As weekend revelry ramps up, it is highly important that students be aware of the potential dangers of sexual assault during Homecoming weekend, according to students and College staff. Due to high attendance rates at parties and easy access to alcohol, Homecoming weekend creates an increased risk for incidents of sexual assault, according to Elizabeth Hoffman '13, the chair of the Special Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault, a council that facilitates collaboration between students, administrators, faculty and alumni on issues related to sexual assault. "Usually sexual predators find vulnerable people to prey on and use alcohol to make people more vulnerable and less able to resist," she said. "Because alcohol plays such a role in our social spaces, especially on big weekends, it's even easier to access this predatory tool." Homecoming brings both registered and unregistered guests, as well as alumni, to the College, increasing the likelihood of sexual assault, accoding to Holli Weed '14, co-director of Mentors Against Violence, a peer education group that works primarily within Greek organizations to raise awareness of sexual assault and provide prevention training. "There are people who go a little bit crazy over the weekend, and that kind of situation gives perpetrators an opportunity to [commit sexual assault]," she said. "There's a lot of people on campus and there's not a lot of accountability." Sexual assault, along with hazing and alcohol abuse, is one of the College's biggest concerns, according to Sexual Assault Awareness Program co-coordinator Amanda Childress. "The problems are really the same on every college campus," she said. "The difference is the culture around how to go about attacking some of the problems." One in four women and one in 33 men nationally are victims of sexual assault over the course of their college career, Hoffman said. "That number is for attempted or committed rape, whereas harassment or non-penetrating assault is much more common," she said. "I would say probably every woman at this school has been touched in a way she didn't invite or want." Dartmouth's statistics are much higher than the national average, but the Clery Act numbers officially reported statistics of sexual offenses on campus every year are hard to interpret because reporting rates are low nationally, Hoffman said. Higher numbers could be a positive indicator that students are seeking help instead of staying quiet about assault, according to Childress. "Anyone within this field would attribute higher numbers to the fact that more people know about the resources so they actually utilize them, which also indicates that students on our campus feel safer coming forward than they might on another college campus," Childress said. Increased awareness of sexual violence and a strong support structure for victims of sexual assault generally lead to higher Clery Act numbers, according to Weed. "Clery numbers do not necessarily correspond to how many actual cases [of sexual assault] there are," she said. "That is why it is so hard to get an accurate picture of this issue." SAAP co-coordinator Rebekah Carrow said that embarrassment, fear of reputational damage and loss of social status, shame and confusion can all prevent victims from reporting cases of sexual assault. "Creating a safe environment for survivors of violence to come forward and get the support they need is the number one priority of the SAAP office and this administration," Carrow said. Most sexual assault cases are initiated in social spaces and are not committed by a "stranger in a dark alley," according to Hoffman. Because Greek houses are the primary social spaces for a majority of students on campus, the houses perpetuate sexual assault on some level, she said. "There are dynamics to our social spaces that I think really facilitate abuses of power and enable some violent behavior, especially exclusive ownership of spaces and controlling what is in different drinks and who gets them," Hoffman said. Weed agreed that the Dartmouth social scene combines risk factors by having many people in an enclosed space with alcohol, which makes sexual assault more likely to occur. However, the Greek system itself is not necessarily responsible for this, according to Weed. "Colleges that don't have Greek systems still struggle with sexual violence, but our social system combines a number of risk factors," she said. There are many programs in place at the College to address sexual assault on campus, but these programs are mostly geared toward response, not prevention, according to Hoffman. Instead, students have to take responsibility for preventing this problem, she said. "The College should provide the right resources, policy and infrastructure, but we need to adopt higher standards for ourselves, especially in our social spaces," Hoffman said. "Ultimately, I think it's a failure on the students' end." The Dartmouth Bystander Initiative, a new College bystander intervention program which will train students to recognize potentially risky situations and intervene to prevent sexual assault from occurring, will be launched in the winter, according to Carrow and Childress. "Right now a lot of our time and resources are going into the bystander initiative," Childress said. "If we can prevent these things from happening, then we don't have to put as much time, effort, money and resources into [response] services because assaults won't happen as often."
Additionally, male students on campus are becoming increasingly conscious of and involved in preventing sexual assault. The Inter-Fraternity Network is a newly established group that seeks to address the issue, and it is a "work in progress" for men who care deeply about the issue of sexual assault, according to founder Elliot Sanborn '14.
"The most effective way to inspire genuine conversations about this topic, particularly in the context of fraternities, is for individual guys to step up and own the issue of sexual assault as their own as something they take seriously," Sanborn said.
Sanborn said that the goal of the Inter-Fraternity Network is to create an acceptable space within fraternities and across campus to organize men in support of sexual assault prevention.
The College's new harm reduction policies, especially those regarding zero tolerance for hard alcohol violations, may have detrimental effects on sexual assault prevention, according to Weed. The policies could put potential victims of sexual assault into more vulnerable positions since this policy would transport hard alcohol out of social spaces and into more private ones, she said. "These new alcohol policies clearly did not take into account sexual violence they just strictly focus on alcohol and that's a bit worrisome for me," Weed said. Childress said she believes that the policy can be beneficial for reducing sexual assault because hard alcohol will be less accessible. "Students are already drinking hard alcohol behind closed doors on every college campus, but making sure it's not in visible areas is really helpful in preventing people from tampering with [the drinks]," she said. "I don't see [the policy] as impeding or making things worse." Other students interviewed said that sexual assault is a major problem on campus. "Sexual assault is more [prevalent] than it should be," Andrew Zulker '15 said. "To the extent that the social scene is more driven by alcohol and the prevalence of frats at Dartmouth, I would imagine that sexual assault is more prevalent as well."
Sanborn said he believes there are more cases of sexual assault over Homecoming weekend due to increased partying and drinking, as well as the number of outsiders visiting the College.
"I'm not trying to vilify our alumni, of course, but the fact is that when you have a surge of visiting outsiders who have a shorter-term stake in the community that exists at Dartmouth right now, I think that's part of an environment that can lead to more cases of assault," Sanborn said. However, other students said they do not believe big weekends increase sexual assault rates on campus. Ahsan Kamal '16 said that campus is more aware of the problem on major weekends, so there is more oversight of activities. Karna Adam contributed reporting to this article.
