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OP-ED: Virginia Could Become a Leader in Sexual Assault Prevention on College Campuses

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Through progressive changes like those in the Every Voice Bill, passed this year in New Hampshire, Virginia could take steps to lead the way in prevention of campus sexual assaults, writes David Millman.

I first got involved with campus sexual assault prevention when several friends of mine at college were sexually harassed by my floormate. When they filed a complaint, I witnessed first hand how convoluted and confusing the Title IX reporting system was, and learned just how many people experience sexual assault at college. According to “The Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study,” approximately 1 in 3 women will experience sexual harassment. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 16 men will experience attempted or completed rape. All in college. The American Medical Association calls it the “silent epidemic.” 

I became part of an organization called the Every Voice Coalition, a student advocacy group working to end campus sexual assault. We fought this year to get a bill passed in the New Hampshire state legislature, NH SB 679. This bill is written largely by students and introduces many protections with clear policy requirements for colleges including improved transparency, confidential counseling, evidence-based training, coordination with law enforcement, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with local rape crisis centers and health centers. The bill also requires transparent data collection on sexual assault though “Campus Climate Surveys” created by a governor-appointed task force and administered by colleges every two years. The results would then inform decision-making on this issue.

It was just passed into law on July 20th, 2020 as a part of an omnibus package. It was done in New Hampshire with a Republican Governor. This isn’t a partisan issue, and there’s no reason why similar protections aren’t Virginia law. 

Virginia is ahead of a lot of states. Just this past session, Delegate Dan Helmer introduced VA HB 913, which passed, making it so you can’t be penalized for drug/alcohol use when reporting sexual violence. Virginia also has a requirement to have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with both a rape crisis center or victim support service and local law enforcement. 

But Virginia currently doesn’t address the role of legal counseling in reporting assaults/harassment, doesn’t require regular training for students/faculty, and doesn’t collect campus culture surveys to inform administrative decision making. Making all statistics public, streamlining confidential counseling, and emphasizing training for students and faculty would go a long way in helping survivors and preventing assault. These are all parts of the Every Voice Bill that passed in New Hampshire, and could easily be passed in the next legislative session. 

Virginia could lead the way in campus sexual assault prevention and protect hundreds of thousands of students. Legislators should make this a priority in the next session.

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect editorial policy.

Photo: Columbia University by George Hodan; CC0, Public Domain

Surviving Liberty

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For some LGBTQ students at Lynchburg’s Liberty University, life was tough even before coronavirus came to campus.

Eli Germanotta had finished their meal at the Reber-Thomas Dining Hall and started to walk back to their dorm when they began to smell alcohol and spray paint.

“There were jocks running away shouting slurs like faggot,” said Germanotta. 

Once Germanotta, who uses they/their pronouns, returned back to their dorm located on the east side of campus, they took off their jacket and laid it out on their bed. Spray painted in large letters on the back was the same word that their peers had yelled at them as they walked away from the dining room. 

As demeaning and possibly traumatizing as the experience was, Germanotta didn’t consider the event surprising, since it had occurred at a University that has proudly proclaimed itself “Politically Incorrect since 1971.”

Conservative activist and televangelist Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of Thomas Road Baptist Church, had a vision that came to life in 1971: a fundamentalist Christian university located in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. 

Originally named Lynchburg Baptist College and housing 154 students, Liberty University has become one of the largest evangelical Christian universities in the world and one of the largest private non-profit universities in the United States, with a student body of over 15,000. 

“From the beginning, the goal was not to create another bible college,” said Falwell Sr, quoted on Liberty University’s website. “The vision was to create academic excellence, world-class facilities, NCAA Division-One athletics, student activities, and to provide it all with a distinctly Christian environment.”

When Falwell Sr. passed away in 2007 at the age of 73, his sons took up his work. Jerry Falwell Jr. became the president of Liberty, while Jonathan Falwell became the senior pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Both men still hold those positions today.

