Last Monday, Dean Suzy Nelson sent an email out to all students, staff, and faculty at Colgate. Contained within the email were the heartbreaking and disturbing results from a survey conducted by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium in the spring of 2015. I will not lay out these results for you, but if you have not seen them, you need to.
Though the Class of 2019 is not represented in the survey, these results deeply affect all members of the bicentennial class as much as they affect every member of the entire Colgate community. Because of this, I went around to different members of the first-year class and asked how they felt about the sexual climate survey results as well as their personal feelings towards sexual assault on campus.
Opinions were varied. First-year Class President Mike Vitale, who earned rapport with students and administration alike with his eloquence and enthusiasm, cares deeply about the safety and security of his fellow students.
“I think the rights steps have been taken in initiating HAVEN and AlcoholEdu, but with all the responses our administration has been receiving, we’re all bound to work together to come up with something that will be beneficial to the entire Colgate community.”
Kit Keane, a first-year Senator, was more critical, however. She is upset at the minimal measures that the administration has taken up to respond to sexual assault.
“I think they’re very public attempts to appropriate valid sentiments.” Sentiments that Mrs. Keane feels that are turned into just bullet points and words on a slideshow. She goes on to admit her frustration at not being seen as having a legitimate voice, even though she is a part of student government (SGA). “Nothing is taken seriously, and everything seems to be brushed off by the administration.”
Vitale continued to stress that real change can only be accomplished “together” and the importance of getting administration on board to institute change on campus. That change, says Keane, is being prevented by the Board of Trustees.
Another first-year, Jessica King, believes that the root of the problem lies in our acceptance of various cultures here at Colgate.
“It is so ingrained. The amount of times I’ve heard people say things like the 'Colgate drinking culture' or the 'Colgate hook-up culture' appears to be a thing that people just accept as a part of Colgate.”
Another frustration that many had is the delivery of the results.
“To be honest, the administration is very opaque in their procedures. The results were supposed to be released a month ago. They weren’t,” said Keane.
“You had to click on an external link in an email that most people wouldn’t read. It just seems that it's trying to bury something that we should be furious about. I am also fed up with being compared to peer institutions. We should get [sexual assault frequency] to zero.”
First-year Benton Scholar Leiya Salis brought the issues of where sexual assault occurs. While many are quick to blame those on Broad Street, Leiya points out that blame may be largely misplaced.
“A large majority of it happens in dorms rooms and dorm parties, not frat parties.”
Salis also called out several comments made on various social media outlets, specifically Yik-Yak.
“When you go on [Yik-Yak], they say ‘Oh yea, the statistics aren’t right because they only asked people have only been assaulted to do it.’ They’re almost defending sexual assaulters.”
Natalie Ramirez, another first-year, takes slight issue with the results.
“I think a lot of people are freaking out being compared to the benchmarks. So even though it is a problem, and one person raped is one too many, I still think that we need to take the numbers into context,” argued Ramirez.
Keane then moved on to the subject of exclusivity.
“As a freshman girl, I have friends that are freshman guys, and they are the guys who would punch someone or protect me at a party, but they can’t go in [to the parties] with me. I go vulnerable and unprotected. It's disgusting.”
When other first years were asked if they were surprised at the results, Maximillian Michael and Allison Jordan responded unequivocally: No, they were not.
“There’s a miscommunication. When a girl goes to report an assault to campo, they say ‘Okay, but we need your name and we’ll talk to the kid’. And that’s not what we were told at orientation,” said Michael, a member of the Colgate swim team.
“There have been tons of unnerving instances since I’ve been on campus. I’ve walked by a frat house with friends and they start asking ‘Freshman girls, freshman girls?’ and then they started grabbing us. Male privilege is so real. It’s not okay,” said Jordan.
“Colgate, however, is still doing a lot better job than many other college campuses,” said Ramirez.
Michael responded to Ramirez’s point stating, “that doesn’t mean to stop working.”
While this is a small sample of first-year students, it is apparent that opinions on the data and its implications are as varied as they are passionate. But one theme remains the same: Colgate has a problem, and its needs to fixed.
Let’s fix it Colgate.
