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What schools don’t tell you about campus sexual assault

Published: April 6, 2016 5:46am EDT

This article was written by Andrea Curcio, a Georgia State University College of Law professor. She has researched campus sexual assaults and wrote this article in The Conversation. (Published: April 6, 2016 5:46am EDT.) The following is a segment of her article.

"Throughout the summer before my daughter left for college, I repeatedly warned her: never put a glass down at a party; use the buddy system when going to parties; and never go upstairs at a fraternity party.

Instead, what I should have told her is: the place you are most likely to be assaulted is in your dorm; you are most vulnerable the first weeks of the semester; and your attacker is most likely to be a friend or acquaintance.

In the past couple of years, much has been written about the high rate of sexual assaults on college campuses. What no one seems to be talking about is that most assaults occur in the dorms.

Vulnerable freshman year

A 2015 study found over 20 percent of all women surveyed experienced unwanted sexual contact while attending college. This confirmed earlier findings from a survey conducted between 2005 to 2007, in which one in five women reported being sexually assaulted since entering college.

The most vulnerable time is the first two months of the freshman year. In fact, to symbolize the danger, the first few months of the fall freshman semester are now commonly called the sexual assault "red zone."

Most likely an attacker will be a friend or acquaintance. A study conducted by the National Institute of Justice, the research wing of the U.S. Department of Justice, found that 90 percent of college sexual assault victims knew their assailant.

The majority of assaults happen when one or both parties have consumed alcohol. Parents and students usually associate alcohol use with parties, and particularly fraternity parties. Rarely is the connection made about what happens when a student returns to the dorm after those parties.

Schools’ legal reporting obligation

Colleges and universities that receive federal funding (which is virtually all schools) are required under the Clery Act to compile and publish an annual report on the nature, date, time and place of crimes occurring on and off campus. On-campus crime reports must indicate whether the crime occurred in on-campus residential housing.

It is likely that campuses underreport sexual assault victims. Wolfram Burner, CC BY-NC

Rapes and “fondlings” are among the crimes that must be reported. Fondlings are defined as forcible and/or nonconsensual touching for sexual gratification. Nonconsensual situations include those in which the victim is incapacitated and thus unable to consent.

It is quite likely that the Clery Act reports significantly underrepresent the number of campus sexual assaults. As the table below shows, in 2014, the combined total Clery Act reports from all U.S. colleges and universities was 4,971 reported rapes and 2,521 reported fondlings.
Even if the data underreport the total number of sexual assaults, what they do show is where assaults happen.

Where campus sexual assaults happen
Here’s what national Clery Act data show:

In 2014, 3,658 out of 4,971 (74 percent) of all reported rapes and 1,236 out of 2,521 (49 percent) of all reported fondlings occurred in on-campus residential housing. When looking only at on-campus occurrences, as opposed to the total of on- and off-campus occurrences, the percentages are even higher. Approximately 82 percent of all reported on-campus rapes (3,658 out of 4,464) and 53 percent of all reported on-campus fondlings (1,236 out of 2,330) occurred in campus housing.

These data are consistent with Clery Act reports from earlier years, which also show the majority of sexual assaults occurring in campus residential housing.

On-campus residential housing includes dorms, other student residences and fraternity and sorority houses owned or controlled by the university or located on university property. Under the Clery Act, schools do not need to distinguish between fraternity houses and dorms when reporting where sexual assaults happened.

However, a 10-year study looked at rapes and sexual assaults between 2001 and 2011 occurring on Massachusetts’ college and university campuses – including dorms, apartments and fraternity houses. The study found that 81 percent of all reported rapes and assaults occurred in the dorms, 9 percent occurred in houses or apartments and only 4 percent occurred in fraternity houses."

Sourced from:
The Conversation
Published: April 6, 2016 5:46am EDT


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