Even though the University and its founder have been known to take an anti-LGBTQ stance, the school still welcomes students who are members of the LGBTQ community — as long as they obey the school’s guidelines.

Germanotta was raised in a Christian conservative household outside of Richmond in the Mechanicsville area. Despite the environment of their upbringing, Germanotta knew from an early point in their life that they were gay. 

“Whenever the fantasies about who I wanted to be with happened, it was always a guy. I’ve always had an open mind about things,” said Germanotta. “I just never expressed those views because of how my family environment was.” 

While Germanotta was in their senior year of high school, their parents made it clear that the only option for college they would support was a Christian one. They chose Liberty after making a friend group at “College for a Weekend,” where the school welcomes prospective students to spend four days attending classes, staying in dorms and eating in dining halls. 

During their first two semesters at the religious University, Germanotta enjoyed the friendships they made in addition to the education they were receiving. It wasn’t until their sophomore year when things began to become complicated.

Another student in a biology class asked Germanotta for their phone number so the two could study for an upcoming test. Once the other student discovered that both of them lived on East Campus, he suggested they meet in a treehouse, to which Germanotta agreed.

“He crawled in after me and asked all these questions about where I was from and if I was seeing anyone,” said Germanotta. 

After a while of questions and uncomfortable interaction, the other student got in front of Germanotta’s face and pulled down his pants, asking if they would give him a blowjob. Germanotta refused to perform the sexual act, pushed the other student away, and left the treehouse. 

Photo via Liberty University

Germanotta reported the incident both to his residence hall assistant and Title IX services. The University took no further action against the student who had harassed Germanotta, but moved him to a different dorm on campus. Title IX failed to act, both when Germanotta reported the incident in the treehouse and when their jacket was spray painted. 

Although Liberty University was apathetic about the harassment they had endured, the school did take action when they began showing their own homosexuality more overtly. 

Students at the fundamentalist Christian college are required to abide by their student honor code, termed the “Liberty Way.” Among the violations in the code is a prohibition against “sexual relations outside of a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman.”

“They leave it specific enough to scare you but vague enough to do whatever they want,” said Germanotta.

During their time at Liberty, they had become involved in a secret romantic relationship with a male student from another college. When they posted a photo of the two of them kissing in front of a Christmas tree to their private instagram page, someone following them reported the photo to the school’s Residence Life office.

Germanotta’s response was to write the Residence Life office a letter saying they had been dared to kiss the other student. However, this didn’t dissuade the university’s pursuit of the matter, and eventually, they were required to meet with Pastors at the school’s Community Life office. The meeting pertained to a series of “red flag” behaviors that had been reported to school officials, pertaining to their actions and views on homosexuality.

“If, for example, I was in an old-testamant class and they brought up homosexuality and I wrote an essay about what I thought about it, versus what they wanted me to say about it, it would get a failing grade,” said Germanotta. “A lot of those little flags got sent to Residence Life.”

Germanotta was required to meet with Pastor Dane Emerick twice a week to look into what “god’s word” had to say about their behavior. When they began skipping their required meetings, the school sent him a voicemail threatening to drop them from a class. Germanotta decided they’d had enough.

“The environment there beyond the administration level is toxic,” they said. “I decided to drop out because I was tired of all the pressure that student conduct was putting on me.”

Jerry Falwell Sr. Photo By Liberty University, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

Liberty University’s long history of holding anti-LGBTQ and other socially conservative views reflects the political orientation of both men who have presided over the school. Both Jerry Falwell Sr. and his son have been known to support right-wing politicians while denouncing liberal causes such as gay marriage and abortion. 

Days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Falwell Sr. stated in a televised interview with fellow Virginia-based televangelist Pat Robertson, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

In the late 1970s, Falwell Sr. launched the Moral Majority, a political organization which would become a driving force behind conservative politics in the ensuing decade. The organization lobbied on issues it believed were important to maintaining Christian moral law. 

