Picking up on the nationwide conversation surrounding domestic and sexual violence, Pepperdine University hosted a two-day forum last week where educators, activists and students from all over the country gathered to discuss how higher education campuses can better handle dating violence and abuse.
The event, titled “Student Life, Relationships and the Law: Confronting Domestic Violence in Education,” featured various panels, workshops and a keynote address from Dana Bolger, a grassroots leader on ending gender-based violence.
Studies by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence report one in five college students experience dating violence. In the last year, dozens of universities nationwide have come under scrutiny for failing to properly handle cases of alleged sexual assault or violence. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is currently investigating 76 universities, including USC and UCLA, for alleged violations of the country’s Title IX law governing gender equality. Pepperdine is not under investigation.
Joanne Belknap, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, said university and faculty staff are crucial to the way in which schools handle cases of domestic abuse or violence. Belknap, who is also the president of the American Society of Criminology, was speaking during a panel on Friday afternoon addressing “Intersectional Perspectives on Sexual and Domestic Violence on Campus.” The 90-minute session was attended by about 40 people, most of whom were women.
In many cases, Belknap said she has been the sole professor to stand up for students who are victims of sex crimes.
“When I do, I get my butt kicked,” she said, explaining that college faculties are predominantly white and lack proper training for when a student reveals they are victims of domestic abuse.
She also pointed out the importance of differentiating between the terms “violence” and “abuse.”
“So much of it is not violence,” Belknap said. “The vast majority is not violent and is still incredibly harmful…threats of death, stalking, incapacitated rapes.”
She has commonly dealt with higher-ranking managers and colleagues who prefer to deal with such cases internally, as opposed to using a university’s proper investigative channels to report potentially serious sex crimes.
Alesha Durfee, an associate professor and director of the gender studies Ph.D. program at Arizona State University (ASU), said universities are making progress in educating on sexual violence, but often fail to reach out to marginalized groups such as the LGBT community. Instead, they place more focus on athletic teams and Greek organizations. In the mainstream, she pointed to the media’s intense scrutiny of the Ray Rice scandal in which the NFL player was caught on camera brutally punching his then-fiance. Similar crimes are not as scrutinized if committed against a member of the LGBT community, the panelist said.
Jasmine Lester, a former ASU student who founded Sun Devils Against Sexual Assault, said she was sexually assaulted and harassed by a female ASU professor while studying abroad in Europe. But when she reported it to her school, administrators failed to investigate and her alleged attacker remains on the school’s faculty.
“I was betrayed by the institution I thought would protect me,” Lester said.
In exploring potential solutions, University of North Carolina law professor Deborah Weissman offered some key goals: students must feel they can trust their college’s support system, have a sense of connectedness to their campus and feel they are in an environment that supports safety, respect and trust for all.
