I found this editorial from the Dartmouth student paper very interesting. A new coordinator has just been hired for their sexual assault prevention program, and the newspaper staff has some recommendations for her consideration. The challenges at Dartmouth seem to be around the small size of the campus, which causes people to be reluctant to turn to peer counselors because they fear that confidentiality won’t be maintained and because they already know of the counselors as outspoken activists.
While I’d like to challenge the idea of known activists as off-putting as counselors, I can think of people I know for whom that would be the case. Particularly in situations where the student is not yet ready to fully perceive what happened to her or him as a crime, there can be a fear of seeking help from those who are seen (although I am sure that these peer advisors are trained to be very nonjudgmental and non-pushy) as very definite in their beliefs. Although those with experience as survivor advocates make great anti-sexual assault activists and therefore serve the community at large very well, it saddens me to learn that at least some students perceive that activism as making them less useful to individuals. Thoughts from student activists and peer counselors? I imagine the size of the campus impacts this question quite a bit…
Dartmouth’s student government is also planning on reviewing the school’s sexual assault policy next year. There has been some debate already around possible revisions to their student code of conduct, and I found this comment from one of the administrators regarding the appropriate standard of evidence for their hearings worth sharing:
Many other schools that have implemented a higher standard of evidence have much greater police forces at their school, Burke said, arguing that Dartmouth is a fundamentally different place.
“We really don’t think this community would be interested in having a more intrusive information gathering process,†she said.
This is an excellent example of why SAFER does not advocate a single policy as the ideal model for all schools. What works on one campus with the resources and student body of that campus may not work at another school, which has a different culture and different resources. I’m glad that Dartmouth’s administration is thinking those issues through – if they change the disciplinary process to require a higher level of evidence than they are able to supply, then the process is not going to work. What aspects of evidence gathering and/or standard for conviction they should change is not for me to say, but I hope that the students’ demands next year addresses these issues very thoughtfully.