Before the Moral Majority’s dissolution in the late 80s, the organization had over four million members and over two million donors. Falwell Sr. would go on to credit the Republican group with Ronald Reagan’s election victories. 

Prior to his political activism with the Moral Majority, Falwell Sr. made public comments about his skepticism toward civil rights activists. 

“I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others who are known to have left wing associations.” said Jerry Falwell Sr. while giving a sermon in 1965. 

His son has followed in his father’s footsteps, supporting Republican causes while running the evangelical university. To the shock and disappointment of other Christian conservatives, Falwell Jr. endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and has called conservatives critical of Trump “fake Republicans.”

Jerry Falwell Jr. Photo By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia

Some members of the LGBTQ community on Liberty’s campus have had a much more positive experience than Germanotta’s, despite some of the school’s history and policies. 

“When I first came to Liberty I was closeted, so the school’s history of LGBT issues never crossed my mind,” said Jonah Lackey, an LGBTQ student at Liberty majoring in Cinematic Arts.

Lackey contends that his experience at Falwell’s college has strengthened his faith and pride in being gay. Growing up in a Christian home made him believe that one would have to choose between being gay or being a Christian. But Lackey says that meeting other gay Christians on campus made him rethink the dichotomy and realize you can be both.

“Once my perspective changed from ‘being gay is a choice’ to ‘God made me gay’, my entire way of seeing the Bible in regards to this issue has changed,” said Lackey. “Issues with the school regarding the LGBT community are highly complex, but I think people would be surprised at the amount of staff who are loving and encouraging,”

According to Lackey, the stigma around homosexuality is changing dramatically among the younger student body, which is gradually creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment within the school.

“Now that homosexuality is being more widely excepted in American culture, people are starting to realize they know more gay people, and it’s causing them to re-examine their thoughts on the issue,” said Lackey. “For professors there’s still a negative sense, but I’m starting to see that less and less amongst students.”

Even Falwell Jr. has made small attempts to back away from his previously outspoken opposition to LGBTQ rights. In an appearance on Fox & Friends in 2019, he claimed he had never made any comment about gay rights, and that people misrepresent Liberty University as being anti-LGBTQ.

Weeks prior to his comments on the show, though, Falwell Jr. denied transgender identidies at a CPAC event, saying that God chooses the gender of people. These comments later sparked a small protest on Liberty’s campus, showing that things are indeed changing at the Christian university. For their part, though, Germanotta is still upset by Falwell Jr.’s continued comments.

“If you opened your mind as much as you opened your mouth we’d all be in a better place,” said Germanotta. “If you read some of the original Jewish or Greek translations of the bible, you might find something that’s a little different.”

Germanotta is currently studying studio arts at the University of Lynchburg with ambitions of a photography career. They are also minoring in gender studies, psychology, and business. 

“I don’t constantly look over my shoulder anymore,” said Germanotta. “I don’t have people looking at me with a funny face every time I wear makeup. I can do whatever I want to express my gender and I’m not belittled because of it.”

Top Photo via Liberty University

Sex Ed Is Key to Reducing Teen Pregnancy, Advocates Say

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States requiring schools to teach sex education have lower teen pregnancy rates; some say high teen pregnancy rates in some Virginia localities are a direct result of the lack of a sex ed requirement in the Commonwealth’s schools.

In the early 2000s, Martinsville, a city of about 13,000 near the North Carolina line, had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Virginia. In a typical year, nearly 75 of every 1,000 teenage girls got pregnant.

More than a decade ago, the school opened a teen health clinic, which provides birth control and treats sexually transmitted infections. Since then, the city’s teen pregnancy rate has plummeted.

“It’s just been amazing because I’ve seen success,” said Beth Holyfield, the clinic’s health coordinator. “I think everybody was a little nervous about it because it was Bible Belt area, you know, offering birth control for children.”

Under the federal Title IX program, the Martinsville High School Teen Health Clinic can treat STIs and provide birth control without notifying the student’s parents. Holyfield and two nurse practitioners don’t discuss abortion, but they do routine checks on student weight and blood pressure and administer prescriptions.

