BY MARISSA CASTANOS
Trigger Warning: This article contains sensitive subject matter relating to sexual assault and rape.
Getting accepted to a university is one of the best feelings any young man or woman wanting to further his or her education can feel. Connecting with your roommate, deciding how you’ll decorate your room, and packing up and saying goodbye to the life you have known and the parents who have supported you can be overwhelming and exciting all at the same time. However, with the new excitement that goes along with moving onto campus, come the harsh realities of what can happen on these campuses.
According to an article posted by The New York Times in 2015, “more than one-fourth of undergraduate women at a large group of leading universities said they had been sexually assaulted by force when they were incapacitated.”
Sexual assault on college campuses is happening all across the country, but it is a topic that is kept hush hush. Is this due to the school wanting to protect their reputation or women not coming forward and telling someone about their assault? These are the issues that are discussed in “The Hunting Ground”, a film that was shown on FHSU’s campus Thursday evening and was presented by the Women’s Leadership Project on campus. ”The Hunting Ground” is described as an expose of rape crimes on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families.
The movie opens with clips of young students being accepted to their dream schools, packing their things, and their parents dropping them off. Then, Annie Clark, a subject of the film, appears on the screen and talks about how she was assaulted before her classes for the semester had even begun. Not only does Clark share her story, but so do numerous other girls who are attending well-known schools across the United States.
These schools include UNC-Chapel Hill, UC-Berkeley, Arizona State, and even Harvard. These young women were assaulted and reached out to the heads of their universities in hopes of getting their assailant expelled from the school. Unfortunately, the only people the universities tried to keep safe were the perpetrators. These universities were trying to maintain the image they had been advertising for years upon years. Imagine what a rape scandal could do to a school as highly respected as Harvard.
In another clip in the movie, different statistics from college campuses were shown briefly on the screen, they displayed the number of sexual assault cases that had been reported to the school, and the number of repercussions that took place for the accused; these numbers were devastating.
From 2009 to 2013 at Harvard University, there were 135 reported sexual assaults, with 10 reported suspensions. At the University of California Berkeley from 2008-2013, 78 reported sexual assaults, with 3 expulsions. At Dartmouth from 2002-2013, 155 reported sexual assaults, with 3 expulsions. At Stanford University from 1996-2013, 259 reported sexual assaults, with 1 expulsion. At the University of North Carolina from 2001-2013, 136 reported sexual assaults, with no expulsions. Likewise, from 1998-2013 at the University of Virginia, 205 reported sexual assaults took place, with zero expulsions. Ironically, in that time frame, 183 students were expelled from UVA for cheating and other honor board violations.
These numbers are drastically different, but why is that? The answer lies in the fact that these schools appear to be valuing their reputation over the safety of their students Not only is there a problem with colleges not addressing the assaults in the first place, but they are also not taking preventative steps to keep these young men and women safe from assaulters. In the instance of one college taking this preventive action, it appeared to backfire.
Wesleyan University in Connecticut took action to warn parents and students in the spring of a fraternity that was infamous for their sexual assaults. The fraternity members and even their parents had such a negative reaction to this letter being sent out that the university did not do it again for the next year of freshman coming onto campus. Not even three months into the fall semester and a young woman was raped in the frat house.
Universities are complicit with frat houses because the schools have more to benefit from the fraternities than the fraternities have to benefit from the university. According to “The Hunting Ground,” “one out of every eight college students living on campus lives in greek housing, that’s a tremendous amount of housing stock the colleges don’t have to pay for or supervise.”
Universities are accepting of fraternities because they help to build a strong alumni connection. The film shows a statistic that in 2013, nearly 60 percent of donations of more than 100 million dollars made to universities came from fraternity alumni. These universities are not going to throw away more than half of their funding by not associating with fraternities.
The Women’s Leadership Project did an excellent job of choosing a film to show to students about sexual assault on college campuses. The movie can be found on Netflix and is a powerful documentary that anyone, but specifically college students, should take the time to view. If you become a victim of sexual assault, seek help immediately. Don’t feel guilt or self-blame for what happened. The Kelly Center, found in Picken Hall room 111, is open from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Kelly Center provides counseling for Fort Hays students and faculty. The most important thing to do when an assault happens is to speak up and to not be silent.
The Women’s Leadership Program will also be holding a Silent No More Walk on the Quad to educate students on the red flag warnings of an abusive relationship. The walk will take place on Monday, October 2nd at 3:30 p.m.
This article is the first of a series of pieces Tiger Media Network will run investigating and examining the effects of sexual assaults on campuses across the country and here at FHSU.