“If a student comes to the administration with a problem, the administrator doesn’t want the student to have a problem, their first job is to protect the institution from harm. Not the student from harm", said Claire Bond Potter, Former Associate Professor at Wesleyan University.
It is quite unfortunate how very often universities are more concerned with their image than that of the well-being of their students.
Colleges and universities across the U.S. have different reasons as to why they’d rather stay hushed when it comes to sexual assault. One being that the annual endowments they are receiving from alumni will decrease if people were aware of the real shocking number of sexual assaults happening at said university every year. These institutions are being set up to lie in order to receive millions of dollars from alumni and to not scare away incoming Freshman students.
The university that is frequently mentioned in “The Hunting Ground” documentary-- an expose bringing to light the sheer amount of rape cases across college campuses-- was UNC: Chapel Hill.
Melina Manning, who was a Former Assistant of Students, said, “What you do is to make it difficult for students to report, so you don’t have 200 or 1,000 reported assaults, so you can artificially keep your numbers low.”
Many institutions encourage students not to go to the police because if it goes to the police, it’ll become a public record. Colleges and universities would rather tell a student to forget about it, and not write down the assault. As soon as an assault gets written down, it’s mandated to be reported, but many institutions keep the numbers underreported. Forty-four percent of universities underreport sexual assaults before and after government audits.
According to colleges, they’d rather downplay the situation and tame it rather than make it a big deal. Ninety-seven investigations were being held on ninety-four separate universities for not handling sexual assault correctly. These institutions could be fined up to $35,000.
In “Hunting Ground," one discovers that forty-five percent of colleges reported zero sexual assault in the year 2012. It was said that in 2012 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with 18,516 students enrolled there had zero sexual assaults. I honestly believe this isn’t possible-- sexual assault happens at almost every university/college. The universities aren’t doing enough to make students feel comfortable to come up front about their assaults.
Clinical psychologist, David Lisak said, “Universities are protecting a brand, they’re selling a product.” This is essentially what’s going on throughout campuses in the U.S.
Institutions as prestigious as Harvard, Dartmouth, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley, University of Virginia, and University of North Carolina aren’t bringing justice to the victims of sexual assault. From 2009-2013, Harvard had 135 reported sexual assaults, only 10 were actually reported. In the University of California, Berkeley there were 78 reported sexual assaults, and only 3 expulsions. Between the years of 2002 and 2013, 155 assaults were reported, meanwhile only 3 students were expelled. At Stanford University between the years of 1996 and 2013, 259 assaults were reported, and there was only 1 expulsion. At the University of North Carolina between the years of 2001 and 2013, 136 assaults were reported, and nobody was expelled. At University of Virginia, 205 were reported with there being 0 expulsions towards sexual assaults, but 183 students were expelled for cheating. Obviously something isn’t right here-- the number of students who are being expelled is extremely low and some universities provide no penalty whatsoever. Where is the justice in this? Students come to these fine universities to receive an outstanding college experience, and what do they get? They get a situation where the university turns their backs on them, and completely ignores their problems. This must not continue. Universities and colleges throughout the U.S. must take action in helping the victims instead of blaming them!
