The New Political x The Lantern:
Student Perceptions of Sexual Violence
About the project:
Ohio State’s The Lantern and Ohio University’s The New Political have partnered to create Student Perceptions of Sexual Violence, a look at the state of sexual violence prevalence, education and reporting on our respective campuses.
Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females and 6.8% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence or incapacitation.
This project seeks to answer the following: How do students perceive their individual risk of experiencing sexual violence? What may deter someone from reporting an incident? How does current university-sanctioned education around sexual violence work, and how does it come up short? We’ve surveyed students from both universities about these topics, and spoken with experts.
We also offer on- and off-campus sexual violence resources, from how to report an incident to available support.
“Rape culture is so normalized, and it leaves all the responsibility up to women. Finding a way to change the narrative of rape culture”
— Anonymous student respondent
What students think universities can do better to combat sexual violence on OSU and Ohio U’s campuses:
“Teach people to not assault other people instead of teaching people to protect themselves. Protection is important but it should be stopped before it even happens.”
— Anonymous student respondent
“Make education courses more specific to consent and the conversation around giving consent under the influence of alcohol. It is known that if someone is intoxicated, they cannot give consent but this doesn’t prevent a lot of college students from engaging in sexual activity under the influence anyway. There is too much of a gray area and I think that’s something that should be discussed.”
— Anonymous student respondent
“Provide more resources, advertise them more, and provide more comprehensive education on prevention of sexual violence. Additionally, promoting a community that looks out for one another and keeps each other safe would go a long way. Making sexual violence a non-gendered issue would also go a long way, because viewing it as a ‘women's issue’ lets men check out of the conversation.”
— Anonymous student respondent
“The root causes go way beyond what a university can do- but universities should educate about consent and demand a full, thorough investigation for every sexual assault allegation.”
— Anonymous student respondent
“I think the university needs to actually make the process of reporting SAs through the school's office clear to every person. i have heard so many horror stories about victims reporting their experience only to be met with more negative experiences. if the school ensured the process would be in favor of the victim, i think more ppl would actually report their experiences and we would actually be able to fully understand how much of an issues sexual violence is on our campus.”
— Anonymous student respondent
