Talking about sexual violence on our campus
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was controversial from the start in the current political climate, but its impact on the ongoing #MeToo conversation did not begin until mid-September.
On Sept. 13, Senator Diane Feinstein announced she had obtained a letter from a woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault while in high school. Christine Blasey Ford eventually went public with her accusation against Kavanaugh, testifying to the details of the alleged assault in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27.
In addition to impacting Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Blasey Ford’s decision to go public with her accusation intensified a desire for conversation about sexual assault, both nationally and on college campuses.
Conversations about victim blaming and the need to believe sexual assault survivors are important to have. These issues, however, are difficult to explore in an in-depth and productive way that is also mindful of the well-being of survivors.
A productive discussion would include actionable suggestions on how to support survivors of sexual assault, prevent sexual violence and would avoid devolving into a partisan debate. The discussions would be less about what each party claims to be true and focus instead on a fair and just method of seeking the truth after accusations are made.
When the issue of sexual violence is discussed amongst friends and classmates, maintaining respect on all sides can ensure the conversation is kept productive.
In an academic setting, these conversations can be further complicated by politics and ideology. Professors may be reluctant to alienate students or be uncertain of how to broach the topic of sexual assault in the first place.
But according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 11.2 percent of all undergraduate students and nearly a quarter of all female students will be sexually assaulted while on campus.
With any given student’s college life so likely to be impacted by sexual assault, it becomes necessary for a university to create opportunities for students to share concerns and have difficult conversations in an environment with people they trust.
The Kavanaugh hearings can be used as a bridge to the larger, more needed discussion around sexual assault and its prevalence on college campuses. Academic settings provide a structured middle ground between a dinner-table discussion with friends and an official, university-sponsored dialogue. Professors can serve as potential intermediaries between students who share concerns in a classroom setting and administrators who are in a position to address those concerns.
The issue of sexual assault carries universalizing social implications that can be connected to all classes with unique opportunities for dialogue presented in different curriculums.
Professors can create opportunities within current curricula in both the Haub School of Business and the College of Arts and Sciences that St. Joe’s students can use as a jumping-off point to begin conversations.
Opportunities to give a platform for student discussion that is nonpartisan and nonjudgmental can be created by prompting students to talk about how they are reacting to the information they are reading or watching in news media.
Both in and outside the classroom, the polarizing, political nature of discussions surrounding the Kavanaugh hearings may distract from meaningful conversation. Therefore, the focus in these vital conversations ought to be on how sexual violence impacts people and what can be done to stop it.
A more thorough understanding of the investigation portion of the sexual misconduct judicial process equips students with the knowledge they need to support friends who have been sexually assaulted and may have questions about what happens after they report.
Demystifying the process of how St. Joe’s investigates accusations of sexual misconduct between students would allow for more trust in the administrators tasked with responding to those kinds of incidents.
It is only through meaningful, critical discussion and full transparency in the processes that follow accusations that we can start to conquer the crisis of sexual violence, both on and off college campuses.
When we stop viewing sexual violence as a partisan issue, when we consider that many of our friends, peers and mentors may be survivors, when we stop to examine the support systems around us and how they may be improved, we take the first step in ensuring that the #MeToo movement ends with our generation.
—The Hawk Staff
