Graduating college is a tricky thing. If you manage to level up enough–suffer through your ten core requirements, finish your major, complete your team/water/lifetime/health credits, attend meetings earnestly begging you to pay back your loans so the school won’t look bad–without dying from a stroke resulting from high blood pressure, you’re lucky. You get to put on a nightgown and cardboard hat and walk across a stage with a $125,000 piece of paper in your hands–walk away in a direction opposite to the people and places you’ve called home for four years. To survive the trauma of graduation, we revert back to a coping mechanism first mastered in eighth grade alongside fortune with M.A.S.H.: the art of K.I.T.
First developed by ancient mariners as a way of communicating with family members while they blazed foamy trails on foreign seashores, the art of K.I.T. is simple enough: get a gmail account and keep in touch. As graduation loomed closer, e-mails alerting friends and family of address changes flooded inboxes. The sheer volume of mail I received telling me that some guy that I sat next to for a semester in my Finite Mathematics class sophomore year had a new e-mail address and gee whiz, he’d be really happy if I dropped him a line if I ever find myself in San Fransisco caused Web Outlook’s System Administrator to threaten suicide in the form of a pop up window.
Thanks to our Davidson 101 program, we all learned the importance of consent when it comes to sexual intercourse. The Student Handbook has the following to say about consent and sexual misconduct:
“Non-consensual” means without either explicit verbal consent or overt action clearly expressing consent. Such signals of consent must be mutual and ongoing. If at any time during a sexual interaction any confusion or ambiguity should arise on the issue of consent, it is incumbent upon each individual involved in the activity to stop and clarify the other’s willingness to continue. Non-communication constitutes a lack of consent. A verbal “no,” even if it may sound indecisive or insincere, constitutes a lack of consent. Incapacitation likewise constitutes a lack of consent. Examples of incapacitation include but are not limited to the following: persons who are intoxicated, passed out, asleep, threatened, or coerced. Use of alcohol or drugs shall not diminish one’s responsibility to obtain consent. (emphasis mine)
Why am I quoting from the Davidson Red Book? I think it’s clear. Much like sexual intercourse, any kind of social intercourse (i.e. K.I.T.) should be consensual. Happy though I am that John from that one history class I took freshman year managed to score the only john.smith e-mail address at the D.C. banking firm he’ll be working for next year, I really doubt that I’ll be using it. A good rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t wave hello to me as we passed in the halls, chances are that I don’t need to be on your list of contacts for next year.
Signs of consent must be mutual and ongoing. If anytime after graduation, some confusion or ambiguity should arise regarding how we know each other, we’ll have to stop and clarify our willingness to continue. Any form of non-communication (i.e. if you haven’t gotten my contact information) constitutes a lack of consent. You assuming my new e-mail address based on my old e-mail address does not constitute consent. No matter how vehement I promise we’ll “be friends forever” while drunk the weekend before graduation, it will not hold up in social court. If I fell asleep on my futon and you managed to weasel my contact information out of me, that doesn’t mean you should use it. Like any graduate of a prestigious liberal arts program, my contact information consent cannot be obtained through coercion or threats–it can only be bribed out of me with mildly-to-moderately awesome job opportunities.
