Freshman year of college is supposed to be about self discovery. Its supposed to be that time where you can step a little further away from your norm, and be able to figure out who you are as a person. Its also about a fresh start and first impressions.

I started at Western Michigan University in the fall of 2012, after having spent the summer entirely too excited to be moving into the dorms. So many thoughts swirled through my head. I found myself wondering if I would like my roommates, and which extracurriculars I would be taking part in.

It never once occurred to me that I would be asking myself a few months later “How did I become the girl that was raped at a frat party?”

To this day, I have only told a few people what happened to me on that warm september night.

It all started with fall recruitment. Every year, the sororities on campus recruit girls (usually freshman, or young transfer students) to “rush” their chapter. It was a week filled with meeting the girls of different sororities, spending all your money on new clothes and hours on your hair and makeup, just hoping you would make a good impression. My RA, Carolyn had convinced me to rush SK, considering that was the chapter she was a part of. And I wont lie, I wanted to belong so badly that I would have accepted a bid from any of the houses, even if it wasn’t Sigma Kappa. And thats exactly what happened.

After all the festivities of the week were over and everyone had accepted their bids, we all went back to our prospective sorority houses to hang out and basque in the glow that is the completion of rush week. It was exciting just to belong to something.

Even though I was bummed about not getting a bid from the girls in Sigma Kappa, I was determined to love everything about my new “sisters”. But as it turns out, Alpha Omicron Pi was not what I thought it would be.

It was fun at first! We would go to the den and get these ridiculously large fountain drinks for under a dollar, which I would later find out were called den pops (they were life changing, really). We would make late night runs to Steak and Shake, because their chicken tenders were on point when you had been up all night studying. I even connected with one of the girls on a deeper level, when she told me about her abusive father and his ridiculously high expectations. I was enjoying myself, and I felt like I really fit in here.

One night, a few weeks into my new found glory as a “sorority girl”, we were invited to one of the neighboring fraternities for their induction of their new pledges. I was so excited! Real live fraternity boys? Was I about to meet my future husband? Would we share a glance across the room from one another and then live happily ever after?

I was too naive for my own good.

Regardless, i put on my nicest dress paired with my most comfortable pair of leggings, curled my hair just so, did my makeup (cat eyes seemed appropriate) and we were off!

I was with a few of the girls I hadn’t really gotten the chance to hang out with yet, one on one. We got to the ceremony, and it last roughly 25 minutes or so. Afterward, there was booze and snacks downstairs for everyone to enjoy.

I’ll just say this now, I was never a heavy drinker. I really didn’t like alcohol too much, but I figured “when in Rome”, right?

So we started taking shots. I probably had about 4 before I started to feel anything (at this point I weighed about 120 pounds and hadn’t previously built up a tolerance for alcohol). But then it hit me all at once and I was ready to DANCE. I was having so much fun! Some random guy came up behind me and started dancing too which was fine, he wasn’t being too grabby or anything. I asked him where the bathroom was, and he then started to lead the way.

We never made it to the bathroom.

He pushed me up against a wall and started kissing me and I was too weak to push him away.

He then lifted my dress up and pulled my leggings down, and began touching me in ways I can only assume he felt were supposed to be sexy.

His untrimmed nails cut me. It was painful. All I could think was “This hurts, this is not okay. This is not okay with me.”

He then tried to carry me into the nearby bedroom. He was doing all of these things right in front of the girls I came with.

One of them had a camera. They were taking pictures as he had me pushed against the wall, violating my body, causing me to bleed. My leggings were soaked in blood. I finally made my escape, and walked briskly back to the sorority house. I was let in by the house mother, who saw the look of pure terror, hurt, and confusion on my face. One of the other girls gave me a change of clothes, and a place to sleep. I kept saying “This isn’t me, this is not the kind of person I am”, as if it was my fault that I had been accosted.

I woke up in the morning, confused and dehydrated. The girls I had gone out with last night were no where to be found. I called a cab to take me back to campus, and when I got back and stood in front of my full length mirror after I was done showering, I saw the damage. I had blackish/blue bruises on my neck and on my arms, and in my pelvic area. I was still bleeding. I only had about an hour before I had to be at my work study job in the office of LBGT student services, so I put a scarf on, and a long sleeve shirt, and went about my day.

I didn’t really know how to feel about what had happened, because I wasn’t really sure that it had happened at all. I felt like I was walking in a dream. You never think that something like this will happen to you until it does, and then your whole world just falls apart.

I got to work, and as soon as I walked in the door, Jen (my boss) asked me if I was alright. I said yes, and then sat down at my desk. One of my coworkers didn’t seem so convinced. She was eyeballing my scarf, considering it was nearly 80 degrees outside. I took my scarf off, forgetting what it was covering up, and thats when it all came out.

The next few hours were a blur. My boss drove me to the YWCA in Kalamazoo to have a rape kit done. The nurse who helped me with everything kept telling me this was the worst physical damage she has ever seen inflicted on a females genitalia. She also asked me if I wanted to press charges. I said no, because I didn’t even know the guys name or where to find him. I felt so broken and powerless. She kept my clothing, including my panties, and I specifically remember thinking that I was sad because that was my favorite pair. But I was still bleeding from the wounds that the guys untrimmed fingernails had inflicted, so they gave me a new pair and sent me on my way. I wore a scarf to cover the bruises on my neck for the next two weeks.

When my RA saw the bruises, she immediately took action. She went to the head of the dorm I was staying at and informed them of what had happened, and the same questions came up.

“Are you okay?”

“What can I do to help?”

The thing was, I somehow felt responsible for what had happened, and I felt like everyone was blaming me, since I was the one who couldn’t handle their liquor.

The following week, I got a call from the head of recruitment at my sorority, and she told me that the entire house had basically voted to revoke my bid. She said to me:

“You’re giving our sorority a bad name, and feel you are in it for the wrong reasons. We will have someone from the house come pick up your letters and anything else affiliated with our house. We don’t want girls like you tarnishing our good name”.

At that point, I was angry. I was being punished. Punished for the actions of some random guy, who violated my innocence in the worst kind of way. How could the people who were supposed to be there for me and accept me as one of their own just leave me out to dry? I was hurt and confused.

As it turns out, the girls who I had gone out with that night had shown the pictures they took to everyone in the house and basically said that I was a slut who just joined the sorority to meet guys. They said they thought I liked the attention.

For a long time, I blamed myself. I became withdrawn from social situations, stopped showing up to class and was severely depressed. My parents saw the change in me, but didn’t know why and thought I was just being impossible. I put on a lot of weight, and was basically just sleeping through life.

Looking back, I wish I had told them what happened to me. I wish I had told everyone, so they could understand the unexplainable change that they saw. But I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to look at me differently, and reject me because of what happened like my sorority did.

The point of me telling my story now is not to get attention, or justice, or anything else. The point is to make sure that everyone knows how important it is to speak up. Injustices like these cannot go unspoken of.

I want you to know it is not your fault. You are not alone.