Powerful protests, both vocal and silent, punctuated the Stanford University commencement on June 12. Dozens of graduating students expressed their outrage over the meager sentence handed down to Brock Turner, 20, a convicted rapist and former Stanford athlete. Turner was convicted by a jury of three counts of sexual assault. Judge Aaron Persky of Santa Clara, Calif., Superior Court, however, handed Turner a velvet-gloved six-month jail sentence on June 2 for the Jan. 18, 2015, sexual assault of an unconscious woman. Turner could be out in three months. His sentence includes three years of probation, and his name will be entered on the lifetime sex offenders list. The unconscious, unmoving victim was being brutally attacked by Turner behind a campus dumpster when two male Swedish students, riding their bikes, came upon the crime in progress and stopped it. As Turner ran away, they tackled and held him until police arrived. “Rape is rape,” “125 years of rape culture,” “You’re a warrior” (referring to Turner’s victim) and “1 in 3” (how many women in the U.S. will be raped in their lifetime) were among the messages on signs held aloft during the ceremony. Many others had “1/3” written on top of . . .
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