A few years ago I wrote a play and based it on actual events that happened nationally and right here in Emporia at Kappa Sigma. A lot of time and research went into it, and I wanted to let the audience take a walk in the victim’s shoes and also the predator who believe it or not also has issues they are dealing with leading them to act that they way they do. I think that’s what made the play beautiful was seeing the pain of the predator as well as the victim.

But today for the first time, I am writing about the actual events that conspired. So instead of looking at these victims as just that please imagine someone else. So….Vice President of Student Affairs, Dean of Students, Former ESU President, Professor, Counsellor, University Campus Police, Peers….Imagine your daughter, imagine your sister, imagine the most precious person in your life when I recount 4 victims and one in detail.

Your sister comes to school and befriends a Frat boy at Sig Tau. He says whatever he needs to say to get her attention. She believes him because you taught her to see the best in people. She wants to fall in love. She has no idea. He rapes her. She doesn’t what to do, what to say. He said he loved her so should she do anything. When she speaks out the other guys in the frat say things about her, call her a slut. It gets so bad that she transfers to another school to start all over….but it’s always there. You never ever find out. You will never know. She never tells anyone after talking with me. She just wanted to reach out to let me know that I was not alone and to inspire me to write a play.

Your niece comes to college. She ends up joining the same sorority that you were in, following your footsteps. You are so proud of her. She tries to find herself and loses her way a little partying at the Kappa Sigma Fraternity next door. She befriends a guy. The most normal looking acting guy. But when he catches her alone, he forces himself on her. She keeps quiet for a while. Then she finds out that it happened to other girls…the same way. She see’s how one of the girls is treated. And even after talking to her and saying that she will help stand for what is right…she is terrified. She will lose her sisters, her frat friends, everything. She retracts what she says to fit in. Does that still make you proud? She never talks about it again, everything is back to normal? Is it really? Sometimes I wish I had been that afraid.

Your best friend goes to a big state college. She goes as a last minute date with her long time friend to the Kappa Sig Sweet heart dance. The girl from the sorority is there. The night is innocent and fun. The same man keeps getting her drinks. She wakes up the next morning dreading the consequences of drinking too much and doing something that she did not want to do. She goes back to her college and later also comes into contact with me telling me her story. She wanted to call the police and give the insight as well…but I don’t if that ever happened.

NOW IMAGINE YOUR DAUGHTER. The most precious person in your life. She just got her first kiss 2 months before she turned 19. She finally has her first true boyfriend. Life is great. She strays a little bit and decides to drink for the first time with her best friend at a Kappa Sigma Party. Her other friend whom she plays video games with will also be there. She sees him there and he made a “special drink for her.” Grape Kool-Aid vodka because he knows it’s her first time drinking and wanted to make something that would taste good. She drinks it…it tastes fine. She dances. She drinks a little more she meets new friends, and a little more…she feels tired, sluggish, not able to concentrate.

“Hey, it looks like you don’t feel good…want to lay down in my room for a bit.”

She manages to shake her head no. She knows she didn’t drink that much. He picks her up and carries her up the stairs. He lays her on the bed. She can feel herself slipping away. He doesn’t leave the room. The same Kappa Sigma member lies next to her. He leans in for a kiss. She turns her head away.

“I have a boyfriend,” she mumbles.

He tries to kiss her again. She turns away. He kisses her neck, her shoulder. He starts to pull up her dress. She whispers no. His hand slips under her dress. She can feel him inside of her. She rolls off the bed onto the concrete-like floor and cries. He steps over her body and walks out.

She crawls down the stairs. She needs to tell someone, get out. She can’t move anymore. He sees her and maybe he thinss she will manage to tell someone, or someone will notice. He carries her up the stairs again. Her eyes are closed. She can’t fight back now.

Hours later a girl on the same dorm comes and wakes her up. The room is spinning. She is alone. Something doesn’t feel right. She manages to get a ride back, and her peer helps her back to her room. She goes to the bathroom and sees bruises all down her side where she fell. She takes of her dress off and sees bite marks all over her body. She pulls up her bra to reveal more bite marks and blood. She feels raw and swollen in the most private of areas.

He texts her the next day…she tells him she knows what happened. He apologizes, saying he has liked her for a long time, that he couldn’t have her any other way. “Please don’t tell anyone.” Her friends tell her to keep her mouth shut. She can’t kiss her boyfriend or let him touch her. She pulls away from her. Their relationship crumbles.

She finally tells her boyfriend only to be treated with emotional, physical, sexual, and verbal abuse. She is not a person anymore. She is an object. Her body was used as an object. So why would he love her anymore? Why would anyone.

She tries to act like nothing happened. She goes to Kappa Sigma events where all her friends are. The man catches her alone and grabs her face. She is terrified. Another member walks in and says nothing but gives her enough time to run out. She is followed by him in campus. She tells him to leave her alone. He grabs her to make sure she can’t get way in the middle of campus. She yells, she screams. Students start to walk out of class. He realizes this and lets her go. He continues to follow her back to her dorms. She is terrified. How stupid of her to think that things could go back to normal.

He messages her, and texts her saying that he wants to be with her want so marry her. Those messages are still on her computer. She finds out that he raped 2 other girls. Finally she tells her boss, who calls the police. It was too early to tell the story. Her roommates find out. They don’t want the frat to get in trouble. Their boyfriend is an active member after all. She has to move out. Her significant other falls in to drugs and alcohol with his new frat Sigma Tau, his friends find out. They call her crazy, slut, cunt…. The I love you, I want to marry you disappears and he joins in. The verbal abuse gets worse. He can’t handle the situation. He leaves.

