Thoughts on campus sexual assault prevention

This evening, people on campus got an e-mail regarding a rape that took place last week. A news report about the event can be read here.

In his e-mail to students (and as it explains in the article) Sam Sadler encouraged students to call Campus Police if they needed a ride home after hours. For my women's studies Community Action Project last year, my group initially investigated some issues related to sexual assault prevention including safe forms of transportation in instances of perceived danger with specific questions about how the intoxication of the student seeking help might cause problems. The police station was not very receptive to the idea of helping to get a drunk student out of a dangerous situation without it resulting in his or her potential arrest for drinking underage. Recently W&M enacted a policy that provides amnesty to students who seek medical help because of alcohol poisoning and to others who may have been drinking underage who are involved in the process of seeking medical care for their friends. It makes sense, in my mind, that this policy be extended to women and men who seek assistance in getting out of unsafe situations that could potentially result in sexual assault or rape. Preventing sexual assault means changing the ways in which students view consent and sexual activity, but it also means providing safe, reliable ways to get out of bad situations, particularly when an individual is intoxicated.

In light of this recent case of rape, and with the tendency of alcohol to be involved with cases of acquaintance rape (I realize this specific incident does not fall into that category), I decided to write Sam Sadler, Vice President of Student Affairs, an e-mail detailing some of my thoughts. I don't know if anything will actually come of the e-mail, but I felt like I needed to say something while people were actually listening. It was disheartening to know that the best advice Sam could offer to students out late was to call Campus Police since they have seemed really hesitant to help in the past. I am hoping that even by shining a little light on this problem, I might actually see some campus policy changed (or at least have the police be encouraged to respond to student's pleas for after-hours transportation).

What follows is the text of the e-mail that I sent to Sam. I know it isn't very formal, but I wanted to post it here to hopefully get people thinking about ways our campus could work even harder to prevent sexual assault, particularly since it's been such an important topic on campus over the last few years.

Sam,

Last year for my women's studies CAP project, one of my group members called the Campus Police and asked if they would be willing to give rides to students after hours if they felt like they were in an unsafe situation. They said they would only do so if they didn't have better things to be doing. In addition, when the question of the involvement of alcohol came up, they explained that they would not be able to treat the student who felt they were in danger with amnesty. It would seem to me that were an intoxicated student (underage or not) to feel safe contacting the police and certain of their positive response, unnecessary incidents that potentially put students in dangerous situations could be avoided. Honestly, I think it is unfortunate that we can only really rely on campus police to intercede once an act of assault has been committed and that while we are willing to grant medical amnesty to students who go to the hospital, we are not willing to grant amnesty to students, particularly women, who ask for help when they feel unsafe.

In light of this recent event, I would love to see some sort of reinforcement of police policy on willingness to transport students after hours in the form of an e-mail sent out to the campus police officers, and I would be hopeful that there might be some sort of conversation initiated with the office of sexual assault prevention about an extension of the amnesty policy to women and men who seek law enforcement assistance when they feel threatened. Barriers that exist to seeking help make dangerous situations that much more dangerous. Particularly since alcohol is so often a factor in acquaintance rape, I think that it is an issue that needs to be addressed.