Penn State senior Melissa McCleery says it’s hard to overestimate how serious the issue of sexual violence on college campuses really is.
The University Park Undergraduate Association member says “the scope of the problem is truly incredible, and in a very negative way.” That’s why Penn State’s Sexual Assault Task Force has come up with a plan to combat issues of sexual violence that is also incredible in its scope.
Task force chairman and university administrator Damon Sims says that last week he presented Penn State president Eric Barron with their plan: an exhaustively-researched 267 page report, complete with 18 recommendations to make Penn State a national leader in the fight against sexual violence on college campuses.
And it seems that Penn State has its work cut out for it. According to the report, one in five women in the United States will raped in her lifetime. A survey administered last year by University Park’s Counseling and Psychological Services office also revealed that nearly 200 students out the 2052 surveyed had experienced non-consensual sexual contact within the last five years.
“This will require a lot of work toward implementation, and this won’t happen overnight,” Sims says. “We’re trying to create a culture here at Penn State that says, ‘we refuse to tolerate this kind of behavior,” and we’re going to do all we can in all the right ways.”
Sims says Barron is expected to respond to the report by mid-February, and that steps to implement the first round of recommendations will come “almost immediately” afterwards.
Danny Shaha, Penn State’s director of student conduct and a member of the task force, sees two of the recommendations as the university’s most immediate needs: for Penn State to create a new position to coordinate educational efforts and victim services across every campus, and for the university to completely rework the way it responds to allegations of sexual assault.
Shaha says that sexual assault allegations are currently handled the same way as any other violation of the student code of conduct. The student accused of the violation can accept responsibility for the allegations, or they can proceed to a full-blow disciplinary hearing before a five-person disciplinary board, complete with witnesses.
While Shaha says this is “an effective process,” it is not sensitive to the “unique nature” of sexual violence allegations. Victims are forced to retell their story over and over during the disciplinary process, before ultimately having to confront their alleged assailant in a formal and sometimes confrontational environment.
The proposed solution to this problem is to hire an investigator who will meet with victims, alleged assailants and witnesses separately before compiling an incident report. After gathering responses to the report from the involved parties, an updated report will be presented to a three-person board, which will decide what – if any – sanctions to impose on the alleged assailant.
Shaha says University Park will begin a pilot program for this investigatory model in the spring, with former Penn State police detective Spencer Peters as the investigator.
Task force member Peggy Lorah, director of Penn State’s center for women students, says that making sure Penn State has a consistent response to sexual assault across all its campuses is another vital step to take as soon as possible.
She says there are “lots of people doing a lot of good work” across the university’s campuses, but there’s too much overlap and too little coordination. One centralized position to coordinate these efforts will help Penn State put forward a uniform message about the importance of consent, the role that alcohol plays in sexual assaults and what resources are available for victims, among many other vital components.
“One thing that seems like it hasn’t changed over the years is that people don’t seem to think of this issue until impacts them directly,” Lorah says. “That’s something that needs to change, and we need to pay attention to how we get our message out there.”
According to the report, other recommendations include:
- Mandatory training for all university employees on sexual assault resources and reporting;
- Requiring university staff who work with victims to undergo training that includes information on male, international, same-sex and other minority victims;
- Administering a university-wide climate survey at regular intervals to monitor the scope of the problem;
- Expanding educational and victim resources at commonwealth campuses that lack the resources available at University Park;
- Encouraging bystander intervention in instances of sexual misconduct;
- Creating an online system for anonymous reporting of sexual misconduct;
- Annually or semi-annually releasing aggregated data on sexual misconduct at Penn State, beyond what’s already required under federal law.
Shaha says that Penn State is one of a number of universities currently under investigation for compliance with a federal law called Title IX that relates to issues of sexual assault, gender discrimination and reporting.
This is part of what Shaha describes as an increased interest from the federal government concerning issues of sexual assault, though he stresses that the investigation was not the reason the task force was formed.
He says Penn State has submitted two rounds of information to the Department of Education for this investigation, and is waiting for further instruction.
“We’ve been very appreciative of the guidance [the government] has provided on this issue,” Shaha says. “We’re also monitoring other potential legislation that deals with sexual violence and mandatory reporting. We want to surpass the minimum expectations required of us.”
The entire report can be read online.
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