You know that sort of hacky insult that goes something like "when you open up the dictionary to the definition of [whatever], you see [whoever's] picture"? That cliché is now reality for Brock Turner, the former Stanford student who served a shockingly short sentence for a brutal rape last year.
As previously reported, Turner became the actual "poster child" (another hackneyed phrase that one rarely gets to use literally) for sexual assault at California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo last fall. School-sponsored posters that read "Don't be that person. Perpetrators of sexual assault, stalking and dating violence look like regular people" over a photo of a broadly grinning Turner appeared across the school's campus as part of Cal Poly's "Safer" Program.
Read all SFist coverage of the Brock Turner rape case here
And now, Snopes confirms, Turner's booking photo appears in a college-level textbook entitled Introduction to Criminal Justice, 2nd Ed., the ISBN of which is 9781506347721, in case you want to check Snopes' work.
The textbook was written by University of Colorado, Denver professor Callie Marie Rennison, "a Professor in the School of Public Affairs (SPA), and the former Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs in SPA. Currently, she is the Director of Equity and Title IX Coordinator for the CU Denver," the school's website says.
According to the caption beneath Turner's photo, which appears at the top of a section in the book defining "Rape":
Brock Turner, a Stanford student who raped and assaulted an unconscious female student behind a dumpster at a fraternity party, was recently released from jail after serving only three months. Some are shocked at how short the sentence is. Others who are more familiar with the way sexual violence has been handled in the criminal justice system are shocked that he was found guilty and served any time at all. What do you think?
Glad you asked, book! I think that if a person who had to be dragged off a woman by two men as he raped her, then blamed a school's culture for his act and, upon his release couldn't even fill out his sex-offender papers truthfully isn't a great person to use as the living, breathing definition of rape, I don't know who is.
Previously: Recall Campaign Underway For Judge In Brock Turner Case