“I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.” That is just a part of the sad and very true story of what happened to Emily Doe when she woke up in a hospital after a night out partying, and then being raped by then Stanford swimmer Brock Turner. “I don’t want my body”(Baker). That’s all Emily had to say after waking up in a hospital on January 18, 2015, and being told that the previous night she had been raped and found unconscious behind a dumpster by two strangers, with her dress lifted above her waist, underwear pulled to her ankles and her breasts out in the open with pines and dirt in her hair. But what’s even worse is that Emily is not the only one who has this story of rape in college. Emily is among many women in college who experience rape and sexual assault and are left feeling like they have “no power”, “no voice”, and are “defenseless”. They are people who believe that either they are living in a society where the justice system does not serve them or one that simply does not care for their safety and protection. They are a group of women who have to live in constant fear of being raped and not receiving the justice they deserve because the United States does not want to fight the issue of sexual harassment and sexual assault in universities.
Despite the argument that the government is already doing something to combat issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault on college campuses since the rates of sexual assault crimes are falling, there is still a number of things that the United States can do to combat issues of sexual harassment. The first thing that the United States can do to combat issues of sexual assault and harassment on college campuses is fix the flawed system in which sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention is taught in schools. Next, in order to fight against sexual assault, the United States should create a single working idea of what sexual harassment is and what sexual assault consists of within college universities by defining what consent is, followed by making victims of sexual assault and harassment feel safe by giving them a platform to come out and talk about their experience openly. Finally, the last thing that the United States can do to combat the issue of sexual assault and sexual harassment is follow what other countries are doing in their fight against sexual harassment and assault.
Some people may believe that the government is already doing enough to protect the victims of rape and sexual harassment since, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, RAINN, the overall number of rape in 2015 has gone down by 63% since 1993(RAINN). This argument is hard to refute since it is true. In 1993, there were over 700,000 cases of sexual assaults in the United States per year, while in 2015, there were about 321,500 cases of sexual assaults in the United States. It is a logical statistic to point out and use to argue that the US is already doing something about sexual assault. However, before sticking to that point, one needs to keep in mind that there are still over 321,500 people getting raped and assaulted. And of those 321,500 people, 90% of them are women and of that 90%, a majority of them are college women, ages 18-24 (RAINN). Women in college are getting targeted at a higher rate than any other person in the United States when it comes to rape, and it is a serious issue. The government needs to do more in protecting the safety of women in general when it comes to sexual assault and sexual harassment, but most importantly, they need to prioritize the safety of these women in college if they truly want to prove that they are doing something to fight the issue.
The first thing that the United States has to do in order to combat the issues of sexual assault and sexual harassment on college campuses is fix the flawed system in which sexual assault and sexual harassment awareness and prevention is taught on college campuses. The way that college students are being taught sexual harassment is very ineffective and can even be looked at as being lazy. Universities are forced under certain federal law, such as the 2013 Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, to provide training for sexual violence to staff and incoming students. Typically, this training consists of video presentations, surveys, and online quizzes of scenarios of sexual harassment and sexual assault. This approach to teaching sexual violence prevention, at first glance, seems to be very effective because it requires all teachers and students to educate themselves on sexual harassment and sexual assault before they enter the school for the new semester or year. However, it is not an effective way of teaching sexual violence prevention because according to the professor of psychology at Nevada University Rory Newlands, “new students do not have relevant contextual knowledge of the institution and campus social culture to be able to effectively apply and use the training they receive” (Newlands). This idea is furthered by the statistic that 50% of college sexual assaults occur during the “red zone”, which is the first six weeks of school between August and November (RAINN). The current way of teaching sexual assault prevention in universities include long, boring, and trivial videos and presentations that preaching the same “sexual harassment and sexual assault is bad” message to an incoming group of freshmen and transfer students. Personally, as a college freshman, I can attest to this claim. Before being able to take classes, or even practice for the soccer team, I, along with many other students, needed to undergo the Hunter College sexual assault prevention training, which was called SPARC. I had no interest in actually paying attention to the information because I, along with my peers, believed that it was boring and unnecessary to be going to school. I see it only as an obstacle keeping me from taking classes, so I skip through the training learning absolutely nothing about sexual harassment and assault prevention in the process. This style of teaching sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention is ineffective because of the fact that they are teaching it to an audience that is new to college and don’t actually understand the importance of what they are learning and how to apply it to their own lives. Colleges are being legally forced to show these types of prevention videos to undergraduate freshmen often times as a requirement to enroll in classes and as a result, they get students who actually remain ignorant on the topic. The system of teaching sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention fails those that its meant for and by doing so, it demonstrates that the current system in place now is flawed.
