by Haley Mitchell, managing editor

Upon Googling ‘Brock Turner’ I am greeted with smiling formal yearbook photos, pictures of an Aryan specimen decked out in swimming medals and hundreds of articles with headlines heralding a ‘sexual assailant’ and ‘former Stanford student’.

I had never even heard of the Stanford Rape Trial until about a week ago, and I wonder if I ever would have heard about it had rapist Brock Turner not received the minimum six-month sentence for his crime.

And if that didn’t bother me enough, a unanimous jury verdict and the upsetting letter the victim read aloud directly to her attacker wasn’t enough to change the way Turner is labelled. ‘All-American swimmer’. ‘Sexual assailant’. ‘Stanford student’. Rapist. Why is nobody in the media willing to admit that Brock Turner a rapist? Several news sources are also using those smiling yearbook photos instead of the mugshot from the night of his arrest because it wasn’t released until very recently, even though the incident took place almost eighteen months ago.

So I think that at this point in my high school career I’m qualified to label myself as a journalist. But I’m also a member of the female race. I have sisters and mothers and aunts and grandmas and heck, like 92% of this staff is female. I’m not even eighteen and I have friends my age who are already part of the frightening statistic that one in five women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. In a year when I should be excited to be going to college and seeing my friends do great things in universities across the country I’ll be worried about them as they depart to their respective campuses because 23% of women get sexually assaulted in college.

So as a journalist, and a woman, and just an incredibly angry person in general, I read all these articles about this horrible thing that this horrible rapist did, and all of the horrible things said to defend him, and I tried to think of anything I could do that could be consequential in any way.

Several petitions and even a web domain has been registered with the intent of getting the judge who delivered Turner’s sentence recalled. Some exist to give Turner maximum jail time. I’d sign every one of them if I thought they’d make a difference, but I think the sad reality is that the only thing that will ever happen to Brock Turner is that he will serve as an emblem of gross injustice in the American judicial system.

I can only hope that the results of his trial will prompt parents everywhere to stop telling their daughters they shouldn’t stay out so late and instead tell their sons not to rape. I can only hope that we all feel a little sick inside when we think about the fact that in a little over three months, a rapist will be walking free among society once again, still denying his guilt in the heinous crime he committed. I can only hope that one day I’ll stop being worried about the 65% of rapes that go unreported, and worrying about the women who the law couldn’t protect because our country still somehow fails to process the seriousness of sex crimes.

I’ve been including all these links throughout this column because sometimes I can’t even believe how upsetting some of the statistics are. As a journalist, and a woman, and an incredibly angry person in general, and an American, I never get more disappointed in our country than when the media catches wind of yet another rape, another sexual assault, another victim somewhere who has to live with the repercussions of a deeply violating and traumatizing crime, and our lawmakers still fail to do anything about it. Even when a rapist is caught in the act, chased down, taken into custody, and found guilty by twelve jurors, the law still fails to punish offenders to the extent they deserve. Brock Turner has been a brutal reminder that rape culture exists. Don’t let the passivity of the law make you forget.