Sexual Misconduct Survey at Rice

By Anita Alem     9/23/15 5:31am

According to Rice’s Survey on Unwanted Sexual Experiences, 18.9 percent of female and 4.9 percent of male graduate and undergraduate students have experienced unwanted sexual contact in their time at Rice.

On the survey, conducted in spring 2015, students selected one or more of six nonconsensual behaviors depending on their personal experiences.

Provost Marie Lynn Miranda said the survey is a step toward understanding the dimensions to this issue on Rice’s campus. “These numbers confirm our belief that we have more work to do,” Miranda said. “The objective here was not just to get more information, [but also] to inform better programs that we need to put into place to make sure that all of our students are safe, protected, happy and prospering on this campus.”

---

---

Students could open the survey and choose whether to participate: A total of 72.3 percent of students chose to participate, while 26.8 percent refused. The remaining students either did not open the survey or gave consent but did not enter any data. The data was directly sent to the National Opinion Research Council, an independent institution at the University of Chicago. NORC has yet to provide qualitative results from sections in which students provided more information on their experiences.

“It was important to us to use a third-party data analyst so there was someone external and purely objective looking at our data,” Miranda said.

In fall 2014, the federal government recommended that universities complete climate surveys before the end of 2015 as part of a report regarding sexual assault on college campuses. However, according to Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson, Rice took this step of its own accord.

The Results

Of those providing responses, 35.9 percent overall indicated they had no experience with unwanted sexual experiences. Among responding undergraduates, 24.2 percent of females and 7.4 percent of males had unwanted sexual experiences at Rice. Among responding graduate students, these numbers were 7.2 percent of females and 2.0 percent respectively. Out of the total student population, 5.0 percent of females and 1.1 percent of males experienced penetrative sexual assault.

{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="f93f9d7c-621d-11e5-8e3e-e738fbe9db92"}}

Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Seiichi Matsuda said information on graduate students’ experience with sexual assault is harder to understand, since some incidences of sexual assault may not take place in the Rice environment.

Director of Sexual Assault Prevention Allison Vogt said this is the first year graduate students have had consent and Title IX support information as a part of orientation and had the information included within their handbook. Associate Vice Provost Matthew Taylor said the graduate students also undergo an online sexual harassment prevention training.

“It’s a more complicated challenge to figure out what we need to do to ensure graduate students’ health and well-being,” Miranda said. “But the fact that it is complicated doesn’t deter us.”

Hutchinson said in the future, longitudinal studies must be conducted following groups of students to better evaluate educational programs and learn about students’ experiences.

According to Vogt, it is difficult to determine the rate of reporting or underreporting of sexual assault from these numbers because of the many different paths of reporting and prosecuting.

Chief of Police Johnny Whitehead said the university releases the number of forcible sex offenses reported to Rice University Police Department each year, as required by the federal Clery Act. Whitehead said in the last year, RUPD received 11 such reports on campus; the number was two per year for the three previous years. However, Whitehead said he sees the jump as a sign that recent initiatives like Project SAFE have increased the number of reporting students.

“There’s more awareness, more training,” Whitehead said. “I see more reporting as a positive, because people are more comfortable, more willing to come forward and report.”

Whitehead said it is important to note that this statistic does not take into account the disciplinary outcome of the complaint, or complaints directed to Wellbeing, Student Judicial Programs or other campus resources without notification of RUPD. The number of reports is not released by these other resources on campus.

Vogt said many survivors may not report incidences of sexual assault.

“People who experience these behaviors underreport ... because they are afraid,” Vogt said. “Afraid that they will be shamed, that they will be judged, that they will be asked questions about what they did in order to cause this to happen.”

Combating Sexual Assault

Vogt said she and Title IX Resource Navigator Kate Hildebrandt recruited interested undergraduate and graduate students for a group that has named themselves STRIVE: Students Transforming Rice Into a Violence-Free Environment. According to Vogt, the group works with different organizations such as the Women’s Resource Center, Queer Resource Center, Rice Health Advisors and residential college Chief Justices. The group is looking for volunteers including faculty and staff.

“[STRIVE] is part of our overall coordinated community response to have our students really help us,” Vogt said. “Without students, we’re really not able to do much. They will be providing us with a way into college life and the university to tell us what the culture is and how to change it to make it a violence-free environment.”

Sam Love, co-director of the Women’s Resource Center, said students find it hard to accept that their peers are perpetrators or victims of sexual assault. Love said Rice should focus on preventative programs rather than the aftermath of sexual assault.

“I hope that the release of the survey results acts as a catalyst for critical discussion and the creation of impactful initiatives and programs that educate students on consent and sexual assault, prevent sexual assault, and provide support and justice for victims,” Love said.

The WRC will be holding an event for students to discuss the results on Wednesday evening. Vogt said representatives from the Wellbeing Center will visit college masters and resident associates to discuss healthy relationships, including breakups and long-distance relationships.

Faculty and staff are being educated about sexual violence prevention and responses to students who disclose experiences to them through Project Community Awareness and Response Education, or Project CARE. Much of the faculty and staff has also already undergone mandatory Title IX education in addition to this, and ongoing sessions for training are held every other week.

Hutchinson said future surveys will be longitudinal and may alter survey questions in order to obtain the most useful results to improve programs.

Matsuda said future surveys for graduate students could be significantly more useful if they determined whether experiences occurred at Rice or off campus. “This [survey] forms a baseline for us,” Hutchinson said. “We would have loved to have a baseline that was five years ago. We would have loved to have a baseline that was two years ago. How we conduct future surveys depends on [the question of] what more we need to learn to help us address these problems.”

Peer Institutions

A different climate survey conducted across 27 campuses by the Association of American Universities was released on Monday, Sept. 21. This survey found that 27.2 percent of female college seniors reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact. A total of 150,000 students responded.

Miranda said Rice’s results come down to making Rice better, regardless of national statistics.

“We’re not interested in making a comparison between Rice and other institutions,” Miranda said. “We’re interested in making a comparison between who Rice is now and who we want Rice to be.”

Deputy Title IX Coordinator Don Ostdiek said Rice made a decision not to treat sexual assault as a compliance and regulatory issue, unlike many other universities.

“This is a human, public health issue and instead of investing money in lawyers and legal issues, we invest it in [well-being programs],” Ostdiek said. “Instead of talking about dry definitions, we’re going to talk about sex — not just scare tactics, but how [to] have healthy sexual relationships. Let’s help people who are victims and survivors and help people have healthy, good relationships.”

---