Sexual Assaults on College Campus
Sexual assault is a broad term that applies to a range of “forced and unwanted sexual activity”. It is far too common of a problem in our world today. It is especially prevalent on college campuses in the United States. The most common issues in sexual assault are underreporting, victim-perpetrator relationships, and school policies and procedures.
Sexual assault occurs everywhere but is more common on college campuses because of it often involves alcohol and drugs. About 20% of rapes reported during college was when they could not give consent because they did not know it was happening since they had used either alcohol or drugs.
This study was based on percent of reports including nonconsensual sexual contact involving force or inability to consent or stop what was happening by gender. Although it is more common for women to undergo sexual violence, men sometimes also undergo this. It disrupts some of the misconceptions in which many oversee or disregard that men also experience sexual assault although on a smaller scale. The transgender, genderqueer and nonconforming students had comparably high cases that aren’t as widely known. On average 21% of TGQN college students have been sexually assaulted. This was so eye-opening since it proved women and TGQN students faced the most sexual violence on campuses.
These data sets reflect how most sexual assault cases are committed by classmates or friends. In all these instances almost 75% of the victims knew or had previously interacted with their attacker. This seemed peculiar to me because I had never expected those closest to the victims to be the perpetrators.
I then wondered if since the perpetrators were most often the victims friends, if they would be inclined to report these cases. Sexual assault cases are already one of the most under-reported crimes.
This data proves how almost 30% of cases were not reported due to fears of being treating poorly by the police. There have many several reports of campus police not taking sexual assault seriously and not handling it with proper precautions.
About 17.2% of cases were not reported because the victims were not sure if it was a crime or if harm was intended. More widespread education must implemented around more college campuses. Mistaking a violent crime such as rape as an "accident" is not acceptable and this knowledge must be known.