Story at a glance
- A large number of reported sexual assaults on college campuses this year has captured the attention of students, who are demanding accountability from perpetrators and their universities.
- More than 300 protests around sexual assault on college and high school campuses have already taken place nationwide, according to Tracey Vitchers, the executive director of It’s On Us.
- Protests among high school students are becoming more common, Vitchers said, most likely because this generation of young students are more exposed to media addressing sexual violence.
Reported sexual assaults on college campuses this year appear to be cropping up en masse.
Researchers say it’s the product of a confluence of both freshmen and sophomore students — whose first-year experience was derailed by remote learning and stringent social distancing protocols — setting foot on college campuses for the first time, effectively doubling the most vulnerable population in the “red zone,” when campus sexual assaults are mostly likely to occur.
Comprehensive statistics are not yet available for this year, but a noticeable spike in reporting has sparked outrage among students on college — and high school — campuses, spurring more than 300 protests nationwide since the beginning of the school year, Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, an Obama-era initiative combating campus sexual assault, told Changing America.
But protests this year look a bit different compared to years prior, when on-campus demonstrations mostly advocated for better survivor resources and Title IX protections.
“What I’ve been intrigued by is the messaging of the protests in particular,” Vitchers said. “They’re asking for accountability for perpetrators in a way that we haven’t really seen before.”
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Students are also demanding more comprehensive prevention education, she said, pushing back against the substandard toolkit often deployed by universities, which includes things like mandatory webinars that students can click “mindlessly through.”
“That’s not prevention. That’s not creating a community environment where sexual assault is not acceptable,” Vitchers said. “Students are coming forward and saying … this shouldn’t have happened.”
Protests kicked off this year in Nebraska, after a female student reported being sexually assaulted at a fraternity house at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln just before midnight on Aug. 24. Thousands of protesters surrounded the fraternity house the following three nights, leading the university to suspend the fraternity’s operations pending an investigation.
Less than a week later, students at the University of Iowa demanded a chapter of the same fraternity — Phi Gamma Delta — be removed from campus following a year-old rape allegation that the university is still investigating. A petition organized by a University of Iowa student calling for Phi Gamma Delta to be abolished nationwide has garnered more than 200,000 signatures.
Protests have not been limited to college campuses, with high school students in Virginia in October staging a walkout after two assaults were reported at two different Loudoun County schools by the same male perpetrator, who has not been charged or convicted of rape.
Students during the walkout chanted “Loudoun County protects rapists,” ABC-affiliate WJLA reported.
Vitchers said the issue of sexual assault has been more “on the radar” of this generation of high school students, who grew up with television shows like “13 Reasons Why,” which addresses difficult topics like sexual violence.
That has erased some of the stigma past generations have faced and could lead to more reported sexual assaults on high school campuses even absent an increase in the actual number of incidents.
“It’s not talked about as much, but we are starting to see more and more protests happening at [high]schools around the issue because we’re seeing incidents of sexual assault taking place, or sexual harassment taking place within a K-12 setting,” Vitchers said.
She added that she and her team have plans to eventually expand It’s On Us programs to high schools — plans that were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“College is in many cases not soon enough to have these conversations,” she said. “Because we know students are experiencing sexual violence in high school.”
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