Renee of Womanist Musings, Melissa of Shakesville, and Cara of The Curvature talk about rape culture on the womanistmusings podcast.

A columnist at the Brown University Daily Herald has a great editorial this week discussing the realities of sexual assault in light of all of the recent rampant rape apologism in the media (re: Polanski). Check it out.

Amanda at The Sexist takes on the victim-blaming going on at George Washington University.

On October 23, the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center will be hosting a full day CLE on “Defending Sex Workers, People Profiled as Sex Workers, and Victims of Trafficking.” Check out the info at the NOW-NYS’s Young Feminist Task Force.

First, some SAFER business—

It looks like we didn’t win the Ideablob contest, which sucks, but I want to thank everyone again for all of the support: the votes, blog posts, RTs, emails…it was amazing, thank you so much. It’s good to know we have such good people standing behind us.

I also want to remind people that we are currently looking for new Board members. All of the details are located in that link to Jen’s original post, but I wanted to throw in my own two cents: I’ve been on the Board of SAFER since May, and it has been an unbelievably valuable experience. Thinking of it as a Board of Directors doesn’t really do it justice—we are (currently) 8 people who run an organization in our spare time (we are all employed full time or are students outside of SAFER). That’s a huge commitment, but it’s an incredibly satisfying one. The past 5 months have been an amazing crash course in nonprofit management and planning, grassroots organizing, and sexual assault prevention—I have learned so so much, and have had the chance to work with a badass group of people whose passion for the work is nothing less than inspiring. So I encourage folks to submit an application. It can be a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it. Check out the above link and for more information and an applcation, please contact Jennifer Howard, Board Development Coordinator, at jennifer@safercampus.org.

Onto some awesome stuff coming out of colleges down in DC/VA:

A writer at the College of William and Mary’s student newspaper talks about the important role of positive peer pressure in sexual assault prevention.

Fraternities at George Washington University are challenging the assumption that “frat boys” are sexist and homophobic, and holding their brothers to higher standards.

At Georgetown, “R U Ready? encourages collaboration among students from diverse backgrounds and addresses sexual assault and its effects on victims.” (h/t Men Can Stop Rape’s twitter)

Fox NY ran a report last night on campus sexual assault. Sarah, a rape survivor, tells her story in the video below (trigger warning).

I’m fairly pleased with how Fox framed the story. Sarah’s strength as a survivor willing to speak and help others is showcased, and her behavior is never questioned (even though she admits to drinking the night of the rape). It’s a story that is reflective of many campus rapes: he was a friend, they knew each other, they had been drinking, she thought she could trust him. The reporter, for her part, emphasizes the frequency of such assaults and the seriousness with which they deserve to be treated. Also interviewed were representatives from Montclair State University (not the school where this particular rape occurred), a school that, as Nora reported, appears to have a model comphrensive Sexual Assault Response Team.

The Fox report seems to have been sparked by survey results recently released by the Campus Tolerance Foundation. The full set of survey results and the summary can be found here. The survey is—and the CTF opendly admits this—not “scientific.” 2,612 undergraduates on 10 campuses were surveyed on facebook about violence, harassment, and bias on campus. The results in terms of sexual assault are mostly in-line with general statistics on campus assault:

B. Female students are at risk of sexual harassment, assault and date rape
PROOF: 33% of women were victims of serious sexual harassment – forced sex, attempts to force sex, or attempts to force kissing or fondling – or personally know someone who was. Things are worst at Harvard (45%), GWU (43%), and OSU (42%); things are better at the U. of Washington (23%) and Barnard and Texas A & M (both 24%). [See Table 2]

PROOF: 62% of women on the 10 campuses report that they have been victims of broader sexual harassment or personally know someone who has been. Broader sexual harassment includes remarks that insult because of gender and remarks that are sexually offensive, as well as the more serious forms of sexual harassment defined above. Things are worst at GWU (73%), U. of Nebraska (69%) and OSU (66%); they are better at Barnard (52%).

While I’m not entirely comfortable with the claims of “PROOF” due to the self-selecting nature and general methodology and language of the survey, [and for that matter I have questions about the use of promoting statistics that are going to be very vulnerable to criticism by those who would have you believe that there is no campus rape crisis] it is quite telling that this many women openly admitted to being harassed and assaulted. And it does ring true in terms of everything we do know about college sexual assault. If this gets the subject some more attention, then that’s a good thing.

[Don't forget to vote for SAFER so we can continue our work fighting campus sexual assault]

Another head in the sand moment. If we don’t do a rape kit, maybe we can pretend rape doesn’t happen. Read it here.