Sexual Assault Expected:

A Brief Look at Rape and Sexual Assault on College Campuses

If college campuses say they handle rape and sexual assault cases well, then why are they continuing to happen? This is a question that I’ve been researching for a few months now and honestly there still really isn’t a clear answer.

To really understand this problem we must first look at a few statistics about rape on college campuses. Research from the Washington Post-Kaiser Poll in 2015 found that 20% of women who attended college during the past four years were sexually assaulted. Congruently, a study paid for by the Association of American Universities, in 2015 surveyed exactly 150,000 students from 27 different colleges and universities across the United States of America and discovered that 27.2% of female college seniors reported that since entering college they had experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact. Along with this, in a national survey given to more than 20,000 students from 21 four year colleges found that about 25% of women were sexually assaulted during their college experience (England, 2015). All of these statistics provide a clear understanding that throughout their college experience about 1 in 5 have been or will be sexually assaulted. These facts are shocking and point to the fact that there is a clear problem not only with sexual assault and rape bit with the correlation of them happening on college campuses.

As mentioned in the critically acclaimed documentary The Hunting Ground by Susan Marine, the former Assistant Dean of Student Life at Harvard, “Sexual violence has always been apart of the college experience”. This quote insinuated that there really is nothing we can do to change the outcome of sexual assaults and rape that happen on college campuses all across America. Because sexual assault and rape happen to be part of the college experience I wanted to look into possible factors that would help create this criminal campus culture. In a study written by Rebecca L. Stotzer “Results suggest that the type of athletic program, the number of students who live on campus, and the institution’s alcohol policy were all found to be related to reported sexual assaults”, however this can really happen on any campus. Out of Stotzer’s observations I decided to focus on the type of athletic program and the institutions alcohol policy.

I found that many collegiate players have been accused of either rape or sexual assault. One interesting case was a now professional NFL player Jameis Winston, who then played at FSU, was accused of rape. In this case nothing happened to him but his victim was repeatedly harassed and called a liar because his fans never believed he would do such a thing. At FSU the football program was king because it made the school stacks of money therefore the school would do anything to stop bad press. Much like FSU many other schools do the same thing, according to Claire Bond Potter, Former Associate Professor at Wesleyan University. “Their first job is to protect the institution from harm, not the student from harm”. Maybe a reason that sexual assaults and rape keep happening on campuses is because the universities we attend care more about their public perception.

When it comes to alcohol policy the first thing that comes to mind is the greek system and the party culture it creates. Often greek life can get a bad reputation however there are some pros that many can’t overlook due to the bad outweighing the good. For example Washington State University is centered around two things, football and greek life. The parties that take place at WSU often can get out of hand causing many problems even going as far as death. Due to this, on multiple occasions fraternities at WSU were put on a forced probation where alcohol was not allowed to be consumed on the premises if they were housing first year students. In an interview with the dean of students Melynda Husky she stated that "When groups of young men are together, their capacity to make good decisions tends to diminish," (Dubrovin, KLEW). This isn't just a problem that happens at WSU, it's something that is nationwide. This is why the greek system has become such a problem area when it comes to rape and sexual assault.This was one of the reasons I decided not to even apply when I was considering colleges to attend.

I was interested to look more into this party culture that in some cases enhances the probability of a sexual assault or rape. Fraternities have done many questionable things but two that stick out to me specifically are things that I’ve noticed without doing any research. One Fraternity in particular, Sigma Alpha Epsilon has gotten in trouble multiple times and many know them along greek row as Sexual Assault Expected. Along with this I personally have seen some fraternities hang up signs on move in day at many different universities saying things like “Drop your daughters off here” or “You’ve been their daddy for 18 years now it’s our turn”. This culture they create seems to play a role in the amount of sexual assaults and rapes that happen on college campuses.

After looking at all of this information you may still be wondering why rape and sexual assault continually happens on college campuses. According to a 2014 Gallup survey, 95% of college presidents say their institutions handle sexual assault reports “appropriately”. From what I can see in the previous examples mentioned, this is not the case. I have come to a conclusion that I call “The Corporation Problem”. I believe that rape and sexual assault is still prevalent on college campuses because the universities we attend only care about two things, money and public image. In my eyes the reason they don’t thoroughly act upon accounts or rape and sexual assault is either because it has the potential to scar their image or because the perpetrator is one who makes the university money. The two biggest creators of campus culture, mentioned before are huge money makers for universities. Almost any school with a good football team, like FSU needs to protect not only its image but also its players in order to make money for the school. Similarly when it comes to greek life, former members of the system tend to be the largest donors to the school they attended later on in life because of the strong ties they have. Due to this both athletics and greek life will never disappear from American college life because of the money both of them generate for the universities which furthers the problem.