According to new data from the Virginia Department of Health, among the state’s 133 localities, Martinsville ranked 16th in teen pregnancy rates in 2018. For every 1,000 teen girls, there were about 21 pregnancies.

Martinsville’s increased access to sex education and contraception coincided with the drop in the city’s teen pregnancy rate. Experts say preaching abstinence over other methods — Virginia’s official policy — has been ineffective. States with more schools teaching contraceptive methods tend to have lower teen pregnancy rates.

Localities vary widely in teen pregnancy rates

Virginia’s teen pregnancy rate in 2017 was 15 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage girls, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirteen states had a lower teen pregnancy rate than Virginia’s. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut all had fewer than nine pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls.

Within Virginia, the rates vary widely, according to data obtained by Capital News Service from the Virginia Department of Health through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The data showed the number of pregnancies for every 1,000 adolescent girls in each city and county of Virginia. That way, it’s possible to compare localities regardless of population.

Petersburg, 30 miles south of Richmond, had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the state in 2018: about 44 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage girls.

Norton, a city at the southwest tip of Virginia, was second with 35 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. Lancaster County, along the Chesapeake Bay, followed at about 30 pregnancies per 1,000 adolescent girls.

The cities of Roanoke, Richmond, and Hopewell all had rates around 25 pregnancies for every 1,000 teen girls.

Sex education is optional in Virginia

Under the Virginia Standards of Learning, the state’s public school curriculum, schools in the commonwealth may teach sex education but are not required to do so. State law requires an emphasis on abstinence, but the SOL curriculum also includes recommendations for teaching about contraception and condom usage.

More than 90 percent of Virginia schools teach abstinence. Fewer than 40 percent of the state’s high schools teach contraceptive methods recommended by the CDC, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS.

Virginia Department of Education spokesperson Charles Pyle says the curriculum is designed to promote parental involvement and help students cope with peer pressure during developing stages.

Pyle said classes “include age-appropriate instruction in family living and community relationships, abstinence education, the value of postponing sexual activity, the benefits of adoption as a positive choice in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, human sexuality, and human reproduction.”

Dr. Samuel Campbell, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Virginia Physicians for Women health-care service, says pregnant teens need more than that.

Pregnant teenagers encounter a specific set of problems because of limited resources and support, Campbell said.

“They have difficulty with transportation. They frequently will seek care later because they are afraid to tell their parents (or) family. They have to continue with their schooling,” Campbell said. “And they have to deal with the social stigma of being a teen mom.”

Most states require sex ed

Thirty-two states require schools to teach sex education, according to the most recent statistics from SIECUS. Eighteen states — including Virginia — do not.

There are seven types of recommended contraception: the birth control pill, patch, ring and shot; implants; intrauterine devices; and emergency contraception. In 2017, no states reported that all of their schools were teaching about all seven methods as well as how to properly use a condom.

According to SIECUS, 19 states reported more than half of school districts teaching students about a variety of contraceptive methods. Fifteen of those states had teen pregnancy rates below the national average of 18 pregnancies per every 1,000 adolescent girls.

Of the 10 states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates, eight required sex ed in all school districts. They include New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, which had pregnancy rates under 15 per 1,000 teenage girls.

The six states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — reported that three quarters of their schools taught students how to use a condom.

On the other hand, of the 10 states with the highest teen pregnancy rate, seven do not require sex ed in schools. Those states include Arkansas, Texas, and Alabama.

Nationwide, 89 percent of school districts teach abstinence, which recommends that teens put off having sex until marriage. Many schools teach both abstinence and contraceptive methods. That is the case in New Jersey and New Hampshire, where teen pregnancy is below the national average.

Dr. Elizabeth Broderick, a pediatrician in Newport News, calls abstinence education “insufficient information.”