However, just because the system in which school teach sexual harassment and assault prevention is flawed doesn’t mean nothing can be done to fix this issue. The way to fix this flawed system currently in place in universities is to conduct various research about the sexual assault and sexual harassment tendencies in universities and use the data gathered in the research to better the sexual assault policies of the university, or in simple terms, leveraging data. If colleges adopt this method of bettering and fixing the current system they have in place at, they could theoretically lower the rates in which sexual violence’s occur. By analyzing the data that colleges already have on the sexual violence tendencies of their universities, colleges can create stronger policies of how they deal with issues of sexual assaults and sexual harassments and, thereby, find a better way to reach out to the incoming freshmen in their universities. According to Lauren LB Klein, “evaluations of [college sexual assault] prevention and intervention programs provide critical data regarding ‘best practices’ for preventing CSA and supporting CSA survivors” (Klein et al). The way to fix this flawed way of teaching sexual harassment and assault is by gathering the necessary information through surveys, online quizzes, video presentations, reflections, sexual assault and sexual harassment tendencies, and intervention research. They offer a way to find out which policies are most effective to their students and staff thereby helping universities better their own flawed programs in place. Universities are required to keep their student’s safe, so by fixing this way sexual assault prevention is taught in their schools, they will better improve the safety of their students.
Another way the United States can combat the issue of sexual assaults and sexual harassment on college campuses is by creating a single perception of sexual harassment within universities by defining what consists of sexual harassment and sexual assault. The reason why finding a solution to sexual assault and sexual harassment in colleges are so difficult is mainly because everyone has a different perception of what sexual assault and harassment is and specifically what consent consists of. Many people have a different perception of what may consist as sexual harassment and sexual assault and the fact that everyone has a different perspective of sexual harassment can be a cause for why sexual harassment and even sexual assault is so prevalent in American universities. The fact that, as Chicago Tribune writer Alison Bowen stated in her article discussing a study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, “men often conflated their perception of a woman’s sexual desire with her consent for intimacy with them personally” is a problem of perception (Bowen). What Bowen is saying about the journals finding is that men often get confused when it comes to sexual harassment and sexual assault especially when giving consent. The Journal of Interpersonal’s study explains that men often times confuse the idea of a woman wanting to have sex with the idea of them giving consent and this is a problem. Men in college are confused as to what consent consist of and because of this they all have a different idea of consent and, either intentionally or accidently, end up becoming rapists. So in order for college campuses to create a single perception of sexual harassment and sexual assault, they first need to unconfused college men by defining what consent is.
Defining what consent is and what it means in college and in life in general is a good way for colleges to fix the problem of sexual harassment and assault. According to the transcript of Emily Doe’s speech to her rapist Brock Turner, posted on by Buzzfeed by reporter Katie J.M Baker, “the night after it happened, he said he thought I liked it because I rubbed his back. A back rub.” Ms. Doe goes on to say that Brock in his interview with police said that he “never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us even speaking, a back rub” (Baker). Brock Turner is one of the many men who do not understand what classifies as consent and, because of this, their line for what consists of sexual harassment and sexual harassment is blurred, which ultimately is what makes them act in ways that consist of sexual assault. Defining consent wouldn’t be too hard, just ask the 2014 California state senator Kevin de León and California Senate president pro tempore Hannah-Beth Jackson, who in 2014 made the nation’s first affirmative consent law SB 967. The law itself, as León and Jackson explain, is a law that redefines consent from being a “no mean no” matter to being a “yes means yes” matter (de León, Jackson). To reiterate, the California bill is changing the narrative of consent from being one where it is the victim’s responsibility to say no to express a disinterest towards sex towards being a matter that requires the victim to clearly say yes for interest in sex. California through this bill, as the authors say in their article in the Washington Post about why they made it, has “[removed] all ambiguity for both parties” (León, Jackson). By changing the definition of consent from being “no means no” to being “yes means yes”, California is taking steps to protect women by eliminating the ambiguity and the confusion when it comes to consent. Defining consent is something that needs to be done in all states and in all universities to ensure the protection of college women.
To solve this issue, each college and university in the United States needs to come up with a single perception of what consists of sexual harassment and sexual assault. By coming up with a single conception of sexual assault, the United States and all of its campuses can better protect the female victims by lowering the rates of campus sexual assault. By curing all confusion and ambiguity that comes with sexual assault, campuses can create a unified policy which can, in effect, better prosecute violators of those policies and ultimately better protect the victims of such cases.
The third way in which the United States can combat the issue of sexual assault on college campuses is by making victims feel more safe and comfortable to come out and speak out against their perpetrators. Many women in the United States and especially in college for some reason do not report crimes of sexual harassment and sexual assault, especially rape. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, rape is the most under reported crime with 63% of all rapes going unreported and of those 63% of unreported rapes, 90% of college campus rapes go unreported (NSVRC). Less and less people are reporting acts of sexual violence on college campuses. A lot of it has to do with the public perception of a rapist as being a random person who jumps out of no where and attacks victims, when in all reality most cases of rapes are from someone the victim already knows. According to the U.S Department of Justice’s 2005 National Crime Victimization Study, “approximately 2/3 of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.73% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger [and] 38% of rapist are a friend or acquaintance”(Department of Justice). These statistic’s prove to show that the public view of rapists are often times wrong and may be part of the problem. Most rapes occur not from a stranger, but someone the victim already knows. Because the perpetrator is someone the victim already knows, this can make the victim somewhat hesitant to report the conflict since they may have a personal relationship with the perpetrator. This makes the victim feel like they need to be loyal to them and try not to get them in trouble. But this is not the only reason why rape crime reports are so low.
