Sexual assault prevention a main focus for college campuses and Obama task force.
It’s the cat-calls on Court Street. It’s the “accidental” groping as someone side-steps you in the bars. It’s the person you thought was a friend, or the stranger on the street. It’s the non-discriminatory fear that someone is behind you.
It’s sexual violence.
Every two minutes, another American is a victim of sexual assault, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
At Ohio University, sexual assault is being addressed. The conversation around sexual violence on campus is changing with a new, required online course for freshmen, “Not Anymore,” that teaches students about sexual violence, and importance placed on resources such as the 24/7 confidential hotline the OU Survivor Advocacy Program boasts.
While administrators agree that OU is on the right track with resources to address sexual violence on campus, there is still more to be done.
The statistics are there. The cases are there. Survivors and perpetrators walk our streets. And now, national attention has been brought to this problem infecting college campuses across the country.
OBAMA’S TASK FORCE
This past January, President Barack Obama took a stand against sexual assault on college campuses, recognizing it as a widespread issue, and started a task force to research instances of sexual violence and how they were handled at institutions across the country.
A task force by the Obama administration was created to look at sexual assault on campuses including: Ohio State University and Wittenberg University in Springfield Ohio. OU, however, was not included on the list of 60 schools, which may come as a surprise considering the activity of protest groups on campus such as F--kRapeCulture, FRC, and the alleged Court Street rape —putting Athens in national news headlines.
These universities were initially picked because officials there have illegally handled some cases. The government has specific instances on file of those violations and their corresponding campuses.
OU is not among those under investigation. As of now, it has a handle on dealing with sexual violence, said Susanne Dietzel, director of the OU Women’s Center.
“Ohio University, in many regards, is ahead of the curve,” Dietzel said. “We have survivor advocacy services, we have streamlined our process with our investigation process and our adjudication process, … also a mandatory education program for all incoming freshman … so I think we’re doing really, really well.”
In April, the White House released a report outlining common mistakes campuses make when handling sexual assaults and how college officials can properly handle those cases.
A checklist for establishing a proper sexual misconduct policy was provided in the 20-page report, “Not Alone: The First Report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.”
The checklist included practices already in place at OU: encourage trained advocates to talk with survivors on campus and reinforce bystander intervention, which means encouraging students who may be witness to sexual violence to speak up or report the incident.
“(Recognizing) that sexual assault is a major problem in our society and to have that recognized by the president had long been overdue,” Dietzel said. “I really commend the president and the team that actually have been working over the last couple of months to make that possible.”
The list, released in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, will be updated with more institutions that violations under Title IX, which outlaws sexual discrimination and obligates campuses to have effective procedures to handle sexual assault, harassment and violence, in an attempt to be more transparent.
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There are still issues on campus regarding sexual assault and consent, and it’s still a priority for administrators to improve education and prevention, said Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones.
“This is a big deal all the time,” Hall-Jones said. “We want to make sure the conversations continue and we can sustain that campus dialogue.”
EDUCATION
An important aspect of prevention is education. And at OU, that starts at Bobcat Student Orientation, Hall-Jones said.
There, she uses time in her scheduled evening speech to address consent and sexual violence in a college setting to students and their parents.
“I talk about it pretty intensively, I talk about Ohio University’s approach, I define sexual misconduct, I talk about our sanctioning guidelines,” Hall-Jones said. “I really put it out there and define consent pretty specifically this year for the first-year students, and I put our expectations there as a part of my speech to them.”
New this year, Freshman students are now required to take “Not Anymore,” a course designed to teach about sexual assault, consent and bystander intervention. Similar to “Alcohol EDU,” the course is set up with individual modules to address certain sexual assault topics.
“I learned how to approach someone if something is happening,” said Haley Clutter, a freshman studying nursing. “I feel like it was a really long course, but I felt like it was useful. … I think some people will take something away (from it) if they were actually watching it. But I think some people probably don’t really care.”
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The course is mandatory for first-year students and needs to be completed by Oct. 15, but can be taken optionally by any OU student at ohio.edu/survivor/notanymore. Dietzel said this is an important part of prevention education on campus, and in line with what Obama’s task force is encouraging on college campuses.
Hall-Jones said she looks forward to when all OU students have been trained through the course.
The university also has someone in place to discuss sexual assault prevention and education on campus: Bill Arnold, OU Survivor Advocacy Program graduate assistant for bystander intervention and prevention education. He oversees an organization called, “Better Bystanders,” a group that aims to educate students, faculty, staff and the community on education and implementation of bystander intervention.
