Campus Whisper Networks

College students who have been sexually assaulted tell someone, almost always a friend, and most students know someone who has been assaulted. These survivors and confidants are part of a campus whisper network. We examine the whisper networks, and how formal and informal structures channel tellings. Knowledge gaps among students and between students and administrators create an uneven knowing field, which affects knowers, their college perceptions, and thwart possibilities of change. Formal and informal communication rules ensure that awareness of sexual assaults within one's community is uneven, mostly confined to whisper networks where survivors tell friends who keep their secrets. The pockets of whispering, secret-keeping, silence-holding, and avoidance constitute a fractured community unable to see its wounds, let alone address them.