UT students rally to protest ‘rape culture’
Chants of “Vols Support Jane” echoed through the lobby of the Brenda Lawson Athletic Center on Thursday as University of Tennessee students protested what they called a “rape culture” on campus.
On the other side of a pair of double doors, UT’s top athletics official, Dave Hart, spoke for the first time about a federal lawsuit under Title IX accusing the university of a “hostile sexual environment.”
“The attitude coming from the Athletics Department has been so dismissive of students,” said Feroza Freeland, 20, a political science student from Memphis. “You can still have a successful football program and say sexual assault is not OK under any circumstance. They’re not mutually exclusive.”