“Welcome to the first year of your university or college experience class, I would like to inform you that 8% of the men in this graduation class will become the culprit to a sexual assault, as well as 1 in 4 of the women in this class will be the victim of this rape. Thanks for your tuition money and enjoy the next four years of your university experience”. If everyone was told this before entering their first year at an institution many would never want to stay, especially the females. Being a proven fact that these crimes are being committed, college and university rapes should not be such a taboo topic to talk about. These assaults occur every day yet only a mere number of them are fully reported only because the universities don’t want to deal with the cases. Due to the abundance of sexual assaults that have occurred it’s important to explore the history of sexual assault complaints and what has been done about these complaints, the recent complaints about assaults on campuses across the country, and the steps that can be taken to move from a point that sexual assaults aren’t talked about to one where there is justice for the victims of these horrendous crimes.
Sexual assault has always been happening in every country and for many years now. There is always a new story, yet most of the stories of victims we don’t even know about. A study that was conducted by the American Sociological Review in 19571. It stated that it was not the most accurate representation of the women because of the sample size and was biased in favour of underclassmen, and to the sorority women, but even in this small of a sample size, more than 50% of women stated that they had either been sexually assaulted or had an attempt of sexual assault against them. Proving that these acts were, and still are, happening everywhere. In 1972 the Title IX act was created under the Education Amendments in the United States of America2. It goes hand in hand with the Canadian Human Rights Act which was a law passed in 1977 with the goal to give equal opportunity to all individuals who man be victims of discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, and political or religious beliefs. These acts are in place so that there can be an avoidance of people in society doing these acts, but in reality it’s only hindering the ability of the survivors to move on with their life. These schools are violating the victims’ rights by not taking a more serious action towards the assault claim. In Carine Mardorossian article called Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered, she states, “In the late sixties and seventies, a second wave of women’s movement became the site of emergence of a pro-victim approach to rape in the public policy”3. Women for years have been trying to overcome this major obstacle of inequality, but it makes it worse to think they just want their equal rights to a law that is governed by the entire country. Yet this law still turns away the women that need it the most. Although you want to hope that this is an issue of the past, it is still very relevant and is happening today.
“Rape is like a football game (Annie), and if you look back on the game, what would you do different in that situation?”4. This is a direct statement made by one of the student counsellors at the University of North Carolina, after a student (Annie) had come to her asking for help with reporting a sexual assault claim. The number one reason to which young females that have been sexually assaulted don’t come forward with their complaint is because of the negative backlash that comes with filing for a rape. The first thing that will come out of the school boards mouth before you can file a report is: “Well how much had you had to drink?” “What were you wearing?” “Why would you leave your friends?” “What could you have done differently to prevent this?” The list goes on and on. Scared students come to these authority figures for help and guidance, and instead of the support they need they are given a list of things they did wrong. These young girls are continuously reminded that reporting this assault will ‘ruin’ this young man’s future, as if their life isn’t already ruined by the acts this man has done towards them. In Allen Ottens and Kathy Hotelling’s article Sexual Violence on Campus: Policies, Programs, and Perspectives they state, “In the Fall of 1990, a number of students at Brown University, frustrated with the lack of an effective disciplinary system for sexual assault cases, began writing the names of men on bathroom walls who they claimed had assaulted or sexually harassed them. The rape list gained national attention after invited the New York Times to send a reporter to the campus. The result was tremendous controversy and embarrassment for the school’s administration”5. It is also proven that “male athletes are a small percentage (less than 8%) of a university’s population, yet they make up 45% of campus rapes. And most of the culprits either et expelled after the final game of the season or post-graduation”4. Most reports given to the school aren’t fully sought out because the school doesn’t want to press to get involved with the crimes. They would rather avoid the girl’s complaints so that the reputation of the institution remains in tack. This concern isn’t just in America, Canada has problems with these universities and allegations as well. CBC states, “Next month, British Columbia will become the second province in Canada with mandatory sexual assault policies in place at its universities – a move that comes following years of claims that come allegations were mishandled by the province’s post-secondary institution”6. In 2016, 1000 Thompson Rivers University students took a health survey that asked about their experiences in the previous 12 months on sexual assaults. The results are as follows: 9.5% reported being sexually touched without their consent, 3.8% reported sexual penetration being attempted without their consent, 1.6% reported being sexually penetrated without their consent, 2.1% reported being in an intimate relationship that was sexually abusive, and a total of 8 students are at a greater risk of experiencing sexualized violence in the first 8 weeks of classes7. Sexual assaults, across the world, are a matter that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It is a serious issue that affects the lives of women every day of their life after these attacks. We need to stop hiding from the fact that these incidents are happening, we need to find justice and support for the victims of these crimes.
