Does the name Elizabeth Seeberg mean anything to you?

Probably not, due to the most disgusting cover up in recent history.

Let’s look at the facts:

On August 31, Elizabeth Seeberg was allegedly sexually assaulted by a Notre Dame football player. She thoroughly recorded the incident and reported it to campus security the next day. She went to a local hospital for a DNA test, rape exam, and sought counseling.

Elizabeth “feared people would dislike her for accusing a Notre Dame athlete of a sex crime.”

On September 10 she died of a drug overdose.

On November 22, the prosecuting attourney for St. Joseph County received the completed report from Notre Dame campus police and “will decide whether further action is warrented.”

Was the player (who still remains nameless) ever benched, admonished, or investigated for this act?

Of course not. That would tarnish not only Notre Dame’s sterling reputation of Catholic education, but would interrupt their football season.

The Irish finished this season with a 6-5 record. I hope that was worth it.

Two years ago when President Barack Obama was chosen as the commencement speaker for the 2009 class of Notre Dame, the Catholic community was in uproar because Obama’s politics don’t match with the Church’s pro-life agenda. I have friends that attended a demonstration on the day of commencement against “Notre Dame has chosen prestige over principles, popularity over morality,” read a petition with over 60,000 signatories against Obama as the commencement speaker. Though I disagree with the basis for the argument, truer words couldn’t be said for this situation.

I can’t even wrap my head around the hypocrisy. How can a University, a Church, a community, take such outrage at someone who they think disrespects human life, which in their opinion begins at conception, when a 19-year-old life was taken probably because of their very actions? When will the people who demonstrate outside of abortion clinics take their signs to Notre Dame and the countless other Universities where this happens all the time?

I lived for a year in a region of the world where this type of thing happens all the time, and is not headline news. In a culture where women are in many ways inferior, it’s all but impossible to prove allegations of rape.

It’s something I never got used to. Whenever I heard a story about a young girl being raped (usually by an older, more powerful man) I thought about America, where this would never be allowed.

I guess I was wrong.

We rant about how women are treated in Muslim countries and cultures when women’s voices are being silenced in our own backyard – literally, South Bend, Indiana. In my opinion, what happened to Elizabeth Seeberg is hardly comparable to having to wear a headscarf.

I encourage all women (and men) to speak up for the rights of a young women who no longer have a voice.

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