My senior year is coming to a close, and I'm in the stressful process of looking for a college that best fits me. Sadly during this process my parents have been very concerned about the large amount of college campus rape cases that has been reported recently. Their worries soon became my worries. I began starting to research many different rape cases that have happened on college campus's, wondering what the most common reason for them was. What I found sickened me. In most of the reports I searched, the incident happened at a party. And in almost every case where the offender was a male and the victim was a female, the offender pledged that the victim was "asking for it by what she was wearing." I felt anger and frustration throughout reading these. 

Women should be able to wear what they feel comfortable in. As a woman, I don't look at another woman who is dressed a certain way and think, "Woah, she's asking to be raped". And I'm sure many others can say the same. So how is it that a man can say it with such ease? How is the statement, "she was asking for it" even a consideration for a fair justification of a rape case? 

Now, I will say that women should be taught to carry themselves with respect and be taught to have some sense of what is, and what isn't, appropriate to wear in different situations. For example, ripped jeans might not be the the best idea to wear for a professional job interview. Or a cropped t-shirt is better worn over a bathing suit on the way to the beach than it is when you're babysitting younger children. But men should also be taught how to treat women with respect as well. We were all taught growing up to keep out hands to ourselves and to treat others the way we would want to be treated. Nowhere along the path of growing up should that change due to an inability in controlling our body language and desires.

Moral of the story is, what somebody wears does not automatically write on their forehead, "Yes, I am asking for it". I think that this seriously needs to be taken into consideration when handling rape cases, specifically college rape cases, and listening to the offenders plead of innocence. 

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