School administrators can choose to be proactive in making their schools safer from harassment and assault, or they can wait for their students to force their hands. Either way, they’d be wise to listen to their students.
On Friday, United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released the Department of Education’s new proposed regulations for Title IX which put the burden of proof on sexual assault survivors to defend their claims of assault.
After almost a year of unprecedented media attention on the topic of rape culture, America’s newest college students may be better armed with a clear understanding of the once-taboo topic of sexual assault than any before them.
Students aren’t just vulnerable because of powerful professors whose prestige allows them to go unchecked, but also because nobody tells them what good relationships with professors are supposed to look like, or presents a clear pathway for how to develop them.
Our society has failed to recognize many manifestations of sexual violence as serious threats, engaging instead in a long history of blaming victims for their inability to extricate themselves from an unwanted sexual encounter.
Prout has been an activist and advocate ever since she was sexually assaulted by a student at the elite prep school St. Paul’s in 2014. She has since launched the hashtag and movement #IHaveTheRightTo. This month, Prout published a memoir: I Have The Right To: A High School Survivor’s Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope.
I always assumed that if I found myself in a situation like this I would report it and feel a sense of justice. But when forced to confront it, the reporting process seemed vengeful and futile.
In July of this year, Columbia University settled alleged rapist Paul Nungesser’s lawsuit against the school for gender-based discrimination. Nungesser was accused of raping then-fellow Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz, who gained attention for her 2014 performance-art piece Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight).