Below is an excerpt from “How Cyberbullying Is Making Sexual Assault on College Campuses Even Worse” by Katie Van Syckle:
Less than two months ago, a commenter on an anonymous online forum threatened to gang-bang me at a fraternity house. “Is the Cosmo writer actually coming to Dartmouth?” the poster wrote on BoredatBaker.com, a forum open to anyone with a Dartmouth.edu email address. “We should invite her to AD and run train on her. Take pics. Publish it in the next Cosmo issue.” Two commenters supported the plan. One suggested peeing on me too.
AD, or Alpha Delta, is Dartmouth’s rowdy cool-boys frat, the inspiration for Animal House and where current college president Phil Hanlon (Dartmouth ’77) pledged. I had contacted Hanlon — a 60-something mathematician — for an article on the new sexual assault policy at Dartmouth. I hadn’t heard back from him, but I’d spoken to enough people on campus to make my presence known.
I found the post while sitting on my couch in Brooklyn in late March, four days after it was posted. I called the college’s campus police, Safety and Security, and they offered to send an S&S officer. I told them I was off campus. They took my class year — I graduated from Dartmouth in 2005 — my birthday, and asked for a screenshot. Two hours later, the Hanover Police called.
“Do you know who would have written it?” the officer asked. I told him I didn’t. He wasn’t optimistic that he could find the author or hold anyone responsible. He said the Hanover Police get calls like mine about Bored at Baker once a month. …
