I attended a deliberation that was on the problem of Sexual assault on not only on Penn State’s campus but colleges through out the United States. I choose to attend this event because it was a interesting topic and was also being run by multiple floor mates of mine. The Deliberation provide a lot of insight on how sexual assault is handle by colleges and law enforcement. The deliberation team did a very great job creating three very unique approaches to tackle this problem. They were Punishment and police, education and awareness, and then prevention.
The Punishment and approach remind me a lot of the kill approach to State College in that it was thought that you could simply force and scare away a problem. But the group discussion quickly turned to the fact that this alone will not work because of its as if people are not already aware the penalties for committing sexual assault. It also was mentioned that a lot of these happen with alcohol present which could unclear the judgement of the offender. In my opinion the reason this approach is hard to enforce because it assumes that police are catching rapes in the act, which very far from the case considering. For example the supplemental girls on my floor were approached by police last week about a sexual assault that was reported to had happened in September. But what was great about this approach that it talked about what schools should do to students on instigation for assaults in order to create a better life situation for the victim.
The education and awareness team gave a great argument that if we taught and spoke about sexual assault in more serious tone it would go along way. They spoke about the sexual assault portion of NSO and the aware online course required by Penn State. A lot of the people in the room had lack luster experiences with these orientation events, they either play the aware program while doing something else in the back ground or there NSO leader made a mockery of the situation. I’m not going to lie too played the aware program in the background as I sat on Facebook and for some portions I wasn’t even in the room. A lot of this had to do because the program made it easy to complete with no effort, not having questioning section. It also talks about sexual assault in situations that are either extremely unrealistic or are no brainers on what needs to be done.A idea I really liked from this approach was a 1 credit course freshmen year about sexual assault that would explain things like what is consent and how to know that you had it.
The third approach was prevention which called for doing things such as giving police access to guns and extending the schools blue light system. I was not a fan of this approach because it seems like it puts the problem on schools administration to completely to solve with no responsibility on the student body to destroy rape culture.As if universities could come up with idea throw thousands of dollars at it then sexual assault will go away. Its unlike the situation with frats that are institutions in connections with the University. Its hard to create situation in which your in a sense micromanaging a entire student body. No matter if your a school of 5000 or 40000.
Recent Comments