Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: People send their children to college thinking that the kids will be safe. Tyler Kingkade reports in Huffington Post article, Occidental College Sexual Assault Response Subject Of Federal Complaints:

Female Occidental College students, faculty and alumni say in a federal complaint that the Los Angeles school failed to take campus sex crimes seriously by improperly reporting and adjudicating sexual assaults and covering up rapes.

The 250-page complaint filed by a group of 37 Thursday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says the school maintained a hostile environment for sexual assault victims and their advocates and violated federal Title IX laws against sexual discrimination.

Even when the school’s investigations have found wrongdoing, punishment has been light, the complaint says. One student found responsible for raping a woman was given the punishment of writing a five-page book report, according to the complaint.

“I’ve seen some of the outputs of these so-called ‘educational sanctions’ like book reports and apology letters and they’re abysmal,” said Danielle Dirks, a sociology professor who specializes in crime and punishment and one of the women who filed the complaint. “The fact that Occidental has invited rapists back to campus and even told survivors not to worry because ‘he’s reformed now’ after these types of inadequate sanctions is an abomination.”

Six of the women who signed on to the complaint also retained attorney Gloria Allred. Allred’s office did not return emails from The Huffington Post.

The filing follows an April 1 complaint against Occidental under the Clery Act by some of the same women, alleging the school underreports campus sexual assaults, discourages victims from reporting attacks and fails to issue timely crime reports. The college was criticized in February by women who said the campus wasn’t notified in a timely manner about sexual assaults.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/19/occidental-sexual-assault_n_3118563.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Some colleges deal with sexual assault and rape with sensitivity and an attempt to reach a just result. Other colleges, not so much. Richard Perez-Pena reports about an Amherst student’s ordeal in the New York Times article, Student’s Account Has Rape in Spotlight:

AMHERST, Mass. — This year has brought news of student athletes charged with sex crimes at Boston University and at Temple, along with countless other less publicized cases. There have been claims that Wesleyan University tolerated a fraternity house where the abuse of women was common. A gang rape at the University of Massachusetts was reported just this week.

Dana Bolger, an Amherst College junior who said she was raped, helped create a Web site credited with raising awareness about sexual violence at the school.

But none has generated more soul searching, or scrutiny from beyond, than a woman’s wrenching account, published in a campus newspaper last week, of being raped in May 2011 by a fellow student at Amherst College and then being treated callously by college administrators.

“Eventually I reached a dangerously low point, and, in my despondency, began going to the campus’ sexual assault counselor,” the woman wrote in The Amherst Student. “In short I was told: No you can’t change dorms, there are too many students right now. Pressing charges would be useless, he’s about to graduate, there’s not much we can do. Are you SURE it was rape?”

Within hours, the story of the woman, Angie Epifano, became the most-examined episode in memory on this campus of 1,800 students, the subject of online commentary from around the world. It prompted other Amherst students, past and present, to step forward publicly and say that they, too, had been sexually assaulted here, treated poorly afterward, and in many cases had left campus rather than be around assailants who were allowed to remain.

Tension around the issue of sexual misconduct had been simmering for a long time here, escalating in the past year as a group of student activists helped persuade a new college president to make it a priority.

“It was being talked about before, but there’s a big difference between people being willing to talk and other people being willing to hear it and join in,” said Emma Saltzberg, a senior and volunteer advocate for people who have been abused. “It’s amazing to see this campus so worked up.”

The college president, Carolyn A. Martin, who arrived in September last year, said that in her previous jobs, as a top administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University, she had dealt only in passing with the question of sexual violence. But in her first year here, after hearing from students, she made several changes, like having trained investigators look into those cases, revising the student handbook, and hiring a nationally known consultant, Gina M. Smith, to review and revise Amherst’s approach. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/education/amherst-account-of-rape-brings-tension-to-forefront.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

This episode at Amherst and the other revelations of rape from other campuses which were triggered by the Ms. Bolger are part of the sordid history of campus sexual assaults.

Cynthia Mc Fadden reported about campus rapes a couple of years ago for a 2010 Nightline report:

In Many Campus Victims Stay Quiet or Fail to Get Help Mc Fadden reports:

 The Center for Public Integrity conducted a 12-month probe into sexual assault on college campuses that was completed earlier this year. The investigation found that students will often keep quiet when they  are sexually assaulted because they blame themselves for what happened,  don’t realize that what happened  to them was a crime or fear that their  assailants or others will strike again if they report them….

If you are a college student and you believe you have been a victim of rape on
campus, tell someone immediately.

