A group of Capital students gathered in front of Yochum Hall from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Nov 20. to protest what they consider to be the university’s failure to achieve justice for victims of sexual assault.
To compel the university to reform the sexual misconduct policy, organizers circulated a petition that collected over 300 signatures.
The demonstrators, who wore university apparel with the word “Capital” covered with duct tape, challenged the rhetoric of the recent online sexual awareness training. They asked of the university administration, ‘Why don’t you think about it?’
In recent years, the issue of sexual assault on college campuses has gained attention across the country. In January 2014, President Barack Obama launched a Whitehouse task force to investigate the mishandling of sexual assault cases at various universities.
While Capital was not on the list, the protesters insisted that sexual assault is a very real problem on our campus.
“No one is willing to have the conversation,” said Rachel Arnold, one of the protest organizers. “Even socially forward thinking people, who recognize that there is a problem on campuses across the country, don’t want to admit that Capital has a problem. We need to start a dialogue on campus about the fact that this is a problem and how best to change it.”
The goal of the demonstration was twofold: to bring awareness to the general problem of sexual assault on campus and to encourage discussion of the university’s current sexual misconduct policy, in hopes of improving it.
The university updated its sexual misconduct policy last June and the changes went into effect July 1.
“It is somewhat of a better policy. There’s no hearing process anymore, and the panel doesn’t involve students, which is good for anonymity reasons,” said Autumn Laws, one of the organizers. “But, there are still a lot of holes in the policy. It gives the university too much leeway in determining who investigates and who makes the final decisions.”
The demonstrators said they would like to see the university enact a more rigid timeline for investigations, stipulate the recording of all interviews, and institute required counseling for all parties involved in a sexual misconduct investigation.
“It doesn’t seem like the university knows what their process is at this point,” Laws said. “It’s almost like they are in the middle of preparing a final policy, and this is just an interim policy.”
The biggest problem the group has with the current policy is that it requires the reporting and accused parties to meet face-to-face.
The demonstrators also raised questions about the efficacy of the university deciding how to deal with issues of sexual misconduct.
“As much as the administration may feel they know how to keep the university safe, its former victims who have gone through this before will have the best knowledge of how to make the policy better,” Laws said.
Roughly halfway through the demonstration, Laws and Arnold met with provost Richard Ashbrook to discuss how best to move forward.
This fall semester, the university recently instituted a required online program called ‘Think About It’ to prevent sexual assault on campus.
“The course is ostensibly good,” Laws said. “It’s a good idea to make students take bystander awareness courses, but the problem is that there are aspects to it that seem to focus more on ‘don’t get raped’ rather than ‘don’t rape.’ It doesn’t really get at the root of the problem. It’s reactive rather than proactive.”