There are many ways that society can help the victims of these crimes, and move from a point that these are taboo topics to one that we can talk about them and learn from them. There are ways that we can prevent this assaults from happening, starting with education but not just education for the women but more for the men. Mardorossian analyzes a common phrase called birth rape. She writes in her book Framing the Rape Victim, ““Birth rape refers to the violating experiences labouring women incur in the hospital setting”2. She goes on to state that men all the time go those classes about parenting. They learn about what is going to happen to the females, and everything that the male can do to help and prevent outcomes not wanted. So if we consider childbirth a type of rape, due to it violating factor, and have classes on those types of issues but not the ones that aren’t planned? Women never leave their houses in the morning expecting to sexually assaulted, this events are not even normally planned by the offender, the decision is made it a moment of weakness. It is a proven fact that these men that are committing these actions are not the scary men hiding the bush, but it’s the people you know and the friends you’ve made. The men most likely to rape are the ones that believe you owe them something for their friendship you have made. The victims are always being blamed for these crimes, but what the culprit has done isn’t seen as a wrongdoing. We must show unity, there is power in groups. The campuses cannot stop the students from talking and showing support for fellow classmates.
These are public problems that affect not only everyone involved but everyone in society. When these assault charges are perused it impacts everyone, especially the victims and their families. Yet when these assaults are not brought forward it’s just the females that suffer in silence. We cannot let these young women believe they did something wrong when all they did was be themselves. No one deserves to live in fear every day. Whether it’s being ridiculed by classmates, judged by school administrators, or frightened by the thought they might run into their offender. Women on campuses everywhere deserve to feel safe and secure at any point in the day. Gender and sexuality is such an important to growing into the person you want to become, having that taken away destroys who you are as a human. It takes away a self-respect, privacy, self worth, energy, confidence and even intimacy. We as a society have to work together to begin a discussion on this unmentionable topic. We are the voice of the young women that have had theirs taken away.
Grigoriadis, Vanessa. Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, & Consent on Campus. Vol. 1, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2017. Accessed October 1, 2017
Huva, A. Sexualized Violence. Thompson Rivers University, 2017. Accessed November 14, 2017. http://tru.ca/sexual-violence.html
Kirkpatrick, Clifford, and Eugene Kanin. “Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus.” American Sociological Review 22, no. 1 (1957): 52-58. Accessed September 29, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2088765
Mardorossian, Carine M. Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered. Rutgers University Press, 2013. Accessed October 4, 2017.
Ottens, Allen J., and Hotelling, Kathy, eds. Sexual Violence on Campus: Policies, Programs, and Perspectives. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2000. Accessed October 6, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central.
The Hunting Ground. Directed by Kirby Dick. Produced by Amy Ziering. United States of America: Chain Camera Pictures, 2015. DVD. Accessed October 4, 2017.
Ward, L. New post-secondary sexual assault policies a start but fall short, experts say. CBC News Canada. 2017. Accessed November 8, 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-post-secondary-sexual-assault-policies-a-start-but-fall-short-experts-say-1.4078365