The rape survivor support group meeting at Stanford University on Tuesday started with birthday cake. But when the sweets were gone and the birthday song ended, the pain began again.



“Did you guys want to talk about your feelings about the Brock Turner case?” one woman asked, shaken and emotional. “I’m feeling really sad and angry.”

Just days earlier, Turner had been sentenced to six months in jail, after being convicted of sexual assault and facing 14 years in prison. The former Stanford freshman was caught assaulting an unconscious woman behind a frat house dumpster in 2015. He blamed the school’s “party culture.” His father pleaded for leniency so “20 minutes of action” wouldn’t ruin his son’s life. The victim’s statement has been widely read and shared and the case has caused international outrage.

The two-hour support group meeting stretched into five. When it ended around midnight, the women had a plan: to protest Sunday’s commencement ceremony while the world was watching. In recent days, others both on campus and off have joined forces with them. There will be signs, bicycle billboards, a plane flying over campus pulling a banner.

“Our focus is not pursuing offenders,” said Amanda Lorei, 23, who will be graduating on Sunday with a master’s degree in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies, “but rather making campus safe and holding the university accountable.”

These are difficult times on the prestigious Palo Alto campus, where the endowment is huge, the grounds are pristine and buildings bear the names of wealthy tech donors – Hewlett, Packard, Moore, Allen, Gates. Graduation happiness is threaded through with shame; yearend celebrations are leavened with outrage.

Petitions have been launched: Recall Santa Clara County superior court judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Turner. Demand the university apologize to the woman known locally by the pseudonym “Emily Doe”, who was attacked on campus by one of the school’s own. Force administrators to reveal the names of students found responsible under the university’s judicial process for committing sexual offenses, because #StanfordKnows who they are and isn’t saying.

Turner, his lenient sentence and sexual assault on campus have been the topic of conversation at Stanford as finals ended, dorm rooms were packed up and the white tents, caps and gowns, and parents with cameras began to appear.

“People are kind of shocked and frustrated and angry,” said Khalev Aounallah, a 19-year-old petroleum engineering student who was skateboarding through campus this week before flying home to Tunisia for the summer. “I’m personally traumatized. I walked by the place it happened last night.

“We think about campus as a good place for good people,” he continued. “Sometimes it’s not.”

Stephanie Pham and her organization, Association of Students for Sexual Assault Prevention, wrote a letter to Persky before the sentencing on June 2, asking that Turner be given at least the two-year minimum sentence.

She said she felt “angry, frustrated and mortified” when Turner received only six months in jail and will likely only serve three. It took her two days, she said, to get through the statement by the victim, which has been read online by millions of outraged people around the world.

One of those was Vice-President Joe Biden, who released a letter of his own Thursday, lauding the young woman’s bravery: “I don’t know your name – but your words are forever seared on my soul.”

Pham said: “Everyone has acknowledged that the spotlight is on Stanford now.” She has persuaded her parents to stay on campus one more day so she can continue to advocate for change. “Stanford is associated with Brock Turner the sex offender.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to talk about this issue,” said Pham, a 19-year-old junior. “We’re not going to get another moment like this for a long time.”

On 18 January 2015, Stanford graduate students Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson were biking by the Kappa Alpha fraternity on campus when they saw a man “thrusting” on top of an unconscious woman by a dumpster.

Jonsson was so upset when he recounted the assault to the police that he began to cry. He said the woman looked “asleep or unconscious” and that once he got close, he could “tell that the female appeared to not be moving at all and that he was sure something was wrong”.

The two men, who are from Sweden, pulled Turner off the woman before the defendant tried to run away. Jonsson said he tripped Turner and held him until police arrived. They have since been been hailed as heroes.

When police showed up, they found Emily Doe partially clothed and “completely unresponsive”, with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit for driving, police reported. She awoke hours later in a hospital with no memory, abrasions on her body and pine needles scratching the back of her neck.

She had to sign papers that said “rape victim”.

After prosecutors convinced a jury of eight men and four women that Turner had committed three felonies – including assault with intent to rape an intoxicated person and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object – Judge Persky decided the former Stanford student should not go to prison.

In his sentencing announcement, Persky said prison would have a “severe impact” on Turner; argued that there was “less moral culpability” because he was intoxicated at the time; and said the negative media attention had already had a large effect on the former championship swimmer, who has refused to admit he sexually assaulted the woman.

Turner was booked into Santa Clara County Jail on June 2. The jail’s website shows his release date as Sept. 2, 2016. USA Swimming, the national governing body that selects and trains teams for the Olympics, announced Friday that Turner would be banned from competition for life.

In addition to the recall effort against Persky, there have been calls for a state investigation into his “misconduct.” The judge has received death and rape threats from the public.

Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford law professor and family friend of Emily Doe, is leading the recall campaign against Persky.

“It’s hard to put into words how many people her letter touched and how many people are personally moved by her story,” Dauber said. “It has worldwide reach, and I think that’s because … that letter just reached into the chest of millions of people around the world.”

Outgoing university president John Hennessy and provost John Etchemendy said through a spokeswoman that they would not comment on the controversy or Stanford’s response to sexual assault on campus.

In a written statement, Stanford’s administration said the university “did everything within its power to assure that justice was served in this case, including an immediate police investigation and referral to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office for a successful prosecution.”

In the Monday statement, the school described the rape as “a horrible incident,” and said administrators “understand the anger and deep emotion it has generated. There is still much work to be done, not just here, but everywhere, to create a culture that does not tolerate sexual violence in any form and a judicial system that deals appropriately with sexual assault cases.”

Professor David Palumbo-Liu, who ran a faculty workshop this year on dealing with sexual assault on campus, said he was “so disappointed” in the statement.

“What we experienced was an extraordinarily horrible event,” he said. “We wanted an extraordinary response. ... A robot could have written it. It was not improper. It was out of touch.”

That’s one reason among many that students feel protest is in order.

Graduating senior Violet Trachtenberg, abandoned her visiting parents Friday to spend hours preparing for Sunday’s demonstration. She will wear her normal cap and gown and carry a sign whose words she would not divulge before the fact.

“This protest is my final act of love for Stanford,” said Trachtenberg, 21, who will leave for South Africa on 4 July to intern in a refugee center.

“It means holding the university accountable, and hoping it can be better.”