Tag Archives: Notre Dame

Early March Campus News Round-Up

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It’s been a while since I did a proper one of these. Here’s what’s going on:

The De Anza civil trial is underway, and one of the three girls who intervened that night has given her extremely disturbing (graphic and triggering) testimony of what she saw. For background on the De Anza case, check out some of our older posts on it.

CUNY’s sexual assault policy is featured in this article about dating violence on college campuses.

A campus rape survivor in Kentucky is advocating for “extending protective order laws” to include people in “dating relationships.” I can’t really believe that isn’t already the law. Apparently in Kentucky only married folks have abusive partners? What? 44 other states (plus DC) already cover the rights of those experiencing dating violence, so let’s hope Kentucky follows suit.

Students at Dickinson College were out protesting yesterday, calling for a more comprehensive response to sexual assault on campus. Meanwhile, a student at the University of Oklahoma wrote a great editorial on why the school’s policy, including it’s 30-day statute of limitations (!!!) needs to be changed.

Students at Colorado State University are actually debating whether or not to raise student activities fees by three or four dollars to support the work of the Women and Gender Advocacy Center.

Nortre Dame is being accused of not properly responding to a rape case AGAIN. Meanwhile, Nortre Dame’s sexual assault awareness week seems to be focused on alcohol instead of how to be accountable to student safety.

The University of Minnesota, which you may remember has been dealing with a number of reported sexual assaults this year, is requesting that greek community members attend this April’s “presentation on preventing sexual violence.” However, the school says that they can’t mandate anyone to attend. Which…I don’t think I buy.The piece goes on to describe the “self-governance” granted to greek life on most campuses and leaves me pretty unsettled, including a reference to greek judiciary processes. Anyone know more about how this works? I’m going to look into it.

Wednesday Links: Student Perceptions of Rape; Awesome Consumer Activism

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Like many of you, I have been bogged down with finals for the past week. But as I’m finishing up (Tonight! Finally!) I wanted to highlight a few stories that I found today.

Amanda Hess has great coverage over at TBD of a new report from the George Washington University School of Medicine and the Younger Women’s Task Force, “Understanding Sexual Violence at a Large, Urban University.” The report explores findings from surveys of 5000 GWU students, surveys that asked not only about students’ experiences with sexual violence but also about their knowledge of GWU’s resources and procedures I recommend checking out Amanda’s analysis of the report (which has an interesting gender breakdown) and the report itself. A notable selection from its conclusion:

After our investigation, we believe there needs to be more sexual assault education and prevention efforts at GWU. According to our data collection, 89 percent of respondents believe victims can obtain a rape kit at GWU Hospital and 69 percent of students believe victims of sexual assault can obtain a rape kit at Student Health Services. This indicates GWU has not done an adequate job of educating students on what to do if one of their students experience sexual assault. Further, the fact that 61 percent of respondents  believe sexual assault is a problem on campus, while 15 percent stated they know someone who has experienced a rape, leads us to believe sexual assault at GWU is an underreported and silent problem.

This report makes the think of the similar report from SUNY Geneseo on rates of sexual violence among current students. I wonder if the key to getting people to take campus sexual violence seriously is surveys like these that really underscore the problem on a micro level, showing that hundreds of students on individual campuses are really are experiencing sexual violence. Maybe those numbers would be more meaningful to folks than the national statistics.

I smiled today (oh god, this might have been the only time I smiled today…finals and #Mooreandme made it a tough one) at this story on the Ms. Blog about students at California State University, Long Beach writing letters of protest to a local clothing store. With the help of the amazing Shira Tarrant, students voiced their concern over shirts depicting a drawing of a topless (looking) girl who has tape over her mouth with the caption “enjoy the silence.” While Caroline at Ms. makes the connection between the image and the idea of women being “seen and not heard,” I would add that it’s even worse when you consider the word “silence” in the context of sexual violence and the lack of reporting. So, we applaud the students at CSULB for NOT staying silent.

Although the Notre Dame football player accused of raping Lizzy Seeberg, will not be charged, the Department of Education is investigating how the school handled the case.If you didn’t come across this powerful piece about Lizzy’s case and suicide written by a special victims unit prosecutor, please check it out.

Finally, I leave you with this awesome student at the University of Minnesota who is totally spot on.

Pre-Thanksgiving Linkstravaganza

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So, the blog will be quiet over the next few days while we take some time off for the holiday, but I will leave you with some reading material! Also, if you’re in NYC and want to come hang out and help us out for a couple hour on Monday night, RSVP for the “work party” at our office! And of course, if you really want to get to know SAFER, consider applying for our Board….

Where Is Your Line has a hard-to-read (triggering!) but very striking story about frat culture (or at least one particular frat culture) and sexual violence. Written by a frat member, in fact.

A lot of people have written about the St. Mary’s College student who killed herself shortly after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexual assault (see Jezebel and Care2 for more). An insanely sad story. Also sad is that no one at Notre Dame or St Mary’s seems to be talking about rape.

Feminist Students United! at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill call out a gross sign put up by the hockey team as being representative of rape culture and fight back with their own awesome sign. Unsurprisingly, the commenters on their blog just think they don’t have any sense of humor. We haven’t heard that before…

The awesome folks at Prevention Innovations tackle the serious issue of how behavior that could be considered stalking can become normalized on college campuses, particularly cyberstalking.

A University of Minnesota Student is waging a one-woman fight to get her community to take groping seriously and improve the reporting process at the U of M.

Guess what? Schools have inaccurate Clery statistics!

The Loyola Maroon addresses the victim-blaming comments (online, of course) on their story about a student arrested for rape.

Finally, a lot of folks are talking about this week’s Law and Order SVU episode, which apparently dealt with campus rape! I haven’t gotten a chance to catch up with it yet. Anyone else see it? Thoughts??

Insight on the Vagina Monologues at a religious university

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I currently (and temporarily) reside in South Bend, IN, home of the very-Catholic University of Notre Dame, which has seen its fair share of controversy surrounding VDay and the Vagina Monologues the past several years. As a member of the university staff, I generally keep my opinions of student affairs quiet, because it would be innappropriate for me to comment in my current position. However, I have to publicly applaud this letter to the editor (writen by a male senior), which supports the Vagina Monologues being performed at UND…