How Campus Sexual Assaults Came To Command New Attention
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[URL="http://www.npr.org/2014/08/12/339822696/how-campus-sexual-assaults-came-to-command-new-attention"]NPR Link[/URL]
[quote=NPR][B]'The Darkness Is Over'[/B]
Indeed, in just a few years, the issue has gone from mostly whispers all the way up to the White House, where President Obama has made cracking down on sexual assault a priority.
"It's like it came out of the closet," says Bernice Sandler, who's known as the godmother of Title IX. "The darkness is over."
Sandler has watched the legislation she pushed 40 years ago evolve from a club used first against discrimination in hiring and admissions, then in sports inequity and now sexual assault. (Click here for a list of the 74 colleges with pending Title IX sexual violence investigations as of Aug. 6, 2014.)
"That's the power of Title IX. It's a hammer that's there, and schools know this and are busy scrambling to change their policies and that makes me smile," Sandler says.
A range of policies are being revamped — from what counts as rape to how schools handle investigations. The crackdown comes three years after the government fired its first warning shot at higher ed with a so-called "Dear Colleague" letter that put schools on notice that failing to handle sexual assault properly could cost them their federal funding.
"That was a game changer. That was a tool that many of us used to show our universities like, 'Hey, you have to do this,' " says Annie Clark. She is one of several survivors-turned-activists who began to tell their stories publically right around that time and to connect online.
[B]A Swinging Pendulum[/B]
It is an abrupt turn for many schools that have treated incidents of sexual assault as teachable moments and have resisted the idea that their valedictorians or star athletes could also be predators.
Gail Stern, who runs sexual violence prevention programs for higher ed and the military, says there's something about colleges that's allowed the problem to quietly fester there longer than at other institutions.
"There is a real sense of 'this is our identity' — that they're the best, they're the smartest, they're the most virtuous. And what's so funny, I can't tell you how many times I've talked with an academic, and I've said, 'Oh, I do all this work with the military and they've said, 'Oh, the military. Well, they need it. And I lose it! I'm like, 'You need it,' " she says.
Helping drive home the point: A growing number of alleged victims are winning civil suits against schools, and they are now more willing to sue. But on the other hand, so are the accused. Dozens of students who say they've been unfairly punished are now pushing back against what they say are kangaroo campus courts run amok.
"There is a certain hysteria in the air on this topic," says Anne Neal of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. She says schools are running so scared of violating the civil rights of alleged victims they end up violating the due process rights of defendants instead.
"It's really a surreal situation, I think. The government has effectively put our universities in an untenable situation where they're damned if they do and they're damned if don't," Neal says.
Advocates say the pushback is no surprise as the pendulum swings and sexual assault goes from being just swept under the rug to being treated as a serious crime.[/quote]
[B]TL;DR For Lazy Fucks[/B]
To summarize, a lot of schools are now swinging around with their limbs as they try to get new policies in place and crack down on sexual assault. The Federal Government threatened pulling Federal Grants to these universities which is what caused the big freak out to occur. Things are starting to get better but we're not out of the dark shit yet.
[B]Round 2[/B]
[B]FIGHT![/B]
We definitely need this, not just in the US.
In NZ we had a big earthquake in the city of Christchurch a few years back, took down a big portion of the city. Somehow the current government saw fit to withdraw funding (in the tens of thousands) for the only rape crisis center in the city, which then had to close. But the government is happy to spend over a million on lunch and dinner dates for visitors.
It makes me sick sometimes what the people in charge choose to prioritise.
It seems like there could have been a better way to handle this than threatening to pull funding from the schools Because as the article mentioned, having fraudulent accusations only serves to create more victims, and the schools are now militantly searching for these claims.
The US Armed Forces has been cracking down hard on sexual assault that has been happening in their ranks. For years, ROTC has even been trying to help establish support channels for sexual assault victims for students out of the campus's they're posted up in. Hell, it's been a major selling point for ROTC, they've been pitching a lot to universities that needed these channels established for their students.
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