Monday, Apr. 18, 2011
It's Not Just Yale: Are Colleges Doing Enough to Combat Sexual Violence?
On the evening of Oct. 13, 2010, members of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale University marched across campus chanting, "No means yes! Yes means anal! No means yes! Yes means anal!" A video of the chanting men was posted online and quickly went viral, spurring an uproar on Yale's campus and nationwide. The message was clear: making light of rape — an abhorrent, violent, dehumanizing crime — is not acceptable, whatever the circumstances.
While the university was quick to issue a letter two days after the incident expressing outrage that such words were shouted on campus (and has issued several statements since), the response has been called into question in a complaint filed by 16 current and former Yale students who allege the school did not adequately punish the students involved in this incident (and a long list of past incidents). And in this inadequate reaction, complainants say, Yale appeared to condone the type of behavior the chant glorified, which in turn, precludes women from having the same access to an education at Yale as their male counterparts. (See "Fighting School Violence by Pinpointing Its Victims.")
The controversy has inflamed an ongoing national debate over whether universities are doing enough to fight rape and sexual harassment of women. The discussion raises all kinds of questions including what constitutes consent and whether students accused of serious sexual violence should be expelled even if they haven't been convicted in a criminal court.
Groups promoting campus safety say that a school's failure to properly deal with these issues violates rights guaranteed by Title IX, which passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972 and ruled that any educational institution that takes federal funding cannot discriminate against women. (Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are all considered discrimination on the basis of sex.) And, by that standard, the university has an obligation to act.
In Yale's case, the complaint prompted the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to open an investigation of Yale for its "failure to eliminate a hostile sexual environment on campus, in violation of Title IX." For its part, Yale has not received a copy of the complaint and, though school officials acknowledge they conducted an investigation into the incident, they are not permitted to disclose what punishment, if any, the fraternity received.
While the Department of Education's investigation has gained wide notice in part because it involves one of the nation's most prestigious universities, Yale is hardly alone in dealing with issues of sexual harassment and assault on campus. The Office for Civil Rights has a handful of inquiries and reviews under way nationwide in addition to the Yale case, including one investigation of an incident at the University of Notre Dame in which a student at neighboring St. Mary's College committed suicide after an alleged sexual assault by a Notre Dame football player. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2010.)
The statistics on these incidents are sadly familiar. One in five college women will be the victim of a sexual assault (and 6% of men). Less than 5% of those assaults will be reported to campus authorities or the police. Those numbers from the Department of Justice have been virtually unchanged for at least a decade despite a host of awareness programs, which begs the question, What more can colleges and universities do to combat sexual harassment and assault on campus?
The answer, according to the Office for Civil Rights, is a lot more. On April 8, on behalf of the agency, Vice President Joe Biden announced a new guidance on Title IX. Addressing the men in the crowd at the University of New Hampshire, Biden said, "Look, guys — all you guys in the audience — no matter what a girl does, no matter how she's dressed, no matter how much she's had to drink, it's never, never, never, never, never O.K. to touch her without her consent. This doesn't make you a man, it makes you a coward. A flat-out coward." The Vice President's statement seems obvious, but in actuality, knowing what constitutes consent is one issue universities have to work very hard to be sure students understand.
The new federal guidance, delivered to schools nationwide in an 18-page "Dear Colleague" letter, goes a long way in clarifying some of these issues and how universities should respond. One point is that colleges are required to perform their Title IX investigations even as criminal proceedings are under way. Which means that even while a police investigation is moving forward, measures must be taken to ensure the victim is not forced to re-encounter her assailant on a daily basis — an excruciating experience that can often lead to the victim dropping out of school, thus lowering her equal access to education under Title IX. In some cases, that may mean moving the alleged perpetrator to a different dorm, changing classes or removing the accused from the school altogether.
See "Yale's Secret Society That's Hiding in Plain Sight."
See TIME's special report on paying for college.
