The VP of PSG removed a date rape joke from his Twitter

Jacob Goedde, the recently elected vice president of Purdue Student Government retweeted a date rape joke on April 4. A few days after his campaign with Geralyn Denger came to a successful conclusion, the retweet was removed from his feed, but not before a screenshot was taken.

This hit home for me because I — as well as a number of other women and men — have experienced something similar to this in the past.

Date rape should never be a topic of a joke in the first place, is joked about so casually that it’s rather alarming. Jacob Goedde definitely isn’t the first to do this. I have previously been around friends and acquaintances who’ve made snide comments and jokes like this. Being the non-confrontational person I am, I would keep my mouth shut and just went along with it for the most part. Deep down, they didn’t mean any harm. I mean, it’s just a joke right? I was supposed to lighten up and laugh along.

But the truth is now I don’t want to keep these thoughts to myself anymore. This bothers me a lot. It makes me cringe.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to demonize Jacob Goedde. I respect him as our new student vice president. He seems to be a very friendly guy, and I am sure he never has and never would do something so low, desperate, and abhorrent like that in real life. This retweet certainly doesn’t mean Goedde promotes the idea of date rape in any way.

In fact a comment provided by Adi Ben-Yehoshua, the Denger-Goedde campaign manager, confirms:

“Jacob retweeted the picture because the toys in the picture were something he used to play with. As soon as he saw the possible connection between the tweet and an inapproporiate joke, he deleted the retweet. Jacob passionately cares about women’s rights and had been fighting for more sexual assault relief services at Purdue for a long time and will continue to work on these issues during his term in office serving the student body. Him retweeting it in no way condones the use of date rape drugs.”

Again, I have seen even worse jokes posted and recycled online, but that is not the point here. The point is that this is such a recurring — and often swept under the rug — issue that is so prevalent among students on college campuses across this country.

There’s absolutely no denying this retweet was done in very poor taste. Not to mention a very miscalculated move by a rather prominent political figure on campus. That being said, it’s also important to note that Goedde did take down this tweet, which says he most likely acknowledges the insensitive implication the tweet carries.

But people need to understand the bigger picture here. This incident reveals a much larger problem within our culture and attitudes toward sex. Especially with the rise of our modern hook-up culture with casual sex and one-night stands a very real occurrence throughout college campuses. It seems so obvious and redundant to say that the only circumstance in which one should engage in sexual activity with another is through mutual consent. And yet, sexual assault is still a common and unaddressed issue, particularly on university campuses.

The statistics are quite astounding. According to The National Sexual Violence Research Center, one in five women and one in seventy-one men in the United States will be assaulted throughout their lifetime. One in five women and one in sixteen men will be assaulted while in college. Imagine how many other cases remain unreported. After all this information, I just can’t fathom how one would still have the gall to post or retweet a joke pertaining to this very tragic and problematic issue.

While it is appears Goedde — as a champion in the battle against sexual violence — meant no offense by the joke, he should act more responsibly as a representative of our student community. He is human, and we all make mistakes. All of us can take away that as millennials our social media presence is painfully public. We also are shown once again how we can’t afford to twist rape into a laughing matter.