Augustana students listen to a speaker at the Take Back The Night Sexual Assault Awareness Rally on April 23, 2017.
There's no question about it: sexual assault is one of the most pervasive safety issues facing college campuses today. If one in four college women and one in six men are experiencing sexual assault in a given academic year, that should be cause for concern.
That concern shouldn't just be coming from survivors of sexual assault, or from those faculty or staff tasked with handling it, but from everyone. Experts agree that educating people about the issue, and what it really means to give consent in a sexual situation, is the only way this problem will ever be solved.
At very minimum, there are more conversations about campus sexual assault happening now than ever before. Until very recently, even at colleges like Augustana, the words "consent" and "sexual assault" weren't part of the college vernacular. But the issue has increasingly received national news coverage, and more survivors are coming forward to tell their stories. As a result, Augustana is now legally obligated to not only protect students from sexual assault, but must prioritize and address reports of it whenever they appear.
My journalistic investigation revealed these conclusions about sexual assault, particularly at Augustana College:
The Good, and Bad
The evidence I uncovered suggests Augustana is neither a safe haven from, nor a hotbed of, sexual assault activity. Comparative data, from sources like the Campus Climate Survey, revealed that Augustana students are about as likely to experience a form of sexual assault as students living on any other campus, even if their likelihood is greater in some instances.
Augie has also made a lot of progress. The college has created resources for survivors, established a dedicated Title IX Team to handle cases, and now requires bystander intervention training. Those things didn't exist even in 2014. But when the federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a letter calling for such major changes, Augustana was quick to do so.
What Needs Improvement
Augustana is doing a lot to address the problems that sexual assault poses, but still has a long way to go. For example, OCR recommends that Title IX investigations be resolved within 60 days. But Augie student Caitlin Lebel said her investigation went on for months longer than that. Even though Augustana requires bystander intervention training, colleges like Monmouth and St. Ambrose have developed strong peer-to-peer teaching environments, claimed by many as the "Holy Grail" of bystander intervention techniques.
The student bodies of these three colleges are about the same size, yet other colleges seem to be more involved with sexual assault prevention than Augustana is. Therefore, improving Augustana's prevention efforts must not only come from concerned administrators, but also from students willing to dedicate more time and effort.
The Long and Short Of It
As all of my staff and faculty interview subjects said, Augustana does not tolerate any form of gender discrimination, including sexual assault. While there's plenty of room for improvement, something is at least being done, and in a far more equitable manner than before.
No one is immune to sexual assault. Just about any college student can be taken advantage of in this most heinous way. But the more that students feel comfortable about intervening, the more students will be safe from sexual harm. If more people work together in leading prevention efforts, sexual assault may just become a thing of the past.
If simply more people care about this issue, we may finally be able to rid ourselves of The People Problem, once and for all.