Understanding and Preventing Campus Sexual Violence against International Students

Photo by Nadine Shaabana from Unsplash

Executive Summary

Acculturating international students face heightened risk of campus sexual violence due to internal difficulties such as language and cultural differences and external barriers such as their immigration status and unfamiliarity with reporting procedures. Few universities take actions to specifically address such issue and existing solutions remain inadequate. This policy brief recommends that universities take a multifaceted approach to better understand and prevent campus sexual violence against international students, including improving data collection, mandating immigration and cultural competency training for first responders, and providing accessible sexual violence prevention and sexual health education programs for all undergraduate and graduate students.

When checks and balances break down

In October 2022, Chinese student Karen Xiang accused her former professor and recent Nobel laureate Phillip Dybvig of sexual harassment. He allegedly pulled her onto his lap for a photo, called her “tian mei zi”, or sweet girl in English, caressed her hands in a closed room, and made inappropriately intimate comments. Since Xiang, Dybvig’s six other former students at Washington University in St. Louis have come forward and made similar allegations, and all are international students. None of them formally complained to the university’s Title IX office, citing fear of losing their student visas and unfamiliarity with the reporting process.

Campus sexual violence is pervasive, and acculturating international students face heightened risk. Language difficulties, cultural differences, racial discrimination, homesickness, and potential feelings of social alienation increase their vulnerability to sexual violence victimization. For example, media portrayal of American campus life may lead them to normalizing inappropriate physical contact, as recounted by a witness in Dybvig’s case.

Moreover, international students face unique challenges that may prevent them from seeking help and reporting, such as fear of retaliation or deportation, unfamiliarity with Title IX and the reporting process, and cultural stigmas around sexuality and sexual violence.

Figure 1. International students are especially vulnerable to campus sexual violence and experience significant barriers to reporting abuse.

Despite substantial risk, few universities have made intentional effort to support international students. There also exists “a critical gap in literature” in understanding how campus sexual violence impacts this population. International students are either intentionally left out of related studies to reduce complexity or weighted in surveys to represent the campus demographic, albeit having fundamentally different college experiences compared to their domestic counterparts.

Existing Solutions

Some universities are taking actions to prevent and address sexual violence against international students. For example, the State University of New York gathered immigration resources and built a tool that allows other institutions to customize to fit their needs and publish in different languages. Oklahoma State University and Indiana University assure international students that they share the same protection as their domestic counterparts, and reporting an incident is unlikely to affect their immigration status or result in deportation. Ball State University and the University of Pittsburgh have developed or proposed culturally sensitive prevention programming. However, not enough universities are taking adequate steps, and cases of sexual violence often only come to light after victims or whistleblowers expose them on social media used in their home countries.

Policy Recommendations

There is not enough research to help understand how campus sexual violence affect international students specifically, and no one policy option is enough to address this complicated matter. To prevent future incidents and support survivors, this policy brief recommends universities take a multifaceted approach and consider the following cost-effective options:

Figure 2. Suggested policy options to better understand and address campus sexual violence against international students.

Researchers and campus public safety programs should intentionally collect data on international students’ experience on campus sexual violence. This may include locations where incidents occur (e.g., faculty offices, classrooms, student lounges, off campus), nationality of the perpetrator and victim (e.g., between a U.S. person and an international student, between international students of the same home country, between international students of different home countries), relationship between the perpetrator and victim (e.g., advisor-advisee, professor-student, student-student), external resources victims may seek for support (e.g., student organizations, friends and family, social media), and any cultural or administrative barriers that may impede reporting. This data collection could be conducted through a specialized task force or implemented into regular campus climate surveys.

First responders, including Title IX officers, campus law enforcement, medical professionals, and sexual assault counselors, should be informed of basic student visa requirements. For example, students holding F-1 visa need to enroll in a full course of study to maintain their immigration status, and this requirement could become physically and mentally difficult when they are experiencing sexual violence. Under certain conditions, students may have the option to apply for reduced course load. First responders should be made aware of such policies and help provide necessary documents. The university’s office of international students and scholars could provide such education to first responders through resource guides and workshops at no to low cost.

First responders should receive mandated cultural competency training. International students are not a homogenous population but an extremely diverse group, and their views towards gender norms, sexuality and sexual violence may differ. It is important that first responders recognize and respect cultural differences while providing medical and legal assistance. That said, first responders should avoid treating international students as othered or use cultural differences to justify sexual violence. This cultural competency training could be provided through the university’s employee professional development services.

Universities should provide comprehensive sexual violence awareness and prevention education including consent, bystander intervention, gender socialization, healthy and unhealthy relationships, stalking and cyberstalking, and other related topics.

• Universities should mandate such education for incoming undergraduate and graduate students. Many universities provide online sexual assault prevention and alcohol education programs for freshmen but not first-year graduate students. This may leave out a significant population of international graduate students who may not have had previous training in college.
• Universities should supplement online training courses with in-person workshops that allow for face-to-face interactions between students and first responders. Such workshops can help add a human touch to what may otherwise be seen as a faceless sexual violence reporting website or phone number and may help reduce students’ resistance to reporting.
• Universities should seek input from international students to develop culturally competent programming. This could mean hiring first responders and educators with studying abroad experience, recruiting international students in sexual violence prevention working groups, and collaborating with student organizations.
• Educators should deliver their presentations in an accessible manner. Pop culture references, such as examples of healthy relationships in celebrity couples, are sometimes used to engage the audience and could be difficult to understand for students who do not grow up in American culture. It may be helpful to select more widely known references or provide detailed explanation. Educators should also do regular check-ins with international students during their presentation and make sure to include and engage them in interactive activities.

Universities should provide sexual health education to international students. Medical forensic exams can be especially intimidating and traumatizing for people who don’t have previous experience with gynecological exams. Demonstration of medical procedures such as pap smears and sexually transmitted illness screening and rape kit assembly workshops may help ease such anxiety. This could be incorporated into international student orientation or first year undergraduate and graduate student welcome week programming at relatively low cost.

International students are especially vulnerable to campus violence and at the same time neglected in prevention efforts. This policy brief discusses several easily implementable and cost-effective approaches that universities could take to protect its international students from campus sexual violence. It is limited as I speak to my experience as a Chinese international student and a cis gender woman, and by no means a comprehensive list of measures. I hope this could serve as one of the starting points for conversations to happen.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Yang Yang, Esther Liu, Chrisy Xiyu Du and Opeoluwa Oyewole for their invaluable feedback.