“Abstinence is an excellent way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections,” Broderick said. “But eventually, many people choose to become sexually active, and they should have accurate and complete information so they can make the best decision that fits their beliefs and values.”

Broderick says long-acting and reversible contraceptives are generally best for adolescents, but they can be hard to get.

“Access to contraception is difficult for most teenagers,” Broderick said. “Education about anatomy, physiology, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and consent is appropriate at school and at home.”

‘Educate them on the facts’ to make good decisions

The CDC’s teen pregnancy prevention guidelines say implants and intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are the most effective and reversible birth control methods. Broderick says these are more difficult to obtain than condoms or spermicide because they require a trip to the doctor and a prescription.

Dr. Natalie Dogal, an OB-GYN with Virginia Physicians for Women, said talking about contraception is important for preventing teen pregnancy. She said she discusses contraceptive options with all her teen patients.

“They tend to have heard good or bad stories from friends, parents, or from reading online, and I like to educate them on the facts to help them make good contraceptive decisions,” Dogal said.

According to SIECUS, about 40 percent of male and female high school students nationwide report having had sexual intercourse.

Nationally, the teen pregnancy rate has decreased in recent decades. According to data from the CDC, the rates dropped by 50 percent from 2005 to 2017.

Nearly a third of teen moms reported not using contraceptives because they didn’t think they could get pregnant. Another quarter of teen moms reported that their partners did not want to use contraception.

“Many teenagers think they are invincible,” Dogal said. “That includes thinking they will never be the one who gets pregnant or gets an STI.”

Resources for Teen Mothers in Virginia

The Virginia Department of Health has resources for first-time teen mothers. In the “Resource Mothers” program, a community health worker develops a supportive mentoring relationship with the teen and her family. The free resources include information about prenatal care and health care, assistance finishing school, and tools to avoid drugs and alcohol. Mothers can also sign up for free text messages on prenatal and infant care.

The Healthy Teen Network has a variety of resources for teen parents across the country, including #NoTeenShame, “Mom, Dad — I’m Pregnant,” and Healthy Families America.

To find a health assistance program near you, call 1-800-311-BABY. This will connect you to the nearest health department. For information in Spanish, call 1-800-504-7081.

The U.S. Bureau of Maternal and Child Health has resources for women nationwide. The programs and initiatives include home visiting, which provides at-risk pregnant women tools for mother and child health, raising children, and preventing neglect. The bureau seeks to promote child development and encourage positive parenting.

Planned Parenthood has a webpage for teens to get information about sex, puberty, pregnancy, and birth control, as well as a private chat function for additional questions.

Planned Parenthood has health centers in Charlottesville, Richmond, Hampton, and Virginia Beach. There are also two health centers in the Washington, D.C., area.

How We Got and Crunched the Data

For this report, we downloaded teen pregnancy rates for each state from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, we needed the teen pregnancy rates for each city and county in Virginia. The Virginia Department of Health posts such data on its website; however, at the time, the most recent statistics available were for 2017.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the VDH, asking for the 2018 data. The department emailed us the file we requested and then posted it online.

The VDH provided the data as PDFs. We exported the data as an Excel file and cleaned up column headings and other formatting. We have posted all of the data we obtained from the VDH and CDC.

One question we wanted to explore was whether there was a relationship between teen pregnancy rates and the sexual education curriculum taught in schools. To examine this on the national level, we used 2017 data from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

We compared the council’s data, which explains how comprehensive sex ed is in each state, with the pregnancy rates from the CDC.

Written by Hannah Eason and Emma North, Capital News Service. Top Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash.

Transgender Teen Student Who Sued School Board Gets Major Federal Court Win – Years After He Graduated

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Gavin Grimm has won another important victory in his fight against the Gloucester County school system that kept him from using the correct bathroom during his high school years.

