April is sexual assault awareness month. And on Friday, one of the four former Vanderbilt football players involved in the infamous Vanderbilt rape case from June 2013 was retried alone. After nearly three hours of deliberations, the jury came to their conclusion and justice was timely served this awareness month. The jury found Corey Batey, a 22-year-old former Vanderbilt football player, guilty of aggravated rape and aggravated sexual battery.

According to a Washington Post poll conducted last year, 25 percent of women and 7 percent of men are victims of “unwanted sexual incidents” while in university. The Washington Post conducted the poll last year by telephone, which surveyed 1,053 women and men undergraduate students at a four-year college, between the ages of 17 to 26, living on campus or nearby. Sexual assault was defined as five different types of “unwanted contact: forced touching of a sexual nature, oral sex, vaginal sexual intercourse, anal sex and sexual penetration with a finger or object.” Using that definition specifically, “5 percent of men and 20 percent of women said they had been sexually assaulted in college.”

With sexual assaults on college campuses increasing and becoming an issue that needs to be addressed more urgently than ever, more colleges are joining the effort to put an end to sexual assault each year and are implementing “mandatory sexual assault awareness programs.” In addition to these mandatory awareness programs, “many universities have joined President Obama’s “It’s On Us” campaign, which is a nation-wide promotion aimed at putting an end to sexual assault on college campuses.” Though universities are showing a commitment to effectively address the issue of sexual assault on campuses, there are been results that indicate that these programs are not yet working. This last fall, Indiana University invited more than 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students to take a survey about their perceptions and experiences with sexual assault. It found:

Twenty-nine percent of the undergraduate women reported experiencing some form of nonconsensual sexual touching while at IU […] 35 percent of the undergraduate women and 34 percent of the graduate women reported being the victims of some form of sexual harassment while at IU […] and, 86 percent of the undergraduate women and 85 percent of the graduate women participants who reported experiencing some form of nonconsensual sexual contact did not report the incident to anyone at IU.

As these findings are similar findings with studies conducted at other universities, an answer on how to solve the epidemic of sexual assault on campuses remains to be solved. Hopefully, this recent court ruling against Batey will influence sexual assault victims to speak up and encourage universities to continue to make efforts with protecting and creating a safe space for sexual assault survivors, and putting an end to this horrendous crime for good.

Ashlyn Marquez

Ashlyn Marquez received her law degree from the American University, Washington College of Law and her Bachelor’s degree from The New School. She works in immigration law and has a passion for worker’s rights, tacos, and avocados. Contact Ashlyn at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Anneliese Mahoney, Brittany Alzfan, Erika Bethmann, Matt DeWilde, and Natasha Paulmeno.

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Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about the mishandling of sexual assaults on college campuses. Although these allegations span years, sexual assault on college campuses is by no means a new conversation. The recent wave of outrage and advocacy began with a courageous young woman named Angie Epifano. Angie was a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts when she was raped by an acquaintance. She received little to no help from the University, and eventually published a first hand account in The Amherst Student, the student newspaper on campus. Her entire, heart-wrenching story is here (trigger warning), but the gist is that the school that she trusted institutionalized, discounted, and questioned her every move instead of providing her with appropriate and much needed resources.

The University of Connecticut, located in the sleepy northeastern countryside, has also come under fire for how they have handled sexual assault cases. Victims claim that UConn didn’t help them, and that they were discouraged from reporting the rapes to the police. One young woman, Rosemary Richie, who was raped by a football player, claims officials at UConn did not believe her.

There are stories after stories after stories on almost every single college campus in the country. Take Amanda Tripp, at the University of Indianapolis. She filed a report that she was raped on November 26, 2012. When she saw a copy almost 2 months later, the police had written, “a crime did not occur” on it. No one ever followed up with her. Or how about Landen Gambill? She reported being sexually assaulted by an ex-boyfriend. The UNC honor court subsequently found him not guilty. She was then charged herself, accused of creating an “intimidating and hostile” environment for the man who had assaulted her by charging him with such assault. Regardless of whether or not he was actually guilty, a young woman should never be scared that she might get in trouble with the school if she reports a crime.

The numbers speak for themselves: at least 1 in 4 women in college will be the victim of a sexual assault during their time in school. Colleges need to be able to provide resources for that 25% of their female population that is attacked. But as we’ve seen time after time after time, this often is not the case.

Now, these women are fighting back. The Title IX Network —an informal network of activists–has helped women at multiple schools file federal claims against the universities. The Title IX Network bills itself as “working to support all survivors, to change how colleges and universities handle sexual assault, and to change a culture where violence is normalized.” Most recently these include Amherst, UConn, and Vanderbilt University; earlier this year claims were filed against UNC, Occidental, Swarthmore, UC Boulder, Dartmouth, USC, Berkeley, and Emerson.

The complaints have been filed under both Title IX and Clery Act provisions. Title IX states that universities have a responsibility to take immediate and effective steps when allegations of sexual violence are brought forth. Under Title IX, the Department of Education can impose fines or block access to federal funds. The Clery Act requires schools to accurately disclose crimes that occur on campus. By not handling and reporting these allegations of sexual assault properly, the universities against whom complaints have been levied may be in violation.

Something has to change. Twenty-five percent of young women, twenty-five percent of my peers, should not be assaulted in the environments in which they are supposed to learn and grow. If these charges lead to any sort of change in the abhorrent way universities have been handling this issue, I say more power to the Title IX network.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Wolfram Burner via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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