More funding, policies needed for rape prevention

Sept 10, 2016, www.press-citizen.com

By Kristin Smith Shrimplin

Kristin Smith Shrimplin is the president and CEO of Women Helping Women, an agency that serves all survivors of sexual assault, stalking and domestic violence in Hamilton and Butler counties.

September marks the back-to-school season. Incoming college first-year students are adjusting to new routines of dorm life, parental freedom, rigorous class schedules and the buzz of a thriving academic and social life on campus.

But there is another reality that is currently happening in their environment. Many of them, primarily women, are surrounded by the “Red Zone.” According to the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study, more than 50 percent of college sexual assaults occur in either August, September, October or November. The CSA’s findings also indicate “that women who are victimized during college are most likely to be victimized early on in their college tenure.

This is why this time on campus is so critical. As students are exchanging innovative ideas and debating critical concepts – their teachings must involve discussions of consent culture. But how much of their tuition costs will cover mandatory classes on gender-equality and social justice? How much time and space will our university presidents, deans of students, athletic coaches, professors, residential hall advisors, and Greek Life campus leaders allocate to the promotion of consent culture – waving it proudly like a symbol of excellence on a school banner? Does consent culture even get discussed in our lecture halls, in our campus board rooms, on the football fields, in the bars, at the parties, or in the dorm rooms?

It does not. In fact, our region, along with the nation, struggles to even address rape culture. We struggle to form budget-backed policies with best practice actions that truly dismantle and eradicate a public health epidemic that attacks one out of four campus students who will experience sexual assault this year. And those statistics are low. We know that sexual assault has already happened at our campuses this year – in the first week. This is not theory. This is fact. These are our students. These are our children. These are our future leaders. But now we call them survivors. We leave them to fend for themselves in a culture where others’ entitlement trumps autonomy of one’s own body.

Let’s talk about that – when did violence rise to the level of normative acceptance? History would suggest that such an entitled culture was born when our country was founded. The genocide of Native Americans and our country’s institutionalization of slavery was the beginning of people becoming property. But we are nearing 2017 and there is no room for someone to not own the decisions and safety of their own body. Yet here we are – struggling with rape culture to the point where we cannot even hear our own voices trying to teach about consent.

Women Helping Women (WHW) believes in building a culture of empowerment that dismantles gender-based violence. We have expanded our services to campuses to keep up with demand of victimization – but we cannot generate change alone. We need all members of our diverse community to cultivate a culture where consent and equality are valued over normalized violence and entitlement.

The solution is not easy – culture change never is. Ending rape culture requires us to end inequality with gender, race, class and all intersections of oppression. It mandates that all forms of social injustices cease being “justified.”

It demands that our city leaders generate budget-backed policies for prevention. It demands that our academic institutions provide as much funding to campus sexual assault prevention as they do for athletic scholarships and recruitment strategies. It demands that our K-12 schools open up all of their health classes to dating violence and sexual violence prevention curriculum. It demands that corporate board rooms open up their portfolios to back agencies working on the front lines with survivors and to invest in equal pay for women. It demands that every male – coach, teacher, parent, friend, colleague – exercises true strength and promotes equality, empowerment and safety of women and girls.

We are in the Red Zone, and the fact is that many sexual assaults and rapes have already occurred this academic year. This is not how we welcome students to their “higher education.” We did not raise them for this. So, we must rise up, dig deep, get real and invest with our dollars, our policies, our actions, our campaigns, and our words to promote a culture where consent is the norm, and entitlement holds no place on our campuses or in our communities.