Beyond ‘no means no’: the future of campus rape prevention is ‘yes means yes’
Just as what Milton Friedman has suggested in the book “Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance,” school is a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose, in which as a business for higher education, the institution’s social responsibility is directly towards the students. Hence, the institution’s reputation could substantially be in doubt when students accuse the school for mishandling cases that severely disturb their security and rights. In the case of how the University of Columbia misconduct Emma Sulkowicz’s terrible’s experience of being sexually assaulted in the campus, this example best illustrates how institutions’ lack of disciplinary system could crucially affect the institutions’ reputation negatively.
Through the action of carrying a twin-size bed with her all around the campus and each New York City building, by gaining the public’s attention into the issue of sexual assault, Sulkowicz hopes that the institution could respond as quickly as possible and expel the man who raped her off the campus. Even though Sulkowicz is just one of the three women who accuse the same fellow offender, she was treated abysmally as both the cops and the Columbia’s disciplinary panel remain uneducated towards the campus violence. Therefore, even if the University of Columbia has been one of the best universities around the world with a worldwide reputation, its business and social ethnic is severely in disappointment due to its poor performance of mishandling such crucial and sensitive issue. Just as Freeman’s stakeholder’s theory has stated, “for any business to be successful, it has to create values for customers, suppliers, employers, communities, financiers, shareholders, and banks and other people with the money;” hence, the driving force of pushing a corporation to the peak of success shouldn’t be evaluated on the profit it makes, but rather the values it creates. In this case, as the institution fails to respond justification towards the students’ loss, it fails to truly exercise its social responsibility and its business ethnic, as it cannot provide values to the students. The fact that Sulkowicz advocates for campus violence and sexual assaults through carrying the bed that she was raped with her to all her classes best proved the unfortunate truth, not just Columbia but as well as other institutions, that a strong disciplinary system and security are fundamental and student violence should not be ignored.
Resources:
The Guardian “Beyond ‘no means no’: the future of campus rape prevention is ‘yes means yes'”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/-sp-campus-rape-prevention-yes-means-yes August 10 2014
Milton Friedman “Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance” http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10187339&page=171 August 10 2014
Edward Freeman “What is Stakeholder Theory” https://www.youtube.com/embed/bIRUaLcvPe8 August 10 2014