A message from St. John’s Senate to the students of St. John’s

In this past week’s edition of The Record, St. John’s Senate was appalled and horrified to learn that some Johnnies on the first and second floor of St. Patrick Hall had created and perpetuated a competition to have sexual interactions with the most female students. This reprehensible behavior should not be tolerated or turned a blind eye to. As human beings and members of a Benedictine community where respect for others should be paramount, the actions taken by our fellow Johnnies go against everything this university and its members should represent. This matter should be fully investigated, victims should be provided with support and perpetrators should be held accountable to the fullest extent possible.

Any discussion of this behavior needs to acknowledge immediately the moral depravity of the situation. In the simplest terms, creating a competition out of sexual interactions with people is wrong. Reducing people and relationships to numbers and standings is inherently objectifying. Every person has a story and background that cannot be described by points or a tally mark. To do so violates their dignity and humanity. It creates a false illusion, a betrayal of trust that each perpetrator commits upon their victim. These relationships, rather than representing an honest expression of feelings, are merely a means to an end to use someone coldly and deliberately to climb a scoreboard.

Even if these relationships are outwardly consensual, this false pretense poisons and endangers every single one of them. When a relationship is based on an ulterior purpose unknown to the victim, the trust that they place in their partner is broken in every interaction. And perpetrators, wanting to climb the scoreboard, have every incentive to bend and break the limits of consent and go further than what their victim has agreed to in order to fulfill their goal of gaining another tally. This incentive puts those in the perpetrators’ reach in danger and creates damage that will stick with people their entire lives. This situation should illustrate to the student body as a whole that there is a cultural change that needs to happen, and it needs to come from us. Administration and staff can only do so much to make our university what it should be. It is our responsibility as Johnnies to take charge and lay out that this kind of behavior will not be allowed amongst ourselves. Right now, there are people who have information about this competition but have remained silent. Please speak up and bring information to the administration so that this matter can be fully investigated and justice served.

We need to show that being a Johnnie is about respecting others, having a sense of right and wrong, and holding ourselves to high standards of behavior. We need to hold our fellow Johnnies accountable and refuse to be a bystander when we see unacceptable behavior happening, else we become complicit in it ourselves. No excuses can be made for this behavior and mindsets like what we have seen existing among Johnnies. There is a responsibility to basic humanity and the Benedictine Values that must be upheld here. We can and must do better.