Here is a spine-chilling statistic, lately published in an op-ed piece for the New York Times by Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld: “only 5 percent or less” of college women who have been sexually assaulted report the incident to police. That’s in contrast to the approximately 35 per cent of sexual assaults and rapes reported to the police nationwide, a statistic that’s nevertheless disturbingly low. Rubenfeld, who has come under attack for his analysis of “consent” and of the role alcohol plays in sexual assaults on campus, cites “low arrest and conviction rates, lack of confidentiality, and fear they won’t be believed” as the main reasons women choose not to pursue criminal charges. These deterrents to reporting recall Davidson College Police Chief Todd Sigler’s analysis, cited in the first of the four posts on this blog about this question (9 Nov. 2014). Very probably, instances in which students have been harassed or assaulted by professors and college staff are even less frequently reported. Another reason for such low reporting and complaint rates is campus culture, both student culture and faculty culture. [Read more…]
Verbal and Oral: Musings
“We had a verbal agreement,” you hear people say all the time when they’re asked if they had a contract with someone. What the person usually means is, “We had an oral agreement.” That is, we had a spoken agreement. Oral is the antonym of written, but written isn’t the antonym of verbal. Both oral and written agreements are verbal, because verbal simply means “composed of words.” If you have a verbal agreement, it could be either oral or written. [Read more…]
Why Don’t Students Report Professors’ Sexual Harassment or Assault? (Part 3)
The most obvious answer to this question would be that the student has been actively intimidated by the faculty member, most probably with the threat of receiving a low grade or evaluation. This sort of scenario does occur: either sleep with me or fail the class. If the student is already worried about the difficulty of the class and her performance in it, this incentive could be strong. [Read more…]
Why Don’t Students Report Professors’ Sexual Harassment or Assault? (Part 2)
This post pairs with the post of the same date on my other blog, “The Immaculate Page.”
One reason of many that students don’t report professorial misconduct is that they don’t know much about policies in place at their institution that pertain to their situation. As noted in my blog post on language, the policy regarding “amorous relationships” between faculty or staff and students at my college, Davidson, is deeply buried in both tortuous wording and an unnecessarily complicated numbering / lettering system that borrows the worst practices from dense legal protocols. [Read more…]
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