Editor’s Note: This story includes mention of sexual violence. Resources are available here. All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
The freshmen are not alright.
As discourse about sexual violence, and how to combat it, now centers on Jane Doe’s lawsuit at Cornell University, that fact is easily ignored. If you doubt that, consider how shocked you’d be to see the headline, “To end sexual violence, we must end fraternities.” And, in fact, a guest column in The Dartmouth offered that solution. As did students in The Wall Street Journal.
Indeed, it’s easy to think that in a world where sophomore, junior and senior men are not the occupants of private mini-mansions and do not pool together substantial resources for major parties, there would be fewer incidents of sexual violence. On Tuesday, this thought led Cornell to suspend social events at fraternities for the rest of the school year. It would also be wrong.
A few factors probably contribute to why Jane Doe’s story hit national headlines. Of course, the details are sensationally horrific — the number of hours, the number of men, the fact that law enforcement did not pursue the case. It also unfolded at an Ivy League in New York rather than a directional school in the flyovers. Not least important is the fact that it involved a fraternity.
With large national brands, like Chi Phi, behind them, it’s easy to tell a story of widespread sexual violence at fraternities, especially when over the years, similarly lurid stories tend to blend into one. “Frat culture is rape culture,” one sign at Cornell said.
It’s harder to convince people that some insignificant residence hall is part of an even wider problem. “Dorm culture is rape culture” has a more humdrum antagonist. Yet, residence halls have more incidents of sexual violence, and the freshmen who live in them face the highest rates of sexual violence, especially in their first semester.
At Indiana University so far this semester, 16 sexual violence cases have been reported. Of the 13 with disclosed locations, at least 12 occurred in university residential housing and 11 in freshman residence halls: four in Teter Quadrangle and one in Eigenmann Hall, Foster Quadrangle, McNutt Quadrangle, Read Hall, Spruce Hall and Willkie Quadrangle. The 12th occurred in an unidentified southeast neighborhood residence hall, which could mean a university apartment, like Union Street Center, but more likely than not a freshmen dorm.
What we really must do is get rid of resident assistants.
Oh, I’m highly doubtful that we ever will. RAs are a convenient way of adding enough of an institutional presence in dorms at a minimal cost, and administrators would probably have a hard time telling bright-eyed, high-achieving students who want to guide younger peers “no.”
Still, it would be nice if we recognized that there is something bizarrely ill-fashioned about the way we go about “assisting” universities’ newest arrivals. Charging sophomores, juniors and seniors — people with exams to study for — with being the frontline responders to sexual assault, not to mention suicidal ideation, is an unintuitive choice on universities’ part.
RAs should be replaced with Real Adults.
Until the 1960s, IU employed house mothers, adult women who lived alongside students in the university’s women’s residence halls. The Jan. 5, 1937, edition of the Indiana Daily Student included a phone number to contact the house mother of South Hall, which is now Smith Hall and part of the Collins Living-Learning Center.
Some universities still place adults in or around dorms. Butler University has Faculty in Residence at three freshmen residence halls. Purdue University has one building with a resident faculty member.
At IU, any semblance of this practice is gone. As parents nationwide have begun turning to the free market equivalent, now would be the opportune time to reintroduce it.
Privately-contracted proxy moms, who check in and run errands, carry all the possible downsides of having an adult watch over college students — doing their laundry or delivering them dinner — with none of the upsides that would come with living side-by-side with them in dorms. Notably: Having an adult in the room. Better yet, one with some background in counseling.
At Rice University, where magisters — tenured faculty — live in houses adjacent to dorm buildings, the rate of sexual violence was over 40% lower than the average of 33 other studied universities, including Big Ten schools like Ohio State, Oregon and Northwestern. Rice also ranked first among these schools for quality of life and in the top 12 for happiest students.
If IU wants to match changing parental expectations and try something to lower its sexual assault numbers, it may be time to move beyond RAs.
Eric Cannon is a junior studying philosophy. Some of his close friends are RAs, and he sincerely apologizes. His column normally appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Never miss it and his other musings on X.
