There isn’t any comfy manner of speaking about rape tradition. However the truth of the matter is, that’s what must occur.
Within the final three years, allegations of sexual assault in native faculties have compelled one thing of a reckoning — which, for a lot of, was lengthy overdue. College students, who are sometimes burdened with the painful work of inciting societal change, have as soon as once more proven their bravery and are available ahead to report assaults and misconduct. They’ve raised their voices, they’ve walked out and so they have demonstrated with the intention to drive us — the adults and leaders and should-be function fashions of the bigger Boulder group — to face the ugly actuality that our tradition propagates sexual assault.
In 2019, Fairview Excessive College’s star quarterback, Aidan Atkinson, whose title was revealed by the Digicam since he was charged as an grownup, was arrested and charged in reference to alleged assaults on a celebration bus the prior yr. Atkinson was acquitted at trial of sexual assault however pleaded responsible to 2 counts of misdemeanor harassment.
In February, in a separate case, a former lacrosse participant at the highschool, who was not named since he was charged in juvenile courtroom, was sentenced to 90 days in jail adopted by two years of probation after being convicted of raping three college students.
And most just lately a former Fairview soccer participant, who was additionally not named, was convicted last month of a misdemeanor in a sexual assault case. The ex-student was accused of pinning a feminine scholar to a locker and placing his hand down her shorts throughout their freshman yr at Fairview. He’s additionally charged with sexually assaulting one other scholar at a basement social gathering; these costs are nonetheless pending and the ex-student is scheduled to face trial once more this month.
With out dismissing what some college students have known as a campus culture tolerant of sexual violence, Fairview is way from being the one college scuffling with sexual misconduct.
In response to a CU sexual misconduct survey launched final week, in 2021 roughly 15% of undergraduate ladies reported being sexually assaulted since coming to CU Boulder, and roughly 19% of undergraduate ladies reported experiencing sexual harassment. These numbers present a marked enchancment from the earlier 2015 survey, the place 28% of undergraduate ladies reported being sexually assaulted and 28% of undergraduate ladies reported experiencing sexual harassment. However even the newest numbers spotlight a pervasive tradition.
Extra broadly in Boulder, the nonprofit Transferring to Finish Sexual Assault has seen an 80% improve in calls since this time final yr, in response to the group’s director, Janine D’Anniballe.
These numbers present that this downside isn’t remoted to at least one college. This isn’t to say that Fairview didn’t have a tradition that was permissive of misconduct, however relatively to say that we should acknowledge that this can be a societal situation that may solely be curbed with cultural change.
And whereas this effort to incite a cultural shift has been mandatory for a very long time, we’re in a great place to make it occur. The techniques to report sexual assault and the companies essential to help victims are, for probably the most half, available in our group.
“In Boulder County, quite a lot of good issues are in place. We’ve got advocacy teams, now we have assets, you may make nameless reviews, you may get an examination performed by a educated sexual assault nurse examiner — the system’s items are in place,” D’Anniballe stated. What we’d like, she stated, is a concerted effort towards prevention.
The Boulder Valley College District has additionally been working to make sure that assets are available for any college students who may want them. The district introduced in a Title IX coordinator and created a student-led Title IX Advisory Council. In response to well being and wellness coordinator Jordan Goto, BVSD is working to supply acceptable measures for each scholar who seeks extra help.
The muse, then, has been laid for our faculties and communities to concentrate on prevention. And prevention begins with training — for college students, employees, college, dad and mom and the group as an entire.
“For years now we have been asking the fallacious query. ‘What can ladies do to maintain themselves secure?’ That’s the fallacious query,” D’Anniballe stated. “The suitable query is, ‘How do we modify our tradition?’”
The reply, for D’Anniballe, is to destigmatize conversations about intercourse and sexuality. “Sexual violence lives on this tradition of silence and misinformation. So the extra we are able to speak about wholesome sexuality, wholesome relationships and consent, the higher,” she stated.
Hand in hand with that is training. And whereas intercourse training has lengthy been part of BVSD’s curriculum, the district has been working to replace it.
“From the second college students are strolling by means of our doorways they’re getting developmentally acceptable consent training,” BVSD’s Goto stated. Basically, the district is working to assist college students construct the talents essential to have and acknowledge wholesome relationships on the youngest age.
However college is just one a part of an adolescent’s life. As a way to incite the cultural overhaul mandatory to finish rape tradition, the group as an entire should be in on the hassle. We want complete intercourse training. We want consent coaching. We have to finish sufferer blaming and start reexamining and doubtlessly reimagining masculinity. And we should create a tradition that values ladies and women and boys and males as equal and equally deserving of respect.
These are usually not issues that college students can do all on their very own.
It’s straightforward to put in writing off one college or establishment and say it’s rotten and the damage brought on there may have solely occurred there. The reality, although, is that it’s a societal downside, which makes it a group downside. This fact, although, doesn’t absolve perpetrators or abusers or these complicit in sexual violence. It doesn’t absolve Fairview Excessive College or the College of Colorado or any establishment the place sexual violence may happen. Moderately, it too ought to ask us to acknowledge that the work that must be performed is cultural.
It will take time, and it’ll take work, and it’ll contain conversations that many will discover uncomfortable. However we owe it to the scholars who’ve had the braveness to return ahead.
For BVSD Title IX Coordinator Elizabeth Francis, we wouldn’t be having this reckoning with out their bravery. “It’s a monumental factor that our college students have advocated and used their voices to convey these points to the group’s consideration,” Francis stated.
Let’s not have their braveness go to waste.
Sources for sexual assault survivors
To contact the Transferring to Finish Sexual Assault (MESA) 24-hour hotline, name 303-443-7300 or textual content BRAVE to 20121.
To file a police report, contact the CU Police Division for on-campus incidents at 303-492-6666 or the Boulder Police Division for off-campus incidents at 303-441-3333.
Extra scholar assets can be found at colorado.edu/dontignoreit.
— Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board
