On Friday, convicted rapist Brock Turner was released from jail after serving only three months of his six-month sentence. His release was accompanied by scores of articles slamming his white privilege for such a light sentence, a particularly amusing article celebrating the look of disgust on an officer’s face as Turner walked past her, and the sheriff expressing her wish for Turner to remain behind bars.
Turner’s case, while receiving enormous media attention, isn’t unique in any particular way from the average college sexual assault other than the fact that he was actually arrested and convicted. The vast majority of cases aren’t even reported; of the ones reported a fraction actually make it to trial, a fraction of those actually result in a criminal conviction, and a fraction of those actually go to prison. Out of 1,000 rapes, 994 perpetrators will walk free.
When crimes of sexual violence receive intense media coverage it can spur a lot of positive change. People realize that rape is indeed a crime that exists in their backyard. Students realize rapists are tangible beings who exist on college campuses. Universities may be more inclined to adopt better policies and procedures to handle complaints of sexual violence. Victims of sexual violence may feel more compelled to come forward to share their stories.
Students whose lives haven’t already been scorched by the slow burn of sexual violence can often feel intense horror, sadness and distress when hearing about the kinds of crimes that occur on their campuses and largely go unreported. The idea that your wonderful university may be much darker than you ever believed is a form of trauma in and of itself.
Being Duke students, when we see a problem in the world, we like to try to fix it. If that means raising money or meeting with the administration or starting a new student organization, if a Duke student thinks it’s broken, hell or high water一they will try to fix it.
When this mentality is applied to sexual assault prevention, however, it can sometimes do more harm than good.
I can’t tell you the number of students I have talked to who, in their very justified rage about the problem of sexual assault on college campuses, insist indignantly that we need to “start the conversation” at Duke. As if the conversation hadn’t already started. It did, a long time ago, before any of us were even here.
The conversation on Duke’s campus about sexual assault prevention isn’t broken. The conversation forever and always can use more voices and perspectives about how our campus can do better and be better for victims and potential victims of sexual assault, but it’s difficult for many to add their voices to the conversation when they may not even recognize that the conversation exists.
I thought I would use this space to describe some of the many initiatives that voices within the conversation of sexual assault prevention at Duke are working on and have accomplished. For students who are interested in sexual assault prevention, I hope this serves as a guide of how to get involved. For the students who are thinking of starting their own initiatives but who haven’t spent any time working with the groups currently in existence, I hope this serves as encouragement to lend your voice to the voices already in the conversation instead of diverting efforts away from that conversation, however noble your intentions.
The Duke Women’s Center provides counseling services for victims of sexual violence and can assist students who choose to pursue investigations with the university. They can assist students in obtaining academic and housing accommodations, whether or not the student decides to pursue a formal investigation. The Women’s Center runs many incredible prevention initiatives, including PACT (Prevent Act Challenge Teach), which is a bystander intervention training program where students learn about gender violence, consent, and how to safely intervene in problematic situations. If you are interested in working on issues of preventing sexual violence, PACT training is the minimum you should be doing to prepare yourself.
In addition to PACT training, the Women’s Center also runs trainings called “Let’s Talk Consent,” “50 Shades of…An Unhealthy Relationship” and organizes numerous talks and events centered on sexual violence prevention. You can sign up for the different trainings on the Women’s Center’s website. The Center also has an incredible staff—Director Stephanie Helms Pickett, Sheila Broderick, Krystal George, Bibi Gnagno and Tuania Wright—who are all fundamental to aiding survivors and preventing sexual assault here at Duke. The Women’s Center staff has been instrumental in ensuring that incoming first-year students are trained on Title IX, consent and sexual assault through sessions during orientation.
The Duke Administration runs a task force on sexual assault prevention that generally meets monthly to talk about current issues on campus such as the creation of a campus climate survey, how to increase participation in training programs, and potential changes to Duke’s sexual misconduct policy. Dr. Larry Moneta, Vice President for Student Affairs, has devoted significant time and energy to ensure that student voices are heard on this task force. Victoria Krebs, Assistant Dean in the Office of Student Conduct, and Howard Kallem, Duke’s Title IX director, work on reported cases of sexual violence and on ensuring Duke complies with federal law on Title IX, respectively.
There are numerous student organizations on campus working to combat sexual assault. I founded one of these organizations, Duke Support, as a first-year. Duke Support is a support and advocacy organization for survivors of sexual violence. Survivors come together to process and talk about what they have experienced and we practice healing through mutual support. We have worked closely with Dr. Moneta on the administration’s task force.
We Are Here Duke is an advocacy organization to prevent sexual assault at Duke. Both survivors and allies are welcome to participate in designing activist projects to raise consciousness about sexual assault on campus. Last year the organization created a vision wall that posed the question: What would our world look like without sexual violence? There were hundreds of responses.
Develle Dish is an online feminist blog at Duke that also runs the Duke Breaking Out campaign. Duke Breaking Out is a photography campaign where survivors of sexual violence are photographed holding posters that illustrate their stories of survivorship. The posters usually contain quotes from perpetrators, family/friends, or describe the victims’ feelings about the situation. After the photographs were exhibited in the Bryan Center last spring, they were posted online and received more than 4 million views and over 130,000 shares. As a result of that success, some students began coordinating Breaking Out as a national campaign where people from all over the world can share and submit their stories. Develle Dish and Duke Support plan on coordinating Duke Breaking Out again this fall.
Duke Student Government has also worked extensively on preventing sexual violence, including holding events like hosting the founders of the organization Know Your IX and hosting a screening of the Hunting Ground. The Duke Men’s Project works to educate about how toxic masculinity feeds violence. Duke also has chapters of It’s On Us, the White House initiative on sexual assault prevention, and He for She, the UN’s initiative. That’s not to mention organizations like Duke Hollaback and more.
The conversation at Duke is alive and well. It doesn’t need to be started, but it very much needs more people to join it. We have an incredible amount of work to do that will only be accomplished if more people choose to step forward. The doors for every one of these organizations are wide open to new members and new ideas.
Start by becoming a part of one or many of these groups instead of trying to cut out your own door, neglecting all of the ones that are sitting wide open and waiting. Spend the time learning, really learning, what Duke is already doing before you try to start your own initiative. Once you’re involved and if you still see an area lacking, go ahead with a new initiative. At that point you will already be equipped with the tools, knowledge and institutional background needed to be successful. That’s what makes lasting change.
Dana Raphael is a Trinity senior. Her column, “problematic people doing problematic things,” runs on alternate Mondays.
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