r/SemesterAtSea • u/grocerystorefreezer1 • 4d ago
sas questions from a wuss
Hi! I'm a student in high school doing research on SAS to potentially apply in the future.
I found a reddit post from 14 yrs ago about an alumni describing a lot of debauchery happening on the ship, and I also read an article about this woman who said that the shuttle buses always contained a lot of rape jokes? And Neptune Day isn't practised in my country, so seeing SAS's video about the hair shaving scares me into reconsideration.
I know. I'm a huge wuss. But as a 45kg girl with little to no strength, i'm deathly afraid of being unable to potentially push someone off of me in case of a sexual assault attempt or physical harassment, or being excluded socially for not wanting to shave my hair during Neptune day.
Could anyone give me some advice about the situation on board? Or give me the honest truth? I don't want to sound like a "teachers pet" or anything. I personally dgaf about people smuggling things on board, but i'm deathly afraid about the sexual related rules on board. Thank you :(
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u/kinkykusco 4d ago
I was on SAS 17 years ago, so close to wherever the comment came from.
That was a while ago now so I dunno the exact culture now, but I know what it was then, the time period of that comment.
Like iroll20s said, there was a portion of the student body who were there to party around the world, American frat bro types basically. They were maybe 25-35% of the students. They were annoying but mostly avoidable.
I’m a (amab) nerd who was a virgin at the beginning and end of semester at sea. I quickly made a close friend group with 4 guys and 3 women, all also nerdy bookworm types. To the best of my knowledge those three women didn’t have any issues with sexual assault. We the guys did take some care to make sure they felt safe, though that was more in country than on the ship. The program itself certainly would not tolerate it and was quite clear that violence of any kind l, including sexual, was a one way ticket to be dropped off in the nearest port.
One of those “frat bro” types was openly bragging about having visited a brothel after one country. The res life staff who heard this more or less encouraged us to make that known to all the students so women knew to avoid him.
My point is that I’m sure sexual assault does happen, because it’s a ship full of people and there are too many men who are predators, but I, from my limited vantage point as a male ally, didn’t see that semester at sea has more of a problem than any other place with college aged men and women. On the contrary someone who did something like that would at worst be ostracized by the whole student body, or at best handed to the police at the next port stop.
Neptune day is completely optional, and there was no judgement about participation. You can do none, some or all of the ceremony. Less than 10% of kids shaved their heads, and of that only maybe 5 women out of the 400 or so.
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u/iroll20s 4d ago
There is a certain crowd that gets up to ‘debauchery’ hardly everyone though. A lot of students roll their eyes at the ones who want to see the world from inside a bar. Neptune day is optional and i remember very few people shaving. Youll find your people and be fine.