“What I’m most interested in terms of bystander intervention is not somebody walking in on a sexual assault in progress and stopping it. That just doesn’t happen that frequently,” Arnold said. “I’m much more interested in bystander intervention in the culture that supports sexual assault and partner violence.”
Arnold said he hopes to see change in a campus where cat-calling and jokes on sexual assault are not OK.
“Advocacy is for when something bad happens, and my whole thing is trying to prevent something bad from happening,” Arnold said.
ADVOCACY
When something bad does happen, however, advocacy does come into play.
Arnold works under the helm of Dietzel, whose Survivor Advocacy Program, or nicknamed OUSAP, provides a variety of resources through its office.
OUSAP also offers a confidential report line at (740)-597-7233. The program is the only agency at Ohio University that offers a 24-hour hotline during the Fall and Spring Semesters, guaranteeing a confidential conversation, unless the caller is in “immediate danger or plans on hurting themselves,” Arnold said.
Under law, faculty members are required to report cases of sexual violence.
OUSAP can also help students navigate reporting, legal processes, counseling, health needs and more.
“The Survivor Advocacy Program I think is one of the key components of Obama’s plan which is access to confidential support services,” Dietzel said. “That is what we do, that is what we do best. That really helps in creating a climate in which victims feel safe coming forward and getting the kind of support that they need to deal with what has happened to them.”
Hall-Jones said she applauds how different outlets work together to fight against sexual violence on campus. OUSAP, the Women’s Center, Counseling and Psychological Services, OU Police Department and Community Standards are just a few of the resources Hall-Jones mentioned that can provide a variety of needs for a survivor.
OUSAP is funded through federal grant money that is due to run out in Fall of 2015. It is eligible to be renewed, but Arnold said he is not sure how feasible it would be to receive again. If the program were to run out of funding, or if the program ended, Arnold said, it would make it seem as if sexual assault isn’t a problem anymore.
While Hall-Jones said she could not guarantee permanent funding, other resources on campus are backing OUSAP.
“I think that combating this and doing prevention education is absolutely a priority. I think what grants do for us is allow us to do something new,” Hall-Jones said. “That’s why having this grant money was so wonderful and allowed us to set up the Advocacy Program that we have. So I would not be surprised at all if this turns into permanent funding.”
Seeing the benefits of being financially supported by the administration, Delfin Bautista, LGBT Center Director, said it sends a message to the community.
“We hope that the the university would show its commitment to ending sexual assault and supporting people impacted by sexual assault by funding the program,” Bautista said. “(The administration has) been very supportive of the program, money is tricky and budgets are a mess. But hopefully finding ways for that program to continue once the grant cycle comes to an end (will happen).”
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Claire Chadwick, co-founder of F--kRapeCulture and a junior studying social work and women and gender studies, said she wants to create a safe space for survivors and students on campus, providing a zine of information about rape culture and sexual assaults and engaging in protests around campus.
“What we’re really trying to do is change the culture on this campus through education and advocacy for survivors,” Chadwick said. “We want to make sure this is an environment where people feel safe coming forward about assault and after they come forward, we want this to be a place where they don’t go through victim blaming and other things that happen in mass media.”
Chadwick said she personally would like to see a university where all student workers go through sexual harassment training. Her organization, F--kRapeCulture, will be hosting a protest this Friday at 5 p.m. on the steps of the Athens court house.
For OU faculty, a list of resources —if they ever had to report a sexual assault— is in the works to become available to them, hopefully by the end of this week, Hall-Jones said.
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“Last year, we put out a folder … that went to all faculty and staff that were guidelines to help a student in distress or a student that was disrupting your classroom,” Hall-Jones said. “And we thought we need to get a folder out for, ‘What do you do if somebody comes forward and tells you they’ve been sexually assaulted.’”
As far as the conversation around sexual violence, said Delfin Bautista, director of the LGBT Center, the need for expansion to include other university resources, such as the LGBT Center and Student Accessibility services, Bautista said.
“The more identities you start bringing in (to the conversation around sexual violence), it does become complicated, it does become messy. But I think that it’s reality, and it’s important and I think it becomes a much richer and effective conversation,” Bautista said.
“My hope is that we can learn from other schools, and other schools can learn from us in being proactive rather than being reactive. (We shouldn’t be) waiting for another Chase Bank incident to blow up in the media, but being very intentional, proactively about having conversations around sexual assault, sexual practices, safer sex practices, having people just be aware of what is consent, and just doing that in a diverse way.”
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