An Artist Is Pretending To Pass Out On USC Fraternity Lawns For Sexual Assault Awareness

Harrison Lee9 years ago

Watch out fraternity gentleman of Southern California: There is a chick entering your house lawns and pretending to be passed out.

An artist who goes by the name of Violet Overn wanted to bring awareness to sexual assault. Her bright idea? Create party scenes and pretend to be passed out in front of fraternity houses that she so cleverly calls “Fraternity Houses.”

This is what they look like:

Huffington Post calls these images “grueling.” I call them terrible, and possibly trespassing (not a big law person, so any future lawyers can fill me in). Fraternities get a bad rap because of people like Violet that think all frat guys sexually assault and that we’re are all bad people. She knows absolutely nothing about the people in the fraternity houses whose lawns she selects to pass out in, but that doesn’t stop her from essentially calling all of them sexual opportunist boozehounds.

Here’s her reasoning for choosing to do this at fraternity houses, via Huffington Post:

The Greek system is a massive, prevalent institution that has to progress and change alongside the rest of society. For example, on most college campuses sorority houses aren’t allowed to host parties or provide alcohol, therefore fraternities have the control of the social gatherings and women can feel pressured or be forced into having sex because of this unspoken ‘trade’ system. I am aware that sexual assault and sexism happen beyond the greek system, but as an artist creating artwork I’m focusing on one part of the larger problem, an institution thats [sic] traditions make it feel above the law and entitled to male power. We have to spark the initiative to provoke change for male dominance and sexual aggression to not be more prevalent within fraternity brothers and male athletes than any other student on campus. My goal is to change the institution as a whole, to have equal rules for both sorority and fraternity members, to have women not feel pressured or be taken advantage of, for women all over college campuses not have to worry about wanting to go to a party or have a drink, to have fun, to socialize, to walk home. We cannot sit back and allow this type of behavior because of social convention or tradition. Someone had to start somewhere and say something.

We’ve had this conversation before, but let’s have it again. There is a reason that sororities don’t hold parties in their own houses, and it’s not because of this supposed “male power” you introduce. Sororities don’t have the parties because they don’t want to have parties. It was their decision. IFC doesn’t look over Panhellenic’s shoulder and say, “Woah woah woah, you can’t allow parties in your houses! We need those girls to come over to our lairs houses!” So we’re actually on your side here, V — let’s let sororities throw parties. Less work for us, and less money out of our pockets.

Secondly, her reasoning for this whole art project is that she was inspired by the Brock Turner situation. Brock Turner, who was not even in a fraternity. Sure, he was at a fraternity party, but so were a ton of other innocent guys and girls who you would never randomly accuse of being sexual assaulters out of nowhere. A little weird to attack the sexual assault problem by picking a small portion of where sexual assaults occur and acting like stopping them there (which obviously we hope happens) is the be-all, end-all solution to the epidemic that is sexual assault.

I’m not even sure this is art, either. When I think of art, I think of Picasso and shit you’d see in a museum, not whatever the hell this is..

[via Huffington Post]