Harrison Mooney
Dr. O’hara
CAS 138T
02/22/2022
Deliberation Visit Extra Credit
I decided to visit the 10:35AM deliberation section on 02/22/2022. The topic focused on approaches on how to mitigate and reduce sexual assault on an around the Penn State University Park campus. The deliberation team proposed three main approaches to help reduce sexual assault. These approaches included adding and improving safety-focused infrastructure on campus, educating fraternities and greek life on sexual misconduct, and changing university policies on sexual assault.
The first approach focused on the ideas of deterring sexual assaulters and providing a sense of security for innocent students on campus. The plan would include increased security cameras, more blue light systems, and alarm systems inside buildings and dormitories. The main benefits of this approach are that students will feel safer walking around campus. The increased security will theoretically give students ease of mind when traveling around campus. This also will give predators a sense that they are being watched, hopefully deterring them from attacking. Our deliberation discussed the effectiveness of the methods. The general consensus was that the methods would be effective but only worth it if it is economically plausible. We discussed that cameras in dorm hallways would be too much of an encroach on privacy and that they should not be used. We also discussed the problem that blue lights do not get used often. Despite their lack of use, we concluded that they are still important because of the sense of security that they give. There is no harm in having them there, so it would be worth it.
The second approach is a plan to educate fraternity and other greek life participants. Studies show that a man in a fraternity is 300% more likely to commit sexual assault and that sorority girls are 74% more likely to be sexually assaulted. The approach plans on hosting mandatory sexual misconduct information sessions for greek life participants as well as setting up a plan for anonymous reporting within fraternities and sororities. The pros of this method are more education for people who may need it, targeted information, and a hopeful decrease in sexual misconduct. The cons include worry that greek life participants won’t pay attention, and that the money required to set this up will be wasted. In the deliberation we focused mainly on the fact that fraternity brothers are not likely to take sexual misconduct sessions seriously. All throughout high school, students are drilled with information on sexual misconduct. All throughout first-year orientation, students are drilled with sexual misconduct information. Most of the time, students will simply click through it saying, “I have heard this before.” On the other hand, there is a moral argument saying that there is never enough education and it is worth educating them more anyways. The idea of anonymous reporting integrated into the fraternities themselves was also talked about. The idea was generally well received but had some criticism when discussing how it would be implemented. The biggest challenge would be getting brothers to call each other out.
The final approach is about a more widespread change of Penn State policy. The plan attempts to make Penn State’s policies on sexual misconduct more strict and effective. The idea is that stricter policies would create more of a deterrent for assaulters. In turn this would create a safer campus for all. The cons are that the policies have to be victim favored, the policies may not even work, and that the policy changes may take too much time. The deliberation agreed with the idea that effective policies work well, but in a reactive way instead of a proactive way. The concern is that the policies will do a good job punishing but not preventing. Generally a sexual assaulter will not consider the consequences before assaulting someone. The biggest problem is that the plan wouldn’t help slow sexual assaults, it would only punish them more.
In the end, I personally agree with the first approach most. It is proactive, tangible, and easy to implement. It does the most for the victim and will hopefully discourage sexual assault the most.