Hi everybody, my name is Riley; I’m an activist and a public speaker, and one of the issues I’m most passionate about is rape culture. You may have heard of this term before, and it has slightly different definitions depending on who you ask, but I’d say it’s a culture in which rape is normalized, excused, or ignored to a high degree by many people, particularly those in positions of power. I would argue that our culture fits this definition, especially at college and universities.
That does not mean people would say they are okay with rape, it just means that there’s a systemic problem with how we deal with sexual assault.
I realize rape culture has become a highly divisive issue for a lot of people who want to argue about its existence, so whether you want to use the term or not, I thought we could go over some facts and statistics that demonstrate a problem, and then look at how we can solve that problem – regardless of what you want to call it.
Because the fact is, about one in four cis women report being sexually assaulted during their four years at college. For trans people, that statistic is almost one in three, and for cis men, it’s about one in fifteen. And these numbers are probably low for a lot of reasons, including the fact that many survivors feel ashamed of what happened to them, and the fact that we have a cultural taboo around discussing sexual assault.
There’s clearly a problem here. It’s a problem that affects people of all genders, but it appears to disproportionately affects cis women and trans people.
These statistics come from the 2015 Association of American Universities study that surveyed 27 schools and over 150,000 students. It was a massive, comprehensive, well-executed study that gave us amazing new data to look at what’s going on.
So those statistics from earlier were about sexual assault, which is an umbrella term that includes actions such as rape, which can be defined as forced penetration. If we narrow it down just to completed rape, we find that 14% of cis women, 15% of trans people, and 3% of cis men report being raped at some point during their four years at college. It’s a smaller statistic than the sexual assault one, but it’s still way too high.
When we talk about addressing rape culture at a societal level, it can feel like a huge, daunting task – but if you’re a college student, there are steps that you can take to make your campus safer.
One of the things that the AAU study found was that there was a huge range in rates of sexual assaults, meaning some schools had much higher or lower rates than others. That means something can be changed at a local level. You could make your school one of the safest, and other schools could use yours as a template for how they should behave.
So what can you do? Well first, you have to know what your school is required to do. The main law you want to keep in mind here is Title IX.
Most people know of Title IX because it deals with equal treatment in sports programs, but it has a bunch of other parts that are often overlooked. One of those is that your school has to be proactive in preventing sexual violence on its campus. And if your school is not doing that, you can pressure them to do that.
Currently, 285 universities across the US are being investigated by the federal government for not meeting all of the Title IX requirements. Any student can file a complaint to start a Title IX investigation if they were discriminated against for their gender or affected by a “hostile sexual environment.” You can go to knowyourix.org to learn more about all of the rules and procedures involved with that.
But before filing a complaint, you can pressure your school to change its policies using some form of social action. If you’re a part of the student media, you can write investigative articles examining how your school handles reports of sexual assault.
If you’re a part of an LGBTQIA+ group or an anti-sexual violence group, you can draft a letter and submit it to your school’s Dean or President. And if those groups don’t exist, you can start one.
If you think your school is sweeping reports of sexual assault under the rug, you can call them out on it. If you don’t feel that your student body is educated enough on consent, encourage them to do more. There’s a lot you have the power to do.
One thing you can do is try to find out how your school handles cases when it finds someone to be guilty of sexual assault. Does your school expel them? Suspend them? Give them a slap on the wrist? Find out. And if you can’t find out, demand that information. Because schools shouldn’t be letting rapists stay on campus, but many times, they actually do.
The pieces of legislation relevant to this are the Clery Act and FERPA. The Clery Act requires every college to report to the federal government every year with the number of how many people were sexually assaulted at their school.
You can Google this information for any school, and they are legally required to have it publicly available online. If they don’t, write to someone in your administration and ask for it – because you have a right to that information.
Now, interpreting these numbers can be tricky. You would think that a low number of reports would be good because that means people aren’t being raped – but that’s just not true. Despite what the AAU study found, 1,300 universities reported zero sexual assaults in 2014. So it’s not that rape isn’t happening on those campuses; it’s just that people aren’t reporting it.
So a higher number of reports probably means that your school is doing a better job creating a safe environment for folks to report. Of course, schools tend to think that a high number would be bad publicity, and therefore they have little motivation to make students feel comfortable reporting.
Once you know how many reports of sexual assault there were at your school in a given year, you can begin to ask what happened in those cases. Your school is required to investigate every single report, so there should be some kind of outcome.
Many colleges and universities will cite FERPA, which is a piece of legislation made to protect students’ privacy, and they’ll say that they can’t provide that information. That’s a lie and an excuse. When I was in college, I worked at the student newspaper, and we pushed this issue with the administration. We talked to Frank LoMonte, the Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center, and he even wrote in to our paper to tell our Dean of Students that the list of punitive actions taken in cases of sexual assault could be released and was not protected by FERPA.
So if you don’t know what punitive actions were taken against people who were found guilty of sexual assault at your school, demand that the administration tell you. Unfortunately, they’re not required to, but nothing is stopping them, and that information could help reassure students that appropriate action is being taken.
So, to recap: Rape culture is a problem at college, but you can do something about it. I suggest you learn about your rights under Title IX, and I encourage you to pressure your college’s administration to better address sexual violence. You can fight for mandatory lessons on consent, you can demand to know how the school handles cases of sexual assault, and you can create a better environment just by raising awareness.
This video just covers a very small portion of my full presentation on rape culture, which is a little over an hour long. I’m currently taking booking requests for the Spring 2017 school year, so if you’d like to have me come to your school to talk about rape culture, feminism, or queer identity, there will be a link to a request form you can fill out on my website in the description below.
And this video is a part of my Feminism with Riley series that I’m doing in collaboration with Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression.
Be sure to share this video if you think it could be helpful to someone, and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time!
