Sexual Assault On College Campuses

According to the US Justice Department, sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient and includes sexual activities such as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape. Sexual assault has always been an unacknowledged problem within society, especially on college campuses, with many people either being reluctant to speak out, believing it to be a sort of “myth” or call for attention, or just not knowing how to deal with it. For example, more than one-third of victims don’t report attacks because they didn’t realize a crime was committed. Sexual assault is a serious problem that must not be suppressed by individuals

or officials with the ability to help and in order to decrease its occurrence we must increase the use of Sexual Assault Kits in the criminal justice system, provide better guidelines for how sexual assault cases are dealt with by school disciplinary boards, and promote prevention methods.

In order to decrease the occurrence of sexual assault, first we must increase the use of Sexual Assault Kits, otherwise known as SAKs, in the criminal justice system. Even though most instances of sexual assault committed on college campuses are reported to campus police or school disciplinary boards, some cases make their way to the criminal justice system. Although SAKs can do a lot for sexual assault cases, many remain backlogged or do not make it through the investigation process. Backlogged evidence is generally considered evidence submitted to a crime laboratory for testing that remains unexamined for over thirty days. Among sexual assault crimes, the existence of forensic evidence that was tested by a laboratory was associated with an increased chance of arrest and of charges being filed but was not associated with case referral or conviction outcomes (Falik and Wells,

5). SAKs are collected in approximately half of all reported rape cases but only approximately one-third of SAKs are submitted for screening. A common explanation for them not being submitted is that no suspect had been identified even though unanalyzed evidence in as many as 40% of cases could be used to identify unknown suspects. This dismissal of evidence is partly from the solvability of a case or how much effort needs to be used to solve a case as well as the credibility of the victim’s statement and the lack of a sworn statement from victims. Several stages of the investigative process in which SAK evidence can be thrown out include collection, submission, screening, analysis, and the development of a DNA profile for submission to the Combined DNA Index System, also known as CODIS. “Because forensic evidence may be filtered out at each of these stages of the investigative process, the chances that forensic evidence will, when studied in the aggregate, influence a large percentage of cases may be small” (Falik and Wells, 5).
Regardless of the factors stated above, through the use of SAKs in reported cases, there is the growing possibility of more arrests and eventual prosecutions. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), about sixty percent of rapes are not reported; but, out of both reported and unreported cases, only three percent of rapists will ever spend a day in prison. SAKs may contain evidence of DNA which can be used in sexual assault cases in many ways such as the confirmation of a crime being committed through sexual contact, to confirm the identity of the suspect or disassociate a suspect with the crime. They may also be helpful in cases where the suspect denies all sexual contact or when the victim was unconscious at the time of the assault. Its absence may diminish victim participation or cooperation.
Another way to decrease the occurrence of sexual assault on college campuses is to provide better guidelines for how sexual assault cases are dealt with by school disciplinary boards. Despite over-sexualization in society, discussions on sexual assault are often discouraged by the general public and as a result, many people who have experienced it are reluctant to share. In recent years, there has been increased legislation and awareness regarding it, especially on college campuses; but there is still much to improve. For example, in many reported cases of rape or sexual assault, police officers as well as some school disciplinary boards are seen to be unsympathetic to the victim. In the case of Emma Sulkowicz, this was true for both the school disciplinary board she went to first and the police officers she decided to talk to after being criticized for not calling the police. According to Michelle Goldberg of The Nation who interviewed Sulkowicz, “Four officers came to interview her, and a friend of hers captured the conversation on her phone. One repeatedly berated her for not calling 911 and harped on the fact that she’d had consensual sex with her assailant in the past, saying it sounded like he’d just been “a little weird that night.” A defense attorney, he told her, would “rip you apart.” As bad as Columbia’s process was, Sulkowicz says, “it was definitely a worse feeling to have someone straight-up tell you that you weren’t raped.”’(Goldberg 15). In addition to the lack of sympathy, there are three major and conflicting criticisms of the school disciplinary process for sexual assault cases (Goldberg 13). According to Goldberg’s article titled “Campus Rape Crisis”, there are three major and sometimes conflicting criticisms of the school disciplinary process for sexual assault cases. “First, to some—though by no means all—victims’ advocates, treating rape cases as internal disciplinary matters to be handled by amateurs trivializes a serious felony...Second, many victims find campus disciplinary boards more invested in protecting the school’s reputation than in seeking justice...Finally, defense attorneys and civil libertarians—as well as rape-skeptical conservative pundits—condemn the boards as kangaroo courts in which the accused are denied ordinary due process.”(Goldberg 13-14). A possible solution to these criticisms would be the employment of campus detectives specially trained on how to conduct a sexual assault case.
In spite of this, there have been many major laws introduced or passed to combat dismissal of such cases on college campuses as well as in the criminal justice system such as the Clery Act (1990) and Title IX (1972) which has just been acknowledged to cover sexual harassment and discrimination in 2009.

