Responding to Campus Sexual Assault: A Simple but Important Way to Get Active

Hi Feministing readers. Everyone has been reading and talking about the Center for Public Integrity report about campus sexual assault, the second installment of which was released last week. When the first part of the report came out, Ann was kind enough to plug a project that V-Day and Students Active for Ending Rape are currently working to get students involved with the issue on their campus. The Campus Accountability Project asks students to take a copy of their school’s sexual assault policy, and use the step-by-step questionairre on SAFER’s site to review the strengths and weaknesses of their school’s policy and programming. These analyses will be submitted to the SAFER/V-Day Campus Sexual Assault Policies Database (must register to view) and maintained there permenently.

Yesterday RH Reality Check put up a feature I wrote on the connection between CPI’s findings and the need for good campus sexual assault policies. Please check it out and consider becoming a part of CAP (if you’re currently a college student—if you’re not, encourage any college students that you know!) Growing this database is important. It’s a great tool for student organizers who are trying to change policy and programming on their campus, but it also plays a big role in promoting administrative transparency and reminding schools that policy matters and people are paying attention to what kinds of attitudes and practices they are promoting. 

We have a lot of goals for this database—once it has expanded we anticipate being able to make stronger statements on campus best practices and policy suggestions for schools to implement, as well as maybe one day having the power to get campus sexual assault policies included in the myriad of rankings that students and parents check out when they are looking at schools. It’s just as, if not more, important than so many other aspects of what folks consider when choosing a campus. So please check out the CAP and tell your friends. If your school is already in our database and you want to add some commentary, let us know !