Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

[Jen Luettel Schweer <>]

Forwarding for a colleague.  Thanks!!


------------------------------

*From:* Women's Resource and Action Centers [mailto:
]
 *On Behalf Of *Nancy Cantalupo
*Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2009 7:03 PM
*To:* 

*Subject:* Article and Presentation at NWSA on law governing campus peer
sexual violence



Dear WRAC-L Friends,



I am writing to do a shameless plug for a presentation I am doing at the
upcoming NWSA conference and to ask for your input on my next research
project.



The presentation comes out of research for a paper that I have recently
published on the law governing peer sexual violence on college campuses.
Entitled “Campus Violence: Understanding the Extraordinary Through the
Ordinary,” this article was published in June 2009 in the *Journal of
College and University Law*, and may be found online at *
http://ssrn.com/author=884485)*.  Since I know this topic is often relevant
to this crowd, I wanted to make sure I flagged the presentation for those of
you going to NWSA.  More information about the presentation is below.



I will also be facilitating a conversation about these issues at the WC
pre-conference lunch, and I want to do a plug for those of you attending the
pre-conference to join my table OR, regardless of whether you are attending,
to email me to see if we can find another time during which we can talk.
Part of what I’d like to talk with WC folks about is my next paper on campus
peer sexual violence and the law, which is going to focus on improvements
that need to be made to the laws to make them more effective at creating
real institutional change around these issues.  I’d love to hear from you
all, who are “on the inside,” about how the law is helping you in addressing
campus peer sexual violence, how it is not helping, and where it needs
improvement.



If you are interested in chatting with me about this topic at the conference
(or, if you are not attending, meeting at some other point, either over the
phone or in person), please do let me know, either at this address or the
one listed below.  Incidentally, I will be at NWSA until Friday night, but
then I head to FL for the 2009 National Conference on Sexual Assault in Our
Schools (NCSAOS), which frustratingly overlaps with NWSA this year.  For
those of you who will be at the NCSAOS conference, or know others who might
be, please pass along this information, as I will be presenting on this
research there and am interested in having conversations about my next
research project with attendees there as well.



Best,

Nancy



Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs

Georgetown University Law Center

111 F Street, NW, Suite 352

Washington, DC 20001



(202)662-9100 (phone)

(202)662-9489 (fax)



*“Ordinary” and “Extraordinary” Campus Violence: Combating Legal Myths and
Gendered Silences about Peer Sexual Violence and School Shootings*

Fri, Nov 13; 1:15pm - 2:30pm; Level 1 / Atlanta 5 (70)



*Description: *



The historical and current understandings and treatment of violence on
college and university campuses by the media, the public, the schools, and
the law present numerous “political memory” problems involving dominant,
gendered stories and significant, gendered silences.  These politics of
memory ultimately perpetuate gender-based violence on campus.



One example of these politics is the relative attention given to
“extraordinary” school violence, namely rampage school shootings such as the
Virginia Tech Massacre, versus the most common and therefore “ordinary”
campus violence, peer sexual violence.  Extraordinary violence, despite its
rarity, receives intense media attention and public commentary, and schools
and their lawyers scramble to adjust their campus response systems and train
personnel to handle school shootings.  In contrast, ordinary violence,
affecting an estimated 20-25% of undergraduate women, is surrounded by
massive silences, with 90% or more of sexual violence survivors not
reporting the violence and the lack institutional attention and resources
paid by schools perpetuating a cycle of non-reporting and violence.



            Rampage shootings are supposedly characterized by their
randomness, not by the victims’ gender, whereas sexual violence is clearly
gender-based.  Yet there are in fact many connections between school
shootings and gender-based violence, connections that are rarely addressed
by the media, the public, the schools, or their lawyers.  Countering the
dominant story and articulating these connections provides opportunities to
use schools’ concern with extraordinary violence to address ordinary
violence.



            Countering the dominant stories and silences surrounding peer
sexual violence also provides opportunities to change schools’ institutional
responses to this ordinary violence.  The last two decades have seen major,
promising developments in the law protecting campus peer sexual violence
survivors.  Nevertheless, like with extraordinary violence, schools, school
officials and education lawyers consistently ignore their legal obligations
to survivors, who are mainly female.  They justify their failures to respond
by citing liability concerns related to the due process rights of alleged
student perpetrators, who are overwhelmingly male.  A careful examination of
the law demonstrates that this liability is largely illusory.



            This presentation seeks to debunk the myth of due process and to
break the various silences surrounding both ordinary and extraordinary
violence.  In doing so, it provides legal knowledge and activist strategies
to change school responses to peer sexual violence, in the hopes that
changing schools’ responses will in turn encourage survivors to report and
break their own silences about the violence, and that breaking the silence
will ultimately reduce the incidence of the violence.