A bill is up for approval this year that would require college campuses to make their policies about sexual assault more transparent and provide security reports to incoming students.

The Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, or SaVE, was first introduced in 2011 in the revised version of the Violence Against Women Act. The Feminist Majority Foundation has a petition on change.org directed toward the U.S. House of Representatives. The petition asks that they move forward with a version of the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, that includes SaVE.

Congress members and Republicans Eric Cantor and Sandy Adams’ most recent version of VAWA fails to include a number of propositions from the Senate-passed VAWA, like protections for Native Americans, LGBT identifying citizens and immigrants. It’s also missing specific guarentees and protections to more than 11 million college students that would be included in the SaVE Act.

In light of the upcoming election, it’s important for college students to encourage both presidential and House candidates to support the SaVE Act. This should be a bipartisan issue that Democrats, Republicans and all politicians can stand behind together.

Statistically speaking, there’s no reason for both the Senate and House of Representatives to deny young women on campus the utmost protection and safety.

The Department of Justice estimates that 25 percent of women on campuses will be victims of rape or sexual assault before they graduate college within four years, and that women between the ages of 16 and 24 will experience rape at a rate that’s four times higher than the assault rate of all women.

While protecting females from sexual assault is important, it’s even more important to realize that we live in a culture that teaches women “don’t get raped” instead teaching men “don’t rape.” Age-old and slut-shaming messages are still repeated to girls about not wearing short skirts and low tops, and about not walking home alone at night.

SaVE is a vital piece of legislation in the same way as VAWA, but in a way, it perpetuates this problematic trend of emphasizing how to avoid getting assaulted instead of focusing energy on teaching people not to assault in the first place.

Take the University of Montana, for example. In response to a series of sexual assault allegations that sparked an investigation from the Federal Department of Justice last spring, the university now requires all enrolled students to score a 100 percent on an online video tutorial about sexual assault and violence before they can register for their spring semester courses.

This isn’t necessarily a game changer — we all remember skimming through Alcohol EDU the summer before our freshman year and barely paying attention to this similar program that educates incoming students about drinking in college.

But it’s a step in the right direction toward a new way of informing students and having conversations about sexual assault on college campuses without the threat of victim blaming.

Rape and assault can be addressed through unanimous political support behind SaVE. In the mean time, since Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on VAWA, college and university officials can also take matters into their own hands, like they did at the University of Montana. The preventative nature of this proposed online course is also a positive aspect in changing the conversation about sexual assaults on campus.

It would benefit Syracuse University and the surrounding community to support similar programs and policies like the SaVE Act and online tutorials. During our first week back at school, the university sent an email notification about an attempted assault that occurred in Thornden Park. This welcome back to campus is an unfortunate reminder of the need to sharpen policies and put effort into battling this issue head-on.

Krystie Yandoli is a senior women and gender studies and English and textual studies major. She can be reached at [email protected] or followed on Twitter at @KrystieLYandoli.

 

Published on September 17, 2012 at 3:06 am