Clarification: In a previous version of this article online, Janet Epstein’s statement about the number of national victims who report their crimes was unclear. Epstein said she believes the number of college women who have been victims of sexual assault who report their crimes to law enforcement is lower than the 12 percent approximation. Epstein said she’s read studies that set the rate as low as 5 percent for college women.

Imagine your five closest female friends – maybe the girls you share a dorm with or the girls you text to grab lunch before a long afternoon of classes. Now imagine that by the time you all don mortarboard caps at graduation, one of these college women will have been sexually assaulted.

One out of five women is sexually assaulted before graduating college, according to a White House report released last Wednesday. Some will be assaulted in the touted best four years of their lives. But according to Jane Epstein, director Syracuse University’s Advocacy Center, some will be assaulted long before their freshman orientations.

In an effort to address these types of alarming statistics, President Barack Obama last week launched the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. Among the objectives, the task force will educate schools on the best practices to prevent rape and sexual assault and find ways to hold institutions accountable if they fail to confront sexual violence on campus.

Women on college campuses are a particular focus of government efforts because “the dynamics of college life appear to fuel the problem,” according to the related White House report, “Rape and sexual assault: A renewed call to action.”  The report additionally notes that “incapacitated assault,” or sexual assault that takes place while a victim is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, plays a particularly influential role on college campuses.

The task force serves as a positive step toward ameliorating an issue that is too often belittled or blamed on the victim. With the weight and influence of the POTUS behind efforts to address campus sexual assault, writing off the rape of a student as an effect of her carelessly high BAC will not be so easy.

While college students should never be encouraged to partake in careless behavior, their careless behavior should never be accepted as excuse for sexual assault.

At SU, where a stereotypically collegiate atmosphere translates to a top-10 ranking on the latest Princeton Review “party school” list, Epstein said there’s no reason to believe that these problems don’t exist here.

Epstein also believes that the number of victims of sexual assault who report their crimes to law enforcement is even lower than the 12-percent approximation rate established in the White House report. Epstein says she’s read studies that set the rate as low as 5-percent of college women.

Sometimes victims don’t report because they don’t consider their experience sexual assault, according to Epstein. Other times, victims fear being blamed for their own rape because they were intoxicated.

“A lot of it has to do with how we look at this crime as a society and the fact that we don’t acknowledge it as a crime,” Epstein said. “It is never the fault of the person who is victimized.”

Changing the culture around sexual assault is critical to sparking a change. We must create a dialogue regarding consent and assault, including what third-party bystanders can do day-to-day to challenge an environment that enables perpetrators by blaming victims.

Epstein noted that SU is working to change this culture through mandatory programs for first-year students that educate them about sexual violence. These include “Everyday Heroes,” which introduces key issues and encourages a respectful campus, and the online “Think About It” program, which replaced Alcohol.Edu this fall and expanded the former’s focus to include sexual and relationship violence.

A task force and bureaucratic mandates may or may not be effective in lowering the percentage of women who deal with sexual assault before graduating college. But the presidential power behind them will go a long way towards advancing the conversation.

Nicki Gorny is a junior newspaper and online  journalism and Spanish double major. She can be reached at nagorny@syr.edu.

 

Published on January 28, 2014 at 2:19 am