Trigger warning: sexual assault
In the last couple years, sexual assault on college campuses has been a topic launched into the national spotlight. Activists began speaking publicly about their ordeals, founding organizations like Know Your IX, creating campaigns like Carry that Weight and testifying before Congress. Their efforts have helped to chip away at the mountain of stigma associated with being a survivor of sexual assault. Despite years of activism, though, we are no closer to consensus on how to solve the problem.
This doesn’t mean that there are not solutions out there. Feminist campus groups, Women’s Centers, rape crisis centers and survivor-activists have been working tirelessly on proposals to combat sexual assault through awareness campaigns, adoption of new policies, educational outreach, among other interventions. Occasionally the government helps as well – the influential 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter clarified that sexual violence is a form of harassment prohibited by Title IX, leading to a flurry of investigations into universities mishandling sexual assault reports (136 were under investigation as of July) and providing the impetus for many schools to hire Title IX coordinators, establish Women’s Centers, provide survivors with accommodations and clarify their sexual misconduct policies.
All of this increased publicity and awareness has helped build strong allyship – individuals supporting sexual assault survivors even if they have not personally been assaulted. Allyship is critical to the destruction of systems and beliefs that both perpetrate and perpetuate sexual assault. However, effective allyship can be difficult. For instance, recent outrage regarding sexual assault has caused many people to become allies, but it has also driven well-intentioned but misguided reforms.
A case in point is the “Safe Campus Act,” a current Congressional bill that would, in short, require students who report instances of sexual assault to their universities to also report their cases to the police and prevent universities from acting unless students file the police reports. While this may not seem particularly problematic and maybe even helpful, survivors of sexual assault and many school administrators have decried the legislation as a guaranteed way to stop survivors from reporting and drastically limit schools’ ability and legal obligation to investigate reports of sexual assault. According to one of the panelists at a Congressional hearing held last Tuesday on the legislation, “If universities are mandated to report criminally, we know it’s going to have a chilling effect on people even getting to the very first resource to help.”
Survivors generally don’t report to the police and generally don’t want to report to the police (if you’re interested in why, check out Time Magazine’s “Why Victims of Rape in College Don’t Report to the Police”). Additionally, police are all too often vastly unprepared to deal with allegations of sexual assault. Not to mention that there are other intersectional issues relating to police interaction, especially for women of color. As the Washington Post recently reported, an eleven-year-old who reported sexual assault to the police twice ended up being convicted for lying. On Duke’s campus, I’ve heard numerous horror stories of women reporting incidents to the police only to be accused of lying, of dressing too provocatively or drinking too much. I myself never reported to the police because I was terrified of not being believed, especially because the men were prominent members of the community.
For the women who do report to the police, though, their rapists end up walking free 94 percent of the time.
Reporting sexual assault to the police is an exhausting ordeal that some women may choose, but we shouldn’t be forcing women to go to the police and live through more trauma. Sexual assault is one of the most dehumanizing, disempowering experiences a person can endure. Giving survivors the power to choose their course of redress, whatever course that may be, is a small but vital step in helping them along the path of recovery. Reporting to the police is one of many options that students can select, and it is presented if students go to their university to seek assistance. But if students learn that their university will force them to go to the police, they will stop coming. They’ll stop getting the mental health services, class accommodation and other services that universities are required to supply.
While well-intentioned, this bill falls into the category of failed, half-hearted attempts to “save” women from sexual assault even as survivors repeatedly argue that it won’t. Just like rape-prevention nail polish or penis-shredding condoms, this bill does nothing to prevent sexual assault and everything to make the experience more difficult for survivors.
Those who want to be allies in this movement and work effectively towards change need to work with survivors and not for survivors. That means, as a newcomer, spending time really trying to understand the experience of a survivor. It means reading up on Title IX, the Clery Act, and issues in intersectional feminism. For students on campus, and specifically at Duke, it means attending events at the Women’s Center, meeting with the Title IX coordinator, reading up on the Sexual Misconduct Policy, interacting with groups like the Women’s Collective, Develle Dish, Duke Support and more.
It means recognizing your status as an ally as something meant to bolster the voices of survivors, not overpower them.
When people, especially men, are confronted with the issue of sexual assault, many are rightfully angry. There’s a desire to fix what is a horrible situation. Many will cite their ideas to “fix” the problem as the first or the best. But too often they overlook the activism survivors and allies have already been deeply engaged in. Rather than working with survivors, poor allies will try to lead their own programs, often contrary to what survivors want and need. Or worse, they’ll put up a façade of cooperation when they really just want to pursue their own agenda.
Sexual assault is maddening. Let’s channel that anger towards the productive movements survivors have been leading rather than movements survivors have to spend time fighting.
Dana Raphael is a Trinity junior. Her column runs on alternate Mondays.
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