Campus Sexual Assault: How America's Institutions of Higher Education Respond

ISBN-10: 1495326845
ISBN-13: 9781495326844
Series: Campus Sexual Assault
Category: Education
Pages: 282
Language: English
Published: 2014-01-25
Publisher: CreateSpace
Authors: Francis T. Cullen, Bonnie S. Fisher, Heather M. Karjane

Description

This book is a copy of the government agency publication.EXECUTIVE SUMMARY BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY Contrary to the traditional image of college campuses as safe havens for young adults, students, and women in particular, are exposed to high risks of sexual victimization on campus (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Fisher et al., 1998; Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987). Obtaining a postsecondary education should be a time for healthy risk-taking and for social, intellectual and vocational maturation. Victims of campus sexual assault, however, face potential traumatization—intense fear and emotional numbing, loss of control, and the shattering of their trust and their belief in their ability to make sound judgements about the people and the world around them. The cost of this potential loss is inestimable. During the last fifteen years, the issue of sexual victimization of students has attracted much needed attention partially through highly publicized campus sexual assault trials and allegations of reports being mishandled by school officials (Bohmer & Parrot, 1993; Sanday, 1990, 1996; Warshaw, 1988). In response to public pressure, Federal legislation has mandated that institutions of higher education grapple with—and respond to—the massive problem of young men's sexual violence toward their coeducational peers. (In this summary, we will refer to institutions of high education with the acronym, “IHE”). Congress passed the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act (20 U.S.C. §1092) in 1990 to require all Title IV eligible IHEs to publicly disclose crime statistics and crime prevention and security policies and procedures on campus. The law was amended in 1992 to require that schools afford victims specific basic rights and again in 1998 to emphasize reporting obligations regarding sexual assault on campus1 . This most recent amendment is commonly known as the Clery Act. Despite the emergence of concern about sexual victimization among postsecondary students, little systematic information has been published about the content of sexual assault policies, protocols, and programs that currently exist in IHEs. In Public Law 105-244, the United States Congress mandated a study designed to address nine issues relating to prevention efforts, victim support services, reporting policies, protocols, barriers, and facilitators, adjudication procedures, and sanctions for sexual assault. On 1 November 1999, the National Institute of Justice awarded a grant to Education Development Center, Inc., and its partners—University of Cincinnati and Police Executive Research Forum—to carry out this study. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS To comprehensively investigate the wide array of issues and institutional contexts mandated in this research, multiple forms of data were used to address each issue. These data included a content analysis of published sexual assault policy materials from a nationally representative sample of IHEs, mail surveys of campus administrators from a nationally representative sample of IHEs, field research at eight colleges and universities, electronic focus groups conducted with campus administrators, and legal research of state-level legislation. Our national sample comprises 2,438 institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico, including all HBCUs (N=98) and all Native American tribal schools (N=28). All nine types of schools eligible for Title IV funding were represented in the sample: four-year public, four-year private nonprofit, two- to four-year private for profit, two-year public, two-year private nonprofit, less-than-two-year public and private nonprofit, less-than two-year private for profit, Native American tribal schools, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (hereinafter referred to as HBCU). More recently, the Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act was enacted 28 October 2000.