Contact your local rape crisis center, victim advocacy legal  organization or rape hotline to find out about your school’s procedures.  Often these organizations can be found through your campus police  department or health services. You should also go to the hospital or  local health clinic and have a rape kit, through which physical evidence  is gathered,  performed.

Title IX of the Civil Rights Act grants the right to equal access to  education. If you believe your school has violated Title IX, or has  failed to offer “an equitable policy on sexual assault prevention and  response,” you can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights of  the Department of Education.

The episode, Rape on Campus A Shocking Reality be viewed at the Nightline site.

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) reports in the article, Sexual Assault on Campus Statistics:

Facts and Figures

• 95% of attacks are unreported, making sexual assault the “silent epidemic.” Sexual assault remains the most drastically underreported crime (*see the paragraph below the statistics for more on why). (1)

• 3% of college women nationally have experienced rape or attempted rape during the academic year. This means, for example, that a campus with 6,000 coeds will have an average of one rape per day during the school year. (2)

• 13% of women are stalked during the academic year, and each stalking episode lasts an average of 60 days. (2)

• 90% of women know the person who sexually assaulted or raped them. (2)

• 75% of the time, the offender, the victim, or both have been drinking. (3)

• 42% of college women who are raped tell no one about the assault. (4)

• 5% of rape incidents are reported to the police. (2) 10 times more rapes are reported to crisis lines than are reported to the police. (5)

• 42% of raped women expect to be raped again. (4)

* While there are many reasons why people do not report, the most often cited reason in a 2009 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity was institutional barriers on campus. Two examples of these institutional barriers are administrators who respond to students with disbelief or other inappropriate behavior and campus judiciary processes that are difficult to understand and follow. Many students who were discouraged because of these barriers transferred or withdrew from their schools, while their alleged attackers were almost uniformly unpunished.(XX) Debunking Myths
Both college women and men harbor misconceptions about sexual assault. Getting the facts is essential to combating sexual assault on campus.

• 71% of rapes are planned in advance. (6)

• 80% of women who are raped try to physically resist. (6)

• 48.8% of the women did not consider what happened to them to be rape even though researchers considered the incidents to be rape. (2)

• 43% of college-aged men conceded to using coercive behavior to have sex (including ignoring a woman’s protest, using physical aggression, and forcing intercourse) but did not admit that it was rape. (7)

The Impact on Victims
Physical and emotional

• 40% of rape survivors develop sexually transmitted diseases as a result of sexual assault. (8)

• 80% of rape victims suffer chronic physical or psychological problems over time. (9)

• 13 times as many rape survivors are more likely to attempt suicide than are people who are not victims of crime. Rape survivors are six times more likely to attempt suicide than are victims of other crimes. (10)

• 25–50% of sexual assault victims seek mental health treatment as a result of the assault. (11)

Academics and achievement
In addition to physical and emotional damage, college students who have been victims of sexual assault suffer from a host of problems that impede their academic achievement.

• In nearly every case, victims cannot perform at the same academic levels that they did prior to the attack.

• Sexual assault sometimes causes students to be unable to carry a normal class load, and they miss classes more frequently. (This is often a result of social withdrawal or a way to avoid seeing the perpetrator.)

• Student victims regularly withdraw from courses altogether.

• In more traumatic incidents, victims leave the school until they recover, sometimes transferring to another college. http://www.aauw.org/act/laf/library/assault_stats.cfm

See, 50 Actual Facts About Rapehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/50-facts-rape_b_2019338.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

When students arrive on campus and even before the decision to enroll is made, students and parents need to inquire about the level of security on college campuses. They need to inquire about late evening transportation, dorm security, notification to students of criminal activity, and whether crime statistics for the campus are reported and available. As the saying goes, an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure. As for the “Animal House” adminsitrators, well successful lawsuits against them and their colleges may force them to care about sexual assault on their campus.

See:

To Combat Rape on Campus Schools Should Stop Keeping It Quiet

Megan’s Story Video

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Tags: AAUW, Amherst, attorney gloria allred, current-events, educational sanctions, federal complaints, Many Campus Victims Stay Quiet or Fail to Get Help, Megan’s Story Video, Occidental College Sexual Assault Response Subject Of Federal Complaints, politics, Rape, Rape on Campus A Shocking Reality, Sexual Assault, Sexual Assault on Campus, Sexual Assault on Campus Statistics, sexual assault response, sexual assault victims, Student’s Account Has Rape in Spotlight, The American Association of University Women, U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights