I was 17 years old.Ī dorm friend, Jim*, who desperately wanting to join a fraternity, begged me to accompany him as his date to a rush party at the Phi Kappa Psi house on Oct. But, those hopes were to be dashed about five weeks into my college career. I had graduated as valedictorian, and as I packed my belongings for the trip the Charlottesville, I was prepared to make my mark at the wonderful institution founded by Thomas Jefferson. I knew I wanted to go to UVA for one major reason: It had the country’s most highly ranked English department, my major of choice. My parents were thrilled with my choice, even though I had never even paid the campus a visit during the application process. As a sheltered, shy, but ambitious child growing up in suburban Westchester County, New York, my choice struck some as very far away, very “Southern.” Most of my contemporaries from my all-girls high school in Rye, New York, were headed north to Boston or other parts of New England, to so many of the liberal arts colleges in much colder climes. In August 1984, I arrived at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, eager to jump into college life. We are all left with questions and opinions in the exhausting wake of the now-infamous Rolling Stone article about campus sexual assault, and how victims are treated at the University of Virginia. I was gang raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house.
I was gang-raped at the University of Virginia.