We take a General Education Seminar (GESM) class called “Law, Language, and Literature” with Professor Sandra Ferrari Disner at the University of Southern California. We were assigned the 4th essay topic, which had the students rank 10 different scenarios of rape according to how well they fit into our prototype of rape; essentially, rank rape for how rape-y they are. It is extremely dehumanizing for us, as students and people, to write an essay belittling these traumatic experiences that those around us have experienced under the ruse of linguistic analysis. This essay should never have been assigned and it should never be assigned again.

Furthermore, a single student has gone to the director of GESM classes at USC to issue a complaint, and the director, Richard Fliegel, is brushing off the complaint by saying that it is important to learn about rape and sexual assault. This essay, however, does not teach anything about this topic and only forces survivors to relive their trauma. There are a multitude of essay topics that would have worked better than this specific one at promoting critical thinking and analysis on sexual assault and rape in local and larger communities. 

This peition is to show that this is not a single student’s complaint, but rather a shared complaint from many different people. It is disrespectful of USC, Richard Fliegel, and Sandra Disner to continue to, knowingly or not, exploit the trauma of people in the class for the purpose of an essay which the professor, Sandra Disner, knew would be a bad assignment, hence creating an alternative for it but not vocalizing it clearly.

Signing this petition will show your support for survivors, their stories, and for changing this assignment completely. Thank you.