Campus Crimes: Rape and Sexual Assaults on College Campuses

Incoming college students from all around the world await the new opportunities, everlasting friendships and parental free-living conditions that they will receive at their new campus. However, what is not included in the college brochures and websites is the amount of campus rape experiences women and men have experienced throughout their years. Reports of rape and sexual assaults on college campuses have soared over the past fifteen years, according to a new federal study. According to RAINN Campus Sexual Violence: Statistics, “studies have shown that 11.2% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation (among all graduate and undergraduate students).” Sadly, most college students that were victims of sexual violence decide not to disclose it to law enforcement. As a result, campus rape prevention programs enforced by either government or by organizations have begun to be put into effect across all universities. Even the most prestigious schools as in Ivy League institutions in the past have proven to be ineffective in showing concern in providing justice for campus rape victims. According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, Harvard acquired more reports of on-campus rape than any other college in Massachusetts in 2014. Hence, students like Emma Sulkowicz decided to take matters into their own hands. In her example, she protests by carrying a fifty-pound mattress for nine months against those who have poorly handled the case in which the Vanderbilt University football players raped a girl taking advantage of her unconsciousness. The voices of students like Sulkowicz were so empowered, strong, and loud that the government and more high profile organizations had to listen, thus developing the idea of enforcing campus rape prevention programs in colleges and universities all across the world.

Many schools have aimed on implementing training and awareness programs on campus for students and staff with thousands of dollars in funding from federal grant programs in the same year since the Obama administration strengthened its concern for institutions to prevent and react to sexual assault. Their objective is to take action that can impede unacceptable behavior before it becomes assaultive. In addition to that, the training and programs aid women to be able to determine uncertainty from their companions and control emotional obstacles when comprehending the danger. A record depicts that twenty percent of women that are university students have experienced sexual assault, without prevention programs as mentioned in a New York Times review of prevalence studies. The high twenty percentage of sexual assaults occurring on the grounds of college campuses portrays how crucial it is to keep prevention programs running for better results.

The real question is if these campus rape prevention programs and organizations are actually having an impact on the rape rates on campus taking into account the thousands and even millions of dollar spent. Specific rape encounters have occurred outside of campuses while others have occurred because of the student’s lack of awareness of the situation due to alcohol consumption which cannot be solved by spending money on improving the security. A twenty-three million dollar investment into campus sexual assault prevention and policies has been declared by the province of Quebec. Martin Contarino, a research assistant at Martin center analyzes how rape is far beyond the influence of campus administrators to solve and the immense amount of money spent has not proven as advantageous as it should have.The unnecessary spending on campus security has been pointless in curbing the most critical safety issues, as in influenced assault and sexual violence, not shockingly. These crimes branch out mainly from social issues beyond the supervision of administrators has not prevented campuses from wasting hundreds of millions of dollars every year on advanced security systems, cops, and highly trained employees. It is approximated that by 2018 campus security spending will surpass four hundred million a year.

Institutions have spent more money on their security when they should have spent it on programs that help the students in more risky situations. Tovia Smith, the author of Curbing Sexual Assault Becomes Big Business On Campus discusses the amount of money spent on two specific programs one called Bringing in the Bystander that is lead by Caroline Leyva. Bringing in the Bystander can be executed as a ninety-minute session or as more respective sessions which costs around $1,950 in total. Relying on their size, many academies spend between about $20,000 a year. Out of the hundreds and thousands of campus rape prevention programs in the world, only a few have real solid evidence that has claimed to be proven successful. Are these programs and sessions worth the amount of money spent and/or can we come up with the more favorable solution to such a controversial issue? Regardless of the amount of money spent, those few campus rape prevention programs such as Canadian rape prevention sessions, Enhanced Assess Acknowledge Act program, and Green Dot program have all proven to decrease rape experiences.

Published by the The New England Journal of Medicine, a trial done at three Canadian campuses by first-year students where they attended classes on acknowledging self-defense, interpreting confidential sexual barriers, and evaluating risk. In contract with nearly ten percent among 442 women in a control group who were given a blunt information session, the risk of rape for 451 women that were appointed to the program was about five percent. The possibility of attempted rape was even lessened to 3.4 percent among women who obtained the training, in comparison to the 9.3 percent among those who did not.

The Enhanced Assess Acknowledge Act, a sexual assault resistance program is developed for women in their first year of college since that's when the risk of sexual assault is the highest. Research studied convey that women who appeared at the sessions were forty-six percent less likely to encounter rape and sixty-three percent less inclined to experience any forms of sexual assault in the next year. Women learned to recognize the risk in male’s conduct and their courage in maintaining their rights. Additionally, they understood how using verbal and physical strategies for defending themselves is a useful tactic. When students are trained and given classes pertaining to rape adequately they become more mindful of how serious the issue is and how applying what they have learned will come in handy. According to Sexual Violence: Prevention Strategies, “Green Dot is a bystander-based prevention program designed to increase positive bystander behavior, change social norms, and reduce sexual and other forms of interpersonal violence perpetration and victimization.” A review discovered that Green Dot was correlated with cutbacks in undesirable stalking, dating violence victimization, and sexual harassment on universities implementing the program in contrast to two campuses without the intervention. The study demonstrates how the bystander-based prevention programs have reduced the rates of stalking and dating violence victimization along with sexual harassment amongst the young adults proven to be more convenient. Altering school policies and attending protests should not be the approaches being taken to address campus rape while more promising strategies are available as in programs and classes.

Similarly to the Canadian rape prevention classes, EAAA programs, and the Green Dot programs, there are many programs, sessions, and classes that have decreased the number of people raped on campus. Furthermore, encouraging more colleges and universities to take these programs into consideration. No campus would want their incoming students to be frightened or discouraged from attending their school solely because of their sexual harassment rates. The thousands of dollars spent on the programs will worth it in the end if it restrains at least one individual from getting raped.