CHICO, Calif. - An opinion article written by a student staff writer for Chico State's Orion newspaper is causing controversy beyond the campus grounds.
Writer Roberto Fonseca specifically calls out the Gender and Sexuality Equity Center at Chico State. Among other claims in the article, he said the organization spreads awareness for a college rape culture that doesn't exist.
"We're a bunch of students who care about providing community and care about providing education and we want to do so with an open heart," said GSEC Director Rachel Ward.
Ward said the GSEC takes pride in empowering all students and the opinion piece is simply wrong.
"[I was] not that surprised," said Ward about reading the piece. "But I was disappointed because a lot of the things that were said were really invalidating to a lot of people's lived experiences."
The article is titled "Debunking GSEC Myths" in which Fonseca lists what he considers are three significant problems with the organization.
The first is his claim that the GSEC brings light to the issue of a rape culture he says does not exist. Fonseca points out a widely used statistic from a 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Survey that one in five women will be raped by college graduation and said it is massively flawed. He instead cited a Department of Justice study to say the "real" number is one in 53.
Ward said not only is this inaccurate, it doesn't matter.
"The work that we do is not necessarily trying to negate every argument that says it's this statistic or that one," Ward explained. "Because regardless, if it's one in five or one in 53, it's still too many."
In the article, Fonseca went on to discredit the GSEC's support of those who consider themselves anything other than male or female and said there are only two genders.
"Why would it be our right or opinion to make judgments on other people's feelings about themselves?" questioned Ward. "It's really not our place to do that and that's what we try to advocate here."
The article finishes with a call to action to Latino and African American communities: fix it yourself. Fonseca added, "White-America isn’t going to fix the problems in those communities, and screaming racism isn’t going to help."
"It's so complex that it's really hard to talk about in a minute or two why those claims are so surface level and invalidating to so many people on this campus and abroad," Ward responded.
She also said that though this article was disappointing, it was not discouraging and only motivated the group to continue its outreach.
KRCR News Channel 7 reached out to Fonseca for further comment, but have not yet heard back. The article did however, prompt Chico State University President Gayle Hutchinson to put out a statement saying, "We respect the opinion writer’s right to free speech. However, the views expressed in the article in question do not reflect the values of our University."