The Clery Act, which was named for a Lehigh University freshman who was raped and murdered by a fellow student in 1990, requires all colleges or universities that receive federal funding and maintain a police or security department to keep a daily crime log that is open to public inspection and is readily understandable. Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law banning sex discrimination in education, is best known for mandating equal access to athletic programs and was not taken seriously for anything beyond sports until recently with the abundance of sexual assault stories circulating the media. In 2011, the Department of Education issued a letter known as the “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities nationwide because of the failed regulation and management of sexual assault cases. The letter scared colleges and universities about the possibility of losing federal funding if they didn’t do what the government wanted them to do and resulted in immediate action to address sexual assault on college campuses. It standardized some procedures for adjudication such as sparing accusers from questioning by their alleged attackers and allowing campus hearings to employ a much

lower standard of evidence than that used in criminal cases, sometimes expressed as requiring a 51% likelihood of guilt for a finding against the accused (Goldberg 14). Nonetheless, once the suspect of a sexual assault case is identified and proven guilty, school disciplinary boards warn, suspend or expel the student or put the student on probation and while these are appropriate solutions for a school board, a simple warning or probation period do not fit the serious nature of the crime. Also, on the rare occasion that a suspect is expelled from college, there is not much preventing them from committing the crime elsewhere.
Finally, we must promote prevention methods such as seminars and classes on public safety, better campus surveillance and teaching what sexual assault really entails. Having better campus surveillance might entail better lighting in dimly lit areas on or around campus as well as surveillance equipment in those areas and areas where crimes are most likely to be committed. Some additional methods come from a Time magazine article by Eliza Gray titled “Taking Assault Seriously” published earlier this year. The first method is to launch applications. In March of 2012, a mobile application called “Circle of 6” was launched. This app was created to provide students and others with an app with the ability to instantly alert a selective group of people of any dangerous situations people find themselves in. There are four main buttons that serve as the instant alerts. The first one alerts the six contacts of the person’s current location. The second gives the person an out of a “bad date”. The third provides resources for someone in a violent or potentially-violent relationship. The fourth is the emergency button which has two national hotlines programmed into it as well as the option to program another safe place into it. The second method is to remove students from panels that determine sanctions for gender-based misconduct and replace them with specially trained university employees (this was done recently at Columbia University). Although student involvement in campus policies is generally encouraged, experts say students are less likely to report sexual misconduct when they know they’ll be judged by a peer. The third method is to have a zero tolerance policy for sexual assault. According to Gray, over the summer, Dartmouth College changed its sexual-assault disciplinary policy to mandatory expulsion for cases of rape by use of “physical force, threat or intentional incapacitation.” The fourth method is to incorporate computer-based courses on assault. Oklahoma State University requires all incoming students to complete a forty-five minute online program that teaches crucial prevention concepts: how to define consent, ways to find resources and techniques for intervention. The final method is to have bystander training programs in which students are taught how to intervene in assaults before they happen.
As stated before, there are many misconceptions regarding sexual assault. These may include questioning its existence or the serious nature of it, what it entails, and who is really to blame for its occurrence. Sexual assault has always been a problem on college campuses and within society but has not been acknowledged as a problem by the public or even the media until recently. Many people believe that it is only considered assault if sexual intercourse is being forced onto the person or if some object is forced into a body orifice. Some believe that it is the victim’s fault because of the “provocative” nature of their clothing, past sexual behavior, or they made themselves vulnerable or a target by choosing to drink or use drugs; and, based on one or a few of these examples, it would be natural for someone to react in such a way.