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

["Ben Atherton-Zeman" <>]

Check out my friend Jaclyn's article in the Washington Post -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031201
792.html.  

 

If you have a Facebook account, you can log into the webpage for free.  But
just in case you don't:

 

To combat rape on campus, schools should stop keeping it quiet

 

By Jaclyn Friedman

Sunday, March 14, 2010 

In 1992, at about this time of year, a boy I knew sexually assaulted me. We
were undergraduates at Wesleyan University. He was a member of a sports
team, and I was one of the team's managers. Away at a tournament one night,
the team decided to party in the captains' hotel room, and I decided to
prove I was "one of the guys" by trying to match them drink for drink. When
I failed, I stumbled back to my room and crawled into bed to pass out.
That's when I discovered he'd followed me there. 

In the aftermath of the assault, I found myself needing a lot of things: a
few incredibly patient friends who would listen to me say the same thing
over and over and react as though it was a fresh insight every time. Time
off from my job as a research assistant in the psychology department. A
community of survivors who gathered in the mismatched chairs of the campus
women's center to try to make sense of life-altering trauma and violation. 

I also needed justice. But I never considered going to the police. There had
been no struggle, there was no physical evidence, and so I had no faith I'd
be believed or taken seriously. Instead, I pressed charges through the
on-campus judicial system. 

Most American colleges have internal judicial boards, often populated by
perfunctorily trained student "leaders" selected by the school's
administration and acting with faculty supervision. These bodies are charged
with handling cases involving the school's code of conduct: plagiarism
allegations, on-campus underage-drinking charges and disputes between
students. They are notoriously bad at dealing with charges of sexual
violence. 

I'd heard horror stories about victims being grilled in excruciating detail
about their sexual histories, as if anything a woman may have done in her
past made her fair game to be raped in the present. But I got lucky on that
front: My assailant agreed to plead no contest to the charges if I agreed to
hear him out. So I spent a dark hour and a half in a dean's office, barely
breathing while the guy who'd violated me wept about his family history of
alcoholism. A few days later, the dean of students called me to say that the
guy had been expelled for a year (the amount of time I had left at school)
but that I mustn't speak of the case -- or the punishment -- to anybody. 

Grateful that I would no longer have to see my attacker around campus, I
didn't think to question the sentence or the muzzle at the time. But as I
began to heal, I encountered survivors of on-campus sexual violence who had
been taken even less seriously than I had by the system. Gag order or no, I
began to speak out about my experience and advocate for change. And then,
without warning, my assailant reappeared on campus, turning my last semester
into a haze of fear, hiding and post-traumatic stress. 

The same thing that happened to me is still happening to young women on
college campuses in this country dozens of times every day. And schools are
no better equipped (or inclined) to dispense justice than they were in 1992.
That's the conclusion of a
<http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/campus_assault/> recent
report by the Center for Public Integrity, which found that, despite Justice
Department evidence that one in five female college students will be
sexually assaulted or the victim of an attempt while at school, students who
say they've been raped on campus are rarely believed. Instead, advocates on
these issues tell me, the women are encouraged not to file charges, asked
about how high their heels were that night or forced into mediation with
their assailants, as if this were some kind of unfortunate disagreement and
not a profound and violent crime. 

Even in cases where the accused is found "responsible," he is rarely
expelled. Instead, the Center for Public Integrity found, college rapists
are subjected to such punishments as writing an apology letter or taking an
anger-management class. They almost always graduate on time, while their
victims, retraumatized by the judicial process and constantly afraid of
running into their attacker or his friends on campus, often drop out or
transfer. 

All of which leads to this question: If schools handle sexual assault cases
so badly, why are they doing it at all? Isn't this a matter best left to the
police? 

Unfortunately, the police are hardly ever a better option. Even in
jurisdictions with favorable laws on the books -- such as Illinois, where in
1991 the Supreme Court ruled that no corroborating evidence is needed to
convict an accused rapist if the accuser is found to be credible -- police
and prosecutors rarely take rape charges seriously unless there are other
witnesses or the victim has physical injuries. Even DNA isn't enough,
because the accused often counterclaims that the sex was consensual. 

This is especially problematic in light of studies (notably ones by David
Lisak at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Stephanie McWhorter
at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego) suggesting that 60 to 70
percent of rapists deliberately get their victims drunk or otherwise
manipulate the situation so that it's not necessary to inflict the very
physical injuries that might give them away. No wonder that the Justice
Department has found that at least
<http://www.ojp.gov/ovc/ncvrw/2005/pg5o.html> 60 percent of rapes go
unreported. 

