For the first time, UNC now has data on its campus problem. It found that in most of those schools somewhere between 1-in-5 and 1-in-4 undergraduate women say they experienced some sort of non-consensual sexual contact.
The results were generally in line with past surveys on sexual assault and misconduct on college campuses – and confirmed that alcohol and drugs are important risk factors. Such advocacy-laden surveys on campus sexual assault – and breathless media reports overstating their already exaggerated findings – have become the norm in this era of hysteria about the campus sexual assault problem. About half said they didn’t intervene when they saw a drunken person headed for a sexual encounter. Of those who responded, one in four female undergraduates at both Harvard and Brown Universities report being victims of sexual misconduct. The study had a 19 percent response rate overall. The fact we have evidence of that on college campuses is not a surprise to me. Researchers said results could be biased slightly upwards because students who ignored the survey may have been less likely to report victimization.
These tables indicate that about 2.2 percent of female respondents said they had reported to their schools that they had been penetrated without consent (including rape) since entering college. “We will monitor how well these policies and practices function, and assess whether changes are needed”. “We are still digging through it”. “Sexual assault is intolerable, and we owe it to one another to confront it openly, purposefully and effectively”.
The Sexual Misconduct Climate Surveymeasures students’ perceptions of sexual violence at BU and is intended to guide the University’s efforts to improve its response to sexual assault.
UNC’s case is still under review. “It did not include any Christian universities, small colleges, community colleges … or other institutions of great importance”, wrote Foubert, author of seven books that deal with the prevention of sexual assault. If extrapolated to the roughly 10 million female college student population nationwide, this would come to about 220,000 student reports to universities alleging forced sex over (to be conservative) five years, or about 44,000 reports per year.
“This study does have the potential to discover a better reporting process that would greatly benefit survivors of campus sexual assault”, Cocanougher said.
This should be beyond alarming. “I see that the University very badly wants sexual assault to stop, and for all the right reasons”.
“I have proposed a one-year suspension up to expulsion for the minimum punishment there”, Summers said. We believe there are strategies that universities can use to minimize it, and we help them work with their students.
“It’s just so much easier to get into a predicament when you’re all alone, then it is when you’re with somebody else…”, said Victim Assistance Coordinator Kim Hood. “For true change to begin to occur”, she says, “it is necessary that the community as a whole is expected to actively participate in learning, hopefully through a series of evidence-based programming that delivers consistent messages and is frequently reinforced”. We’re talking about college students at elite institutions here. She has also requested a task force to come up with recommendations by January 2016. Smiley, for one, was unable to say whether events such as the showing of “The Hunting Ground” made her feel safer on campus.
At the end of August, the UT System announced the four-year study, which is valued at $1.7 million and is the largest comprehensive assessment of campus sexual assaults.