Graduate Student Senate heard from Athens Police Department Chief Tom Pyle and Ohio University Police Department Chief Andrew Powers regarding sexual assault on campus at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Pyle and Powers discussed what each police department is capable of doing to help victims in situations of sexual assault and what rape culture looks like on campus.
“The point that I really wanted to underscore I think in light of everything that has happened this fall so far is the importance of understanding what sexual assault looks like on our campus,” Powers said.
Powers said OUPD looked at their statistics from last year and found that 81 percent of sexual assaults investigated on campus were committed in private spaces where the amount of lighting, cameras and police cars patrolling would have had no effect on the assault.
“It is important for people to understand that sexual assault is typically committed by people who are known to the victim; someone the victim trusts,” Powers said.
Powers asked GSS to consider that what happens in private spaces is a direct result of the culture created at OU.
“What contributes to those offenses and what contributes to what happens in private space is the culture that everybody on this campus creates,” Powers said. “When it comes to attitudes toward women, attitudes toward minorities, attitudes toward each other. It is about rape culture, it is about tolerating sexist jokes, it is about tolerating behavior that condones the kind of things that lead to sexual assault.”
Rachel Stroup, GSS commissioner for women’s affairs, asked Powers and Pyle what things OUPD and APD are doing in terms of preventing sexual assault and also what their initiatives are.
Powers said OUPD and APD works very closely with the Survivor Advocacy Program on campus so each victim has the opportunity to have a SAP advocate.
The university will be installing 500 more cameras around campus, predominantly in residential areas to provide more video footage of outside spaces.
“Both departments prioritize residential areas in terms of officer patrol,” Powers said. “We have officers on foot, we have officers on bike, we have officers patrolling in cars.”
Pyle said that preventing sexual assault is not something law enforcement expects to do successfully because of where most of these crimes take place. He said about 90 percent of them take place outside of the purview of law enforcement.
Stroup asked both chiefs the question of what steps they take after a sexual assault is reported.
Pyle said that there is no set protocol that either department follows because every sexual assault situation is different. He explained the protocol as more of a circle filled with objectives.
“We want to accomplish as many of these [objectives as] possible but they are not in any order,” Pyle said.
Along with contacting SAP, OUPD also makes sure the victims have received appropriate health and psychological care. If they have not been transported to the hospital, OUPD will transport them.
GSS passed three resolutions at the meeting.
Brett Frederickson, department representative for environmental and plant biology, brought two separate resolutions to endorse the Center for Student Legal Services in its contract renewal and its wish to increase the student health insurance fee.