Laura Dunn knows that experience all too well. During an investigation that occurred while she was a student at the University of Wisconsin in 2004, Dunn was forced to spend an entire year on campus with one of the men who she says raped her — an experience she calls "horrific." (The other alleged rapist had already graduated by the time Dunn came forward to report the incident.) Dunn says that throughout the course of the investigation the university dragged its feet until time ran out and her alleged assailant graduated. "It was as if they were going above and beyond to ensure nothing would be done in my case," Dunn told TIME. "I felt extremely disappointed to know that the institution in charge of ensuring my safety did not recognize the massive distress the sexual assault caused me. Furthermore, I was disappointed that when I sought justice through their system, I was treated with hostility and disrespect. I was clearly not believed, and was often blamed for what had happened." (In a report released four years after the incident, the Department of Education found that the University of Wisconsin had acted properly, though neither of the men Dunn says raped her were punished.)
Dunn raises an important point that the Office for Civil Rights is attempting to better address: promptness. The department's guidance requires that universities resolve cases "swiftly and appropriately," according to assistant secretary for civil rights Russlyn Ali. The problem with "prompt" is that it varies case by case, university by university. There is no way to require a set schedule for how these investigations should proceed. Some cases have much more complicated issues than others and take much more time to work their way through the system. (Why are so many female Florida teachers sleeping with male students?)
"What we are making clear is no matter how long the process takes, the institution has a responsibility to provide interim support for the victim," Ali told TIME. "We've heard from too many students who said they were being revictimized by the process." And that situation may be contributing to the fact that so few women come forward in the first place. The guidance, while it doesn't set specific timetables, will ideally spur universities to change policies that may have not been in the best interest of the victim, according to S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security on Campus, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention of campus crime. He cited one university that stipulates cases must be resolved by the end of the following semester — that means victims can often be held in limbo for the majority of the year before receiving any form of resolution.
The new directive also clarifies universities' commitment to deal with those incidents that happen off campus. Handling off-campus incidents is an area that colleges and universities have not always been so good at. "There were some institutions that felt if assaults occurred off campus it wasn't their responsibility," Carter told TIME. Though off-campus incidents do not fall under their jurisdiction for criminal prosecution, Carter says they do have a responsibility to carry out the same sort of measures as they do with on-campus incidents to mitigate a hostile environment for the victim, like switching dorms, etc.
And finally, the guidance also clarifies the standard of proof for sexual harassment. "Far too often universities use the higher standard when it comes to Title IX," Ali says. "Colleges need only a 'preponderance of evidence' showing it's more likely than not that a crime occurred." Meaning that even if police don't have enough evidence to take the case to court, a college or university can act. This point is especially supported by Title IX activists and students, including those at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., who staged a four-day sit-in in March to demand the college change its policies, which students said were too lenient in their punishment of rape and sexual assault. The standoff ended only after the college agreed to lower its standard of proof and punish those students found guilty of rape by a university investigation with mandatory expulsion. (See "When Bullying Turns Deadly: Can It Be Stopped?")
The department's directive and a new federal bill known as the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act — which was introduced April 14 by Senators Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington — urge, and in the case of the bill, require, more prevention education, which supporters hope will lead to a change in the overall culture of a campus and how sexual violence is seen among students. But even that may not be enough. Melanie Boyd, who is both the director of undergraduate studies in Yale's Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies department, as well as the special adviser to the dean of Yale College on gender issues, told TIME that the Administration going in with policies and rules is important but can only do so much — what really needs to happen is to make incidents like the fraternity's chant socially unacceptable. "We could try to fix this by saying, 'Let's expel the guys who chanted,' but it won't change the culture," she says. "You need a campus community that is really well educated about this, that says, If you do this, no one will come to your parties anymore."
To promote that idea, Yale developed a workshop between members of the campus' student-run Women's Center and a fraternity on topics like what is nonconsensual sex and what are the situations that lead to it. All of which Yale and other universities nationwide, who carry out similar initiatives, hope will go a long way toward increasing the understanding that, despite what any fraternity may chant, no really does mean no.
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