Author: Andrea Kippur
Occidental takes pride in having students of a higher caliber then the rest of the academic world, so why don’t we hold students to that standard in regard to sexual assault? Let Occidental be the exception to the rule and have the lowest rates of assault.
Too many people can start sentences with “when my friend was raped…” or “when I was attacked…” This is not something unique to Occidental’s campus. People have a higher chance of being a victim of sexual violence during their time at college compared to any other time in their lives, and yet it affects at minimum one out of six women and one out of 33 men. On a college campus, that number increases to one out of every four women and remains at one out of 33 for men. With such high rates, it is hard to believe that sexual assault is the most under reported crime in the country.
Occidental has a zero-tolerance policy in regards to sexual assault; meaning if an Occidental student is proved guilty of rape, he or she will be expelled from the school. 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police, but what about to the Occidental administration? Many experts acknowledge a variety of factors that keep survivors from reporting their crime. Being drunk, wearing certain types of clothing or having a previous sexual interaction are often used as reasons to justify the attack. Less than 12% of rapists ever spend a day in jail.
Very few of us talk about how those rates translate on our small campus of 2100. People joke that you cannot walk into the Marketplace without running into the person you made out with at a party the night before, but what about running into the person who raped you? What about walking into the average class of 16 and seeing your attacker sitting across the room from you? How many people on our campus are survivors? How many still consider themselves victims?
Recently a good friend of mine told me that she came to the decision to bring charges against the person who raped her at Occidental. Considering the attack was three years ago, there is a slim chance her case may result in a guilty verdict, a fact that she is unfortunately aware of. Often times it is very common for survivors to have psychological and emotional scars, which inhibits them from reporting right away. This specific attack happened three years ago, so the chances of this trial turning into a “he-said-she-said” are extremely high. The administration’s verdict will not validate nor invalidate her experience. Regardless of what the administration says, we need a way to ensure the safety of our friends, our classmates and our loved ones.
Occidental has sufficiently had a strong policy in support of survivors, but if their policy prevents true justice form being delivered, then Occidental’s policy needs to change.
We, as allies and survivors and friends and lovers, need to shine a spotlight on perpetrators of sexual violence. We need to make sure that these perpetrators are not kept on our campus to attack more people. Survivors of sexual assault are four times more likely to contemplate suicide and three times more likely to suffer from depression. If Occidental rightfully takes such a strong stance against sexual assault,
Why is it that we are in an environment where survivors and other students are continually placed at risk?
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