Dissenting Voices

Proposed Prevention Measures for Sexual Assault On Campus

 

The 2011 Dear Colleague Letter mandates that schools “should take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence...and implement preventive education program and make victim resources, including comprehensive victim services, available.” To fully comply with this mandate and ensure student safety on-campus, we ask that the College:

 

• Review, expand, and clarify its definition of consent as affirmative verbal consent to sexual activity;

 

• Establish a Women’s Center on-campus. This center would serve as a safe space for rape survivors. It could also centralize Title IX resources, and possibly host pre-existing campus services such as SHIC. The College has established safe spaces for LGBTQ

students and students of color. We feel that the same protection should be afforded to women, particularly given Grinnell’s high rates of sexual violence. Many of our peer institutions have women’s centers, such as Carleton College, Vassar College, Pomona

College, Swarthmore College, and Bowdoin College. 

 

• Place equal, if not more, emphasis on sexual misconduct policy than academic dishonesty. For example, there is a detailed handbook about academic dishonesty that students are required to read and sign in Tutorial. Grinnell should provide a similarly

detailed handbook about sexual consent, sexual assault, and related policies. Students should have an opportunity to read these policies, ask clarifying questions, and sign a statement that affirms their commitment to upholding them by the end of the first

semester. This would have the added benefit of including faculty in the conversation and commitment to the Federal laws that apply to the college.

 

• Create a Sexual Assault Support Team (SAST). This team would consist of members of faculty and staff who are trained to assist, counsel, and support students who have experienced sexual assault and/or intimate partner violence. Students going through these

difficult and traumatic experiences should have a network of adult support and representation. Macalester College provides an excellent model of sexual assault response that Grinnell should carefully examine: http://www.macalester.edu/sexualassault/support/sast/

 

• Provide ongoing preventative education about sexual assault that recognizes the variable circumstances that contribute to sexual violence, including but not limited to sexism, domestic violence, and dating violence, all of which are often hard if not impossible for

an active-bystander to detect and stop. Nearly 60 percent of sexual assaults occur in the victims’ own residences, and an additional 31 percent occur in other living quarters—all behind closed doors. And studies have shown that bystanders are much less likely to act if the people know each other, which makes up the vast majority of sexual assaults. We recommend providing anti-sexist training and workshops specifically and explicitly teaching students not to assault, in addition to active-bystander training. Furthermore,

“Real Men” should be renamed to more explicitly acknowledge sexism and sexual violence. Such examples of male anti-rape organizations on college campuses include “Harvard Men Against Rape” and Northwestern University’s “Men Against Rape and

Sexual Assault.” 

 

• Offer regular self-defense courses that provide all interested students with the tools to protect themselves from sexual assault. Physical self-defense trainings have been shown to significantly increase self-protective behaviors and active resistance strategies in

women, and these strategies have been shown to reduce the risk of sexual assault by more than 80 percent compared to non-resistance (Gidycz et al. 2006; National Institute of Justice). Self-defense trainings avoid institutionalizing the disempowering narrative that women must be saved by others (active bystanders, namely, men) when offered in conjunction with active bystander training. Moreover, studies have shown that even when attacks have happened, a previous history of self-defense training lessens PTSD.