Even if our legal system handled rape cases brilliantly, schools would still
have a responsibility to maintain a safe and equal learning environment for
everyone -- and that means doing everything in their power to ensure that
female students don't find their studies interrupted by the kinds of fear or
trauma that male students rarely are forced to imagine, let alone confront.
That's not just my opinion -- that's the legal standard set by Title IX, the
same federal regulation that has been so successful in ensuring that girls
have a fair shake at athletic opportunities. The Supreme Court held in 1992
that Title IX -- which broadly prohibits sex discrimination in education --
specifically obligates schools to prevent and remedy sexual harassment and
assault.

The problem is, unlike in the sports arena, it requires nearly superhuman
emotional fortitude on the part of a campus assault victim to file a Title
IX case. "The seemingly insurmountable obstacle," reports Colby Bruno,
managing attorney at the  <http://www.victimrights.org/> Victim Rights Law
Center, which represents campus rape victims, "is that after the victim has
been retraumatized by the campus process, that victim no longer wishes to go
forward with a Title IX complaint because of the additional trauma it would
cause." It's one thing to sue your school for a fair chance to play soccer;
it's quite another to take it on over its inability to properly handle rape
cases, while trying to heal from your own sexual assault. 

And that's what colleges seem to be counting on. When it comes to sexual
assault, they'll do anything to be able to claim that "it doesn't happen
here" -- even if that means flouting reporting laws and creating the very
environment of silence, rape apology and victim-blame that ensures that it
will. 

It doesn't have to be this way. University campuses could easily become labs
that innovate effective ways to prevent and prosecute rape. But for that to
happen, everyone -- parents, alumni, students, school officials, law
enforcement -- needs to stop treating rape like it's an embarrassing cold
sore and start tackling it like the public health crisis it is. Using the
Justice Department's numbers, we can predict that during this school year,
more than 400,000 young women will be sexually assaulted on a U.S. college
campus. And according to McWhorter's research, more than 90 percent of those
400,000 rapes will be committed by repeat offenders who will rape, on
average, six times during their academic careers. 

That rate of recidivism is actually a golden opportunity, if only schools
and courts would take it. It means that all we need to do is get serious
about punishing the tiny percentage of men who are committing the vast
majority of assaults, and many, many fewer women will have to live through
the trauma of sexual violation. 

The solutions aren't even that complicated. First, colleges can eliminate
the "miscommunication" excuse that many rapists use by creating an on-campus
standard that requires any party to a sexual interaction to make sure their
partner is actively enthusiastic about what's happening -- not just not
objecting. They can create judicial boards equipped to seriously investigate
rape accusations, instead of throwing their hands up at the first sign that
the accused's testimony contradicts the accuser's. They can defend the
safety of the entire campus by permanently expelling those found guilty of
sexual assault. And they can be transparent about every step of the process.


There is some small glimmer of hope that change is coming. Inspired by the
Center for Public Integrity report, Bucknell University is considering
abandoning mediation as a way of adjudicating sexual assault cases, and the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst has a new policy requiring all sexual
assault cases to be personally reviewed by the dean of students. 

But while these are steps in the right direction, they are tiny ones.
Stopping rape on campus is going to require a giant leap of faith. It may
require a few extraordinarily strong survivors to file Title IX charges
against their schools. It will require visionary campus administrators who
care more about the safety of students than they do about their public
image. 

It will require parents, students and alumni to demand real, effective
change. We will all need to recognize that, because the veil of silence must
be pulled back for the real work to begin, the campuses we love may have to
suddenly appear less safe if they're going to actually become safer. 

 
<mailto:>
 

 

Jaclyn Friedman is the editor of "Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual
Power and a World Without Rape." 

 

 

Until the violence stops, Ben.  

 

Ben Atherton-Zeman, Maynard, MA USA
Actor, Comedian, Feminist and Husband
Presenting a One-Man Play: "Voices of Men," Educational Theatre for
Sexual/Domestic Violence Prevention - video excerpts at
http://www.voicesofmen.org

Booking information: 978-897-3619

 

Quote of the Month, March 2010: "Whenever we blame a victim, we are siding
with the perpetrator."  - Diane Docis,