thought he would have headlines linking his name to sexual assault. He 
was drunk and made “one bad choice” that ruined his life. He had a slide 
listing the consequences of that bad choice which listed his job, his 
marriage, his friends, etc.  He followed that up with a slide detailing all 
the money he lost—court cost, attorney fees, divorce fees, lost income, and 
(court-ordered) counseling fees. He did not list the costs to his victim or 
his victim’s family.
He talked about his experience in counseling and how horrible it was for him 
to be in an offender’s group (with a man on one side who had had sex with his 
daughter and on the other side a man who got his nephew drunk to perform oral 
sex on him). He continued to talk about other “bad” rapists and put up 
pictures of two men who had raped and murdered more than one woman. One 
student shot her hand up to ask a question and he said he was almost through 
and would answer questions later. She persisted and said it had to do with 
that slide and asked why he chose only men of color to represent “real” 
rapists and he said he didn’t notice color and went on talking.
He put up slides of him and his two daughters and talked about how he was 
afraid his wife (now ex-wife) would get a restraining order against him and 
he would never see them anymore. He said he deserved it and he would get a 
restraining order against himself. He left the picture of his daughters on 
the screen for several very silent seconds. When he had the slide about the 
consequence of his “bad choice,” he had listed suicide. He said he thought of 
it but he couldn’t do “that” to his daughters, but other offenders have. He 
didn’t not mention how many victims/survivors have resorted to suicide.
He wrapped up at the end by encouraging people to watch out for their friends 
and to be smart while drinking. The audience was ready to ask questions and 
the student govt rep stepped up to the podium and announced there wouldn’t be 
any Q & A, but they would hold a forum in three weeks to talk about
“things.” One student stood up and said they were told there would be Q & A. 
She directly asked Ritz if he would sit down and talk with them. Ritz said he 
“never” does a Q & A period “for a variety of reasons.” Our violence 
awareness coordinator stood and addressed the student govt rep. She asked him 
why he had told her there would be Q & A when she asked him directly earlier 
in the week, and he didn’t provide an answer (or why he announced it at the 
beginning of the lecture). People were outraged. About 30 students stood up 
and started talking about how unfair it was, how they felt violated, how they 
felt silenced. One student demanded her student fees back. The males in the 
fraternity encircled Ritz at one end of the room and blocked him from anyone 
who wanted to talk to him. The student govt president came to the back of the 
room to “listen” but when addressed he said things like “everyone has the 
right to speak their mind” and many students responded, almost in unison, 
that they weren’t allowed to speak their mind. He also responded with “then 
go vote” as students expressed outrage. The president of the MAV group was 
conspicuously absent. After some time, he reappeared in the room and the 
group turned to him and asked him to explain why he sponsored Ritz. He said 
he had no comment.
His whole presentation centered on the consequences of making “bad choices” 
while drinking. He said the message he wanted people to get out of his 
presentation is that he wanted to educate men about “how to be safe and not 
go to jail”—his exact words. He did not address how to take responsibility 
for your actions once you have made a “bad choice.” This was supposed to be 
directed at men and the male students who thought he was a great speaker 
refused to take responsibility for their choices when the hurt and angry 
women and men wanted to talk. The bottom line then is that even directly 
after his presentation, the sponsors were not taking responsibility.
Students are still assessing what they want to do and the have created a 
Facebook page—“Response to Adam Ritz.” If you have student thinking about 
sponsoring this speaker, you might direct them to speak to some of the 
students who are posting there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wanda L.E. Viento, M.S.W., Ph.D.
Director, Women's Center
Minnesota State University, Mankato
218 Centennial Student Union
Mankato, MN 56001
507-389-6146

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold 
down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.  ~~  Saul Bellow