A better policy on campus rape

An incident of sexual assault at IU from 2006 has recently resurfaced as part of a National Public Radio investigation.

In the spring semester of 2006, a female student was helped into her dorm room after a night of drinking by a male student from down the hall, who then followed her into the room and allegedly raped her.

According to NPR, the woman pursued legal action against her attacker and had to ultimately settle for the Campus Judicial System, which found the man to be guilty of “sexual contact” without consent. He was suspended for one year.

Feeling defeated because her attacker would be allowed to return to campus, the victim withdrew from the University.

Although this case does draw some special attention to IU, it should not imply that there is some particular problem with this University.

NPR is conducting an investigation of a national problem, and IU is simply not immune to the struggles with sexual assault on college campuses.

That said, confronting this case does call for an evaluation of the actions taken against sexual assault on this campus.

IU-Bloomington takes immediate steps to educate incoming students about the realities of sexual assault, as all incoming students now attend a play involving a sexual assault scenario during orientation.

The University also provides similar demonstrations and discussions to individual classes or living communities by request. Furthermore, there are compassionate services available to victims struggling from sexual assault.

These are essential programs for the University. However, we believe there needs to be more decisive action to punish attackers and prevent possible future incidents of sexual assault.

Given that alcohol is involved in some 90 percent of campus rape cases and that incidents often come down to a he-said she-said battle, it is difficult to have sufficient confidence to take punitive action.

However, the fact that across the country few male students are expelled even when found guilty is simply wrong. Policies regarding sexual assault should be zero tolerance; if an individual is convincingly found guilty by the campus judicial system, they must be completely removed from the University.

Considering the specific domain of sexual assault on college campuses, we propose the creation of a judicial entity for sexual assault situations. This would act as a body that deals only with rape-related crises affecting students here on campus, giving them a quasi-legal avenue through which to obtain justice.

We cannot speculate on the logistics of such a program, but hold its merits to be self-evident.

The installation of such a directed program would be a clear-cut and focused response to an urgent problem. It would demonstrate an extreme level of commitment to the safety of the University’s students. And this would make IU a forerunner among colleges for a new approach to a long-standing and extremely appalling lack of efficacy in the battle against sexual assault.