On Nov. 19, 2014, Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.” The story depicted a gang rape at a party thrown by the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The victim’s anonymized name was Jackie.

On April 5, Rolling Stone officially retracted the story after months of speculation about the article’s truthfulness. This came after an independent investigation by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism that labeled the story a “journalistic failure.”

I could continue writing some lame, angry article about the embarrassingly sloppy work of reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely and how she and the staff need to be held accountable and how heads should be rolling at Rolling Stone. “Shame on you, Rolling Stone,” I would call it. Instead, there’s something more important here than journalism ethics.

I’m going to college in the fall and the threat of sexual assault truly scares me (Reminder: I’m a guy). I’m not necessarily afraid it will happen to me. I’m more afraid of the possibility that a female friend could be the victim of such a heinous act, and I’m afraid of how badly I would kick the crud out of a guy friend if he did something as heartless as that. Well, maybe not, but we wouldn’t be friends anymore. That’s guaranteed.

Tangent: It’s great that the school offers to teach self-defense classes in gym for girls. How about having someone come in to tell the guys that sexual assault isn’t okay?

The Daily Illini, the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign’s student newspaper, ran a three-part story last spring about sexual assault on campus. They estimated that a total of 975 sexual assaults go unaccounted for in a campus of over 40,000 students. Only 12 sexual assaults were reported to authorities at the university in 2012.

That is ridiculous, but think of what can go through a victim’s head. “It’s somehow my fault.” “I don’t want to ruin our relationship.” “I’m ashamed of myself.” “I don’t want to look stupid.” “No one will believe me.” “I don’t want to be treated differently.” “I don’t want to even think about it ever again.”

That’s a lot, isn’t it? I’m sure that’s not everything that goes through potentially 975 Illini minds and many other minds across the country.

Upon the publication of “A Rape on Campus,” I was glad that Rolling Stone decided to take on something this heavy. The narrative initially brought light to a prominent issue across America, and now it has brought light to two other issues: fear and lying.

Fear, lying and America go together like a cheeseburger, a soda and some fries. Fear and lying definitely were factors in this Rolling Stone saga from both parties. While we know Jackie lied, we don’t know if she was afraid of anything. We don’t even know who she actually is. What we do know is she lied about being raped, defacing a major university and magazine in the process. I won’t argue here whether that’s morally worse than rape itself, but it’s at the very least appalling.

America is also known for its progress, but fear and lying can sometimes get in the way of that. Jackie has obstructed the abstruse battle of dealing with rape that our culture is waging. It’s obviously not a step in the right direction, but it’s not a huge step backwards either. Maybe it’s opened the door to much-needed discussion.