My first two years of college were spent at a state university. I lived on campus, and walked everywhere. The campus was gorgeous, and it felt like living in a dream. I loved my classes, I was meeting new people, and I had even reconnected with some youth group buddies. Many evenings, I would leave my room at 9:30 in order to go to Mass at 10:00. I would come out of my room into a hallway of women talking, playing with hamsters in balls and sometimes there would even be a guitar out, but always some music.
Occasionally, there would be a blurb in the student paper about a string of rapes on campus. I knew where the blue emergency lights were, so I gave it absolutely no thought. It was years before I acknowledged that walking across the less than well lit campus might not have been my best idea.
Sexual assault was not uncommon at the private college I attended either. I could list half a dozen stories off the top of my head where the women had been drinking and didn’t think it was “fair” to report the assault. I know of at least one incident where the women reported it to the administration to no avail, and at least one incident that most likely involved a woman being drugged and raped that was brushed off by the local law enforcement. By my senior year, I was feeling incredibly fortunate to have escaped a completed rape.
There are a few things we all need to know about sexual assault on college campuses:

1. In a study conducted by the CDC of 5,000 students attending over 100 US universities, 1 in 4 reported being forced into intercourse during her lifetime.

 

2. A typical academic year (not including school breaks) sees 3% of college women reporting surviving attempted or completed rape.

 

3. The National Crime Victim Survey reports that only approximately 30% of survivors report sexual assault to the police, and of that 30%, only 16% or so of offenders are prosecuted and see sentencing.

This information begs a few questions: What happens in cases that are not reported? What happens if the student reports the incident to someone on campus instead of law enforcement?
Perhaps sexual assault was not a part of your college experience. Thank God for that. However, I do not think that my experience, nor that of my college acquaintances is rare, unfortunately. Whether we know it or not, or want to admit it or not, rape is a problem for our kids. We have recently seen the ugliness play out center stage in a certain high school example of a party gone terribly wrong. So what do we do? How can we change these statistics for the better?
A few days ago, I came across this article about a proposed, bi-partisan bill that focuses on decreasing sexual assault on college campuses. I find the proposal to be a good start. However, ultimately ending sexual assault is in our hands. We need law enforcement and those in charge to take sexual assault seriously. We need citizens to stop turning a blind eye and to get involved. We need to stop blaming victims for their assaults. We need for rape to not be a joke at a party.
 
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