Somebody may be in trouble with Middlebury College for what she posted on Facebook.

On December 12, the senior went on Facebook to post a short list of “men to avoid” at Vermont’s most prestigious college and solicited input from others. She added the crowdsourced names to her list until she had called out 36 male students and recent graduates for sexual misbehavior, ranging from serial rape to harassment.

The “senior” was Elizabeth Dunn, who felt she was a “survivor.”

And, like many new college students, Dunn found herself navigating social situations for which she was unprepared. One night during her first year, she attended a party, met a guy and went to his room. According to Dunn, the student, a senior, plied her with alcohol to the point where she was “very drunk.” They had a sexual encounter even though Dunn now says she “didn’t really know what was happening” and “didn’t really consent to a lot of what was happening.”

Dunn tearfully explained that, the next day, she knew something terrible had occurred but didn’t want to fully admit it to herself. She never reported the incident to police or campus judicial officers because she did not want to face humiliating questions that “chip away at you” and blame the victim, she said.

Unprepared, indeed. And so she chose to no longer be “complicit” by posting names and accusations on Facebook.

Before Facebook took it down due to complaints, the post listed the offenders — almost all by both first and last names — along with various accusations after each one, from “serial rapist” to “emotionally abusive” to “treats women, especially black women, like shit.”

Dunn’s post ended with these words: “here’s to not being complicit in 2018 and feel free to dm me more names to add to this status because I could really give a fuck about protecting the privacy of abusers.”

Unsurprisingly, trouble followed. But not the unsurprising trouble one might expect.

Dunn got a call from a campus judicial officer asking to meet. Initially, the purpose seemed to be to offer her comfort and support as a victim of sexual assault, Dunn said. But then the officer, whom she won’t name, asked her to identify and provide contact information for those students who gave her the names of the men on the list.

On January 17, they told her she was officially facing college discipline for violating the privacy of other students — that is, those individuals she outed on the list.

Dunn faces discipline not for naming and accusing males of rape and fetishism, but for “outing” the traumatic experiences of other women. Dunn wasn’t a stranger to activism at Middlebury. She helped organize the protest against Charles Murray, “calling Murray’s race-based theories about intelligence deeply offensive.” She was the host of “a weekly program, ‘Cannabis Feminist,’ that explores ‘the intersections of marijuana, feminism, race, class and the prison industrial complex.'”

But what was the reaction on campus to Dunn’s activism?

Samantha Valone, a Middlebury sophomore from the Boston area, said it was a good thing to call attention to sexual violence. But, she added, “I just kind of feel bad for some of the people who were maybe accused and are innocent, because their lives are pretty rough right now.”

The range of misdeeds, alleged or real, also varied widely, she noted, from emotional abuse to the much more serious “serial rape,” and “they maybe shouldn’t have been put on the same list,” Valone said.

And the boys named?

Tyler McDowell, a junior from Pennsylvania, was accused on the list of making “fetishistic, racist, sexual comments about black women.” He doesn’t remember making such comments and does not know who claims he made them, McDowell told Seven Days.

Still, he doesn’t feel he was treated unfairly. “I do not feel wronged by this. I also would stipulate that other men probably shouldn’t, either,” said McDowell.

Not all the males named were so happy to have their names, reputations, futures, sacrificed on the altar of Dunn’s activist hearsay, despite claiming innocence. But isn’t that what it takes to “trigger discussion”?

The list was a “wake-up call” that should trigger discussion about the need for an end to the behaviors that were described on the list, he added. It’s “one way of broadcasting kind of a general call for culture change.”

What’s to become of Dunn as a result of her activism? She’s got friends. She’s got plans.

Back at Middlebury, Dunn is waiting to see how the college disciplinary process treats her. Her friends are petitioning against punitive action, and Dunn is applying to law schools.

She said she isn’t concerned that her activism could adversely affect her chances of getting in. Her plan B: landing a job in the Bronx public defender’s office.

As for Tyler, given his accepted reputation as the sort of guy who engages in “fetishistic, racist, sexual comments about black women,” there is a chance he might run across Dunn again should he ever visit the Bronx. Dunn might be assigned to defend him, provided he behaves obsequiously in her presence.

That baseless public accusation of outrageous conduct, some heinous and some, well, petty at most, should now be characterized as an act of bravery is itself a paradigm shift. But when the targets of false accusation would rather acquiesce to their throats being slit than doing anything that might be construed as defending the Patriarchy, there isn’t much left to contest.

So boys will be boys? Apparently so, except that now means that males are beginning to accept the premise that their gender is sufficient to make them guilty of whatever accusation is leveled. This isn’t because they did anything wrong, but because there is no disputing their gender. And all for a discussion, which will surely be productive.