One in five women report being sexually assaulted while in college. That is a fact.
A recent Justice Department study confirmed that the number is one in five, again. Let’s say it all together now. One in five. Study after study after study have reached the same conclusion.
But numbers do little to capture the reality of the situation. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard “me too.” I know more women whose friends, sororities, SLGs, and families turned against them than those who were actually supported. I know of more cases of police officers laughing off women’s complaints than those who actually did their jobs.
I know more rapists currently enjoying their time at Duke than who have been expelled, suspended, removed from their athletic teams, or even found responsible. I’ve been at parties where I’ve been introduced to men I already knew as sexual assailants. I’ve had women share the same names with me over and over and over again. I’ve intervened in more attempted sexual assaults than the total number ever expelled from Duke for sexual misconduct (hint: only one person ever has been, and he’s suing the University for his diploma). That is the reality.
But yet for being such a widespread, systemic social disease, we still hear surprisingly little about sexual assault. If one in five college women were getting mugged, dying of cancer, dropping out of school, or losing limbs, we would hear day in and day out about the crisis facing American college women. Universities would be holding daily meetings; administrators would be pulling their hair out. If going to college meant you had a 20 percent chance of losing your arm, with another student wielding the saw, parents would be apoplectic. Every student would have to take an extensive saw safety course. But sexual assault and rape? Radio silence.
Part of the problem is that sexual assault often appears as an invisible wound. People outside of the circles who frequently discuss gender violence tend to never notice it. We don’t see one in five college women unable to function. There is no scarlet letter that magically appears on the foreheads of assailants or their victims.
At Duke, we see women running around doing amazing things. We don’t notice their weekly trips to the Women’s Center for counseling, or their weekend meetings with lawyers to build their case, or the parties they stop going to because their rapist is in that fraternity. We believe them when they say they’re sick but are really too mentally exhausted to get out of bed. We think nothing of it when a friend is a bit scatterbrained, not realizing their assailant was found not guilty yesterday. But when we do choose to pay attention, when we open our eyes to the crisis around us, the toll of assault is absolutely staggering.
Where do you even begin trying to combat something that is so pervasive? Well, every one of us can help by believing and supporting our friends if they tell us they were sexually assaulted. We can have conversations with our peers about consent (or direct them to the handy video comparing consent to drinking tea). We can step in when we see someone acting sexually aggressive, or trying to take a very intoxicated person to their room.
Duke is also required to take steps to make campus a safe space for learning, free from gender-based discrimination, thanks to federal legislation called Title IX. What does that mean? It means that if a student experiences sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, or rape, Duke is required to take action to help that survivor. That could be through counseling at the Women’s Center or CAPS; through residential and academic accommodations, like extensions on assignments, switching and relocating where you live; a process for filing a formal complaint that can result in disciplinary action; and much more. Failure to meet those obligations violates Title IX, and can result in federal investigation of the university (Duke just recently joined the list of 161 colleges and universities currently under investigation for violating Title IX).
If you have been the victim of any form of sexual misconduct, which ranges from sexual harassment to rape, you have rights at this university. You have the right to be free from sexual harassment in your higher education, and there are tons of resources out there to help you exercise your rights. Know Your IX is a great website with endless information on all that Title IX requires of universities. For more Duke-specific information on Title IX, you can contact Duke’s Title IX Coordinator, Howard Kallem. You can file a formal complaint against another student through the Office of Student Conduct by contacting Victoria Krebs, the Associate Dean of Students, Title IX Outreach & Response.
You can get free legal advice, assistance, and representation through the UNC law clinic, which the Women’s Center can help you set up. You can receive free counseling and academic accommodations through the Women’s Center and CAPS, which does not require you to make a formal report. You can meet other survivors and talk about how to make Duke a safer place for students through Duke Support, a student-run sexual assault survivor support group. You can always reach out to me if you want to talk about any of your options. There are resources for you here, and you will be believed.
Too often, I hear that women are “just dealing” with what happened to them or “just dealing” with a person who keeps harassing them. No one should have to “just deal” with that kind of harassment and pain. We should give our friends the support they need. We should know about the resources Duke has to offer in case survivors want the help. And Duke should be more forthcoming about what they’re going to do to stop the epidemic on our campus. We should stop waiting for the next study.
Dana Raphael is a Trinity junior. Her column runs on alternate Mondays.
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