A lot of the time people are not reporting these cases because they feel unsafe and like they do not have a platform to speak out against their perpetrators. They feel trapped in a system where they feel like doesn’t care about them and their experiences with rape. But how could you blame them when only 6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators of rape end up convicted and in prison (RAINN)? People feel unsafe on college campuses and as a result feel like they don’t have a voice to discuss their experiences because they are stuck in a system where their voices often go unheard. Victims of rape are living in a society where they are not receiving any justice for what is happening to them and that is unfair.
The United States in order to fix this issue needs to provide victims with a platform where they can address their experiences with full confidence that the justice system in and out of college campuses will hear out their stories and take the right measures to prosecute perpetrators. But in order to do this, the United States needs to come up with stronger legislation that can arrest perpetrators of sexual assault. Legislation similar to that of other countries.
The fourth and final way the United States can combat the issue of sexual assault on college campuses is by following the steps of other countries and creating stronger laws and legislation that punished violators, which will ultimately push more women to come out and address perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment. Alissa J. Rubin, in her New York Times article “France’s New Law Against Sexist Catcalls Gets Its First Conviction” discusses the positive steps France is taking towards sexual assault as the city of Paris, after creating a law that makes verbal sexual harassment illegal, convicts its first person for the verbal sexual assault of a 21 year old woman, showing progress for sexual assault at a time that demands new laws protecting the rights of women. The French laws, as Rubin so eloquently puts it, are pushing for more women to voice out their frustration and call out harassers (Rubin 2), ultimately stopping the problem at its root. By pushing women to call out people who verbally harass them, the city of Paris and the entire French country is preventing further acts of sexual assault to take place, surely proving that the problem of verbal sexual assault is one that needs to be stopped first in order to solve bigger issues of sexual assault.
By starting with fining verbal sexual assault and enforcing these verbal sexual assault laws, the French government is taking steps to further eliminate the greater issue of sexual assault and rape. They are tackling this issue one step at a time and it shows great promise for the way we as a society view rape and most importantly it shows great promise for the future of the hardworking women in this world. The U.S and other countries should follow this example.
The story of Emily Doe and her rape by Stanford rapist Brock Turner ends in a typically tragic American way, with the perpetrator being innocent of rape and walking away free. Brock Turner is one of over 90% of sexual assault perpetrators that get favored by the U.S justice system and get to walk away practically unharmed by his actions. Sexual assault and sexual harassment is a very complicated topic and should be treated like one. The solutions offered in this paper are just a few of the many possible solutions that can potentially fix the problem, they are not the only solutions of course, but it’s a start. This is something that needs to change and the only way to initiate the change is to get people to start thinking of solutions to this problem. Emily Doe’s story, although it is a sad demonstration of justice for women in this country, should be looked at as motivation for Americans everywhere to potentially put an end to college sexual assault and harassment.
Works Cited:
Baker, Katie J.M. “Here’s The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read To Her Attacker.” BuzzFeed News, BuzzFeed News, 9 Nov. 2018, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra.
Bowen, Alison. “College Men and Consent: How the Wrong Perception Can Lead to Sexual Misconduct.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 12 Dec. 2017, www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/sc-fam-college-male-students-consent-1226-story.html.
“Campus Sexual Violence Statistics.” RAINN | The Nation’s Largest Anti-Sexual Violence Organization, www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence.
De León, Kevin, and Hannah-Beth Jackson. “‘Why We Made ‘Yes Means Yes’ California Laws.” Washingtonpost.com, 13 Oct. 2015.
“Get Statistics.” Sexual Assault Statistics | National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), www.nsvrc.org/statistics.
Klein, Lauren LB. “Leveraging Data to Strengthen Campus Sexual Assault Policies .” Databases Login | Hunter College Libraries, 5 Sept. 2018, journals-sagepub-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/doi/10.1177/0886260518798351.
Newlands, Rory. “A Critical Review of Sexual Violence Prevention on College Campuses.” Acta Psychopathologica, IMedPub, 2 Apr. 2016, psychopathology.imedpub.com/a-critical-review-of-sexual-violence-prevention-on-college-campuses.php?aid=9087#11.
“Sexual Assault Statistics .” Women’s Center Youth and Family Services, www.womenscenteryfs.org/index.php/get-info/4-sexual-assault/10-sexual-assault-statistics.
Rubin, Alissa J. “France’s New Law Against Sexist Catcalls Gets Its First Conviction”
New York Times, 27, Sept. 2018.
Hunter College Writes 