Culture of Silence

The Center for Public Integrity has released a report about Sexual Assault on College Campuses.. The report has many details, but the overarching ideas are:

• “95 percent of students who are sexually victimized do not report to police or campus officials”
• Students are subject to a disciplinary code which is confusing and not transparent.
• There is a “a culture of silence around sexual assault,” in which college administrators subtly discourage students from reporting assault and rape, however, administrations insist that there is no such discouragement.
• Those who do report “described encountering processes that seemed intimidating, unsympathetic, or unlikely to result in punishment for the accused students.”
• Some schools offer “mediation,” which should NEVER be used in sexual assault cases.
• Students pursuing justice through the campus administration are often subject to “gag orders,” and are required to not disclose anything about the procedures or outcomes

To give some perspective on how this affects students:

Few of the roughly 8,000 students at SUNY New Paltz have admitted an interest in pursuing disciplinary proceedings in sex offenses, according to statistics the school provided to the Center. Since 1998, only six students have reported a sexual assault to the office responsible for initiating those proceedings. Of those, three cases resulted in a campus hearing. Just one punishment has resulted from a sexual assault case — an expulsion in 2002.

From the Justice Department-funded study, a college the size of SUNY New Paltz could estimate that more than 1,700 of its female students were victims of rape or attempted rape in that 11-year period.

Sadly, there are lives at stake with this issue. One student committed suicide after her school refused to investigate her allegations of sexual assault and rape, and the police did little in their investigation.

How many more women have to be victimized before things stop? How many women ARE victimized, and then choose to not report it to the police or campus authorities, just to avoid being victimized again?