She goes to her old place to get some clothes and brings a police officer friend out of uniform just in case. Her ex-roommate is there with another friend. You try to talk to them. They still stay on frat boys side even though he told them what he did to you. You leave only to learn that they called the cops saying that your daughter came in threatening them and trying to hurt them…your 5 foot 4 inch now 98 pound daughter who is withering away tried to hurt them. Luckily she was smart enough to bring a local police officer to vouch for her.

People call her a liar, a slut, attention seeking little whore, cunt,… she has already died inside. She tries to take her life. A co-worker thought she sounded upset when she called into work. She finds her and takes her to the hospital and saves her life.

She hears back from the police and the county who has dropped the case. She turns it into campus. There is no trial held because the Kappa sigma member confessed and was “sanctioned.” She gets a restraining order….yet he still follows her to class. He shows up to places she has been. The campus police do nothing, the city police do nothing. Her tires are slashed, her house is broken into, she has to delete all social media, change her hair, and change her look. Her peers join in in the nasty comments. She has to change her major. She has to get an extension on the restraining order because he is still stalking her. The judge is in disbelief at the police and says he could be in jail for his actions. He gives her an extension after the Kappa Sig member says “I have been places where she has been and she never even knew…” And gives him the warning of jail.

She contacts the national Kappa Sigma office. They do nothing. They push her aside like she is nothing. She starts to believe she is nothing.

She gets a knife, pepper spray. She now has a heart condition. She tries to communicate with the president who has her meet with student affairs. She is told that she is not allowed to say that the Kappa Sigma member confessed so there was no trial on campus. She is threatened to be sued for exploitation. She is made to see a counsellor on campus who breaks HIPPA for sharing information but ultimately breaks her trust. A professor accuses her of being emotional and not holding it together in class just because she is having “boy problems”….they didn’t know that she was upset because that was the day her tires were slashed and her guy friend came to comfort her at the time.

A few lawyers tell her she was a case, but she can’t afford it. And why let it drag on. Hasn’t she hurt enough…

She is never told about title 9 or anything else she can do because she is not happy and does not feel safe. She feelsshe has nowhere to go, no money to uproot. You don’t even know what is truly happening. She stays because after everything horrible a miracle came out of her, and she now has someone to care and love for.

She writes a research play tackling the subject and it is performed on campus. She writes to the Bulletin to cover the story (a member of Kappa Sigma was on the Bulletin calling her a Bitch in front of other Bulletin members. They don’t write anything about it…even though it is a success even though student affairs tried to step in so that it was not performed, even though peers said horrible things to her for it. They had nothing to say after that. They felt it. They felt the pain, and the beauty. Just know that during that time she still had true friends, professors who helped her survive, and God.

Different now that you imagine your daughter right?

So when I saw that article in the gazette, when I saw the articles in the Bulletin my face became hot, my heart condition symptoms kicked in, my eyes teared up, and my fingers turned numb. Nothing was said about me, I was shoved under the carpet and stomped on. I died inside. Then the fact that this keeps happening at the same fraternity and nothing is done. That fact that one man raped 3 girls in the time frame of 2 months. The fact that he confessed, and became the President of Kappa Sigma. That the people who promise to keep your kids safe on campus did nothing. That someone who should be in jail for breaking a petition of stalking order among all the other thing is not because the campus and city police failed. Even the judge admitted that!

The hunting ground movie came out about campuses hiding rape cases. Why? Why is it a taboo. Why is it not a crime? Why am I a slut for saying no and having my wishes taken away? I was left with bite marks, the scars, the bruises, the bleeding. My virtue was taken away from me.

Just when I think I have moved on with my life I see those articles and the same thing happen to girl after girl. 1 in 4 girls are raped on campus….96% of perpetrators get off free.

So now the Bulletin wants to know how I think? Shame on the Bulletin, shame on society, shame on this campus, shame on how these situations are dealt. Shame on me for thinking that this would never happen to me. Maybe I would be just like society if it hadn’t. This is real. It happens to your friends, your sister, your daughters…do you even know? Probably not. Why? Because they are treated like how I was treated. And quite honestly… sometimes I wish that I had never said anything. But I think I would be hurting more and feeling guilty if it happened again. But even when I spoke out it did happen again. He tried to drug another girl that was witnessed. He became President of his frat, graduated, and I was recently told to stay away from Up-Down Kansas City because He is a bouncer there. I can only imagine how many women that brings in for him to prey on.

But at the end of the day, it happened to me. It’s my experience. It doesn’t matter if anyone believes me or not. Because I am valuable, I am stronger, I am better. I am a Steel Magnolia for those who have seen the movie. I am graduating in May with my Dream Major. I have a family now. I pray for him at night to ask for forgiveness for any anger that I hold onto, and for God to bless him and to touch his life as well as anyone else who treated me the way they did. Life is gift, and I plan to make some good come out of my situation. It already has . I am finally happy me again. When people find out they say they would have never guessed because of my upbeat personality. It still hurts everyday…but there are more important things in this world.

Whitney Steinike

This is an email statement from Whitney Steinike in response to The Bulletin’s request for an interview.