According to a student at California State Polytechnic University–Pomona, trying to give a classmate a ride to their car so you can get their parking spot is rape culture.
In an op-ed for the Poly Post, the school’s official newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Adrian Danganan admits that commuting to the campus “has never been more difficult” because “parking is becoming increasingly sparse.”
She explains that “students are struggling to find suitable methods ” to find a spot to park to attend class, and that some have resorted to offering departing classmates rides in order to take their spots when they leave.
But this method, according to Danganan, is far from “suitable.”
Now, she starts off by explaining that it’s generally a bad idea to get into a stranger’s car — which is a totally fair argument. She quickly goes from reasonable to ridiculous, however, when she writes that “pressuring a pedestrian to enter a vehicle only encourages idiosyncrasies that attribute [sic] to rape culture.”
(Yikes! I guess these students would be better off missing class entirely. They might fail out of school, but at least they wouldn’t be contributing to a culture of sexual assault!)
Now, Danagan does concede that “this seems radical and outlandish,” but explains that she’s actually totally right because “trying to ease someone or even guilt him or her in to [sic] doing so is almost like sweet-talking to get what is desired.”