Gavin Grimm became a household name overnight, it seemed. The transgender teenage high school boy – now 20 years old – sued the Gloucester County, Virginia School Board in 2015, when he was a junior. One of his first wins came the following year, and another after he had already graduated, although he later had a setback at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday afternoon, Grimm won another major victory. A federal court ruled the Gloucester County School Board acted in a discriminatory manner and was wrong to ban him from using the boys’ restrooms in his high school, and was wrong to not have changed his school records to indicate he is a boy, and will have to pay his attorneys’ fees.

“The court ruled the board’s policies violated Grimm’s rights under both the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,” WAVY reports.

Perhaps it was his comment to the press that he just wanted to be able to use the restroom like any other student, that struck a chord with many people across the country – just not with the Gloucester County School Board, who forced him to use a specially-devised “boys room” that had been converted from a janitor’s closet.

“The issue remains far from settled. A patchwork of differing policies governs the nation’s schools,” the AP reports Friday. And today’s “ruling will likely strengthen similar claims made by students in eastern Virginia. It could have a greater impact if the case goes to an appeals court that oversees Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas.”

In 2017 Grimm became the youngest person to make TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

OPINION: Does Betsy DeVos Have a Point About Campus Sexual Assault Guidelines?

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that the Department of Education would be reviewing campus sexual assault guidelines passed by the during the Obama Presidency. She stated, among other things, that “through intimidation and coercion, the failed system has clearly pushed schools to overreach…the sad reality is that Lady Justice is not blind on campuses today.”

There was, of course, an immediate and expected uproar from the left.

In fact, my initial instinct was also to be angry — just because it was Betsy DeVos. My general loathing of her charter school policy and support of President Trump, who is shaping up to be the main antagonist of my 20s, makes me want to disagree with just about everything she says.

So why do I find myself saying, weirdly, that I agree with DeVos on this issue?

While I consider myself far, far, to the left, it is also important to be able to see both sides of a story — especially in politics, and especially when lives are hanging in the balance.  

Photo by @CUDJOE70 / Twitter

It’s true that the Obama-era guidelines encouraged universities and colleges to take sexual violence seriously, when in truth, most were not. As a woman, I have experienced in my lifetime the negative stigma surrounding sexual assault, and the gradual shift in attitude to a more accepting society over the last few years.

But at the same time, the rules were ultimately flawed. An easy example of this is the potential loss of federal funding. If schools don’t take sexual assault allegations seriously, they lose it. Pretty simple, and a fitting punishment until you think about its implications on college campuses.

The flaw here is that this Obama-era legislation expects colleges and universities to fully and properly persecute sexual assault cases out of fear — rather than an inherent desire for justice or empathy. I can point to countless examples of systems implemented under terms of fear,  notorious for their extremity and lack of tolerance or mercy. The government’s actions during the aftermath of 9/11, for one, and the subsequent increase in xenophobia and Islamophobia that is still alive today.

American educational institutions replied to these stricter guidelines as those frightened of losing federal funding often do – by overcompensating. A recent article written by Emily Yoffe of The Atlantic highlighted this very issue.

Yoffe wrote that chemical biology student Kadwo Bonsu, a junior at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was the son of Ghanian immigrants and the only black member of his fraternity. He was an avid jazz musician and had plans to pursue his two passions, science and music, upon graduation.

According to the article, Bonsu smoked some weed with a fellow white, female student and they got to talking — then kissing. She made it clear that she didn’t want intercourse, to which Bonsu replied that was fine. Eventually she started performing oral sex, and it was then that she realized how high she was, and that she was uncomfortable with the situation.

“The encounter continued for a few more minutes, during which, she [R.M.] wrote, he cajoled her to stay—’playfully’ grabbing her arm at one point, and drawing her in to kiss—then ended with an exchange of phone numbers. R.M. had not removed any clothing,” wrote Yoffe.

She left, and soon felt, according to her statement, that she had been sexually assaulted — R.M. had felt a completely valid pressure to not leave him hanging, and thus she had stayed. Because she felt expected to, which sucks. And now, she felt violated.

I’m not saying these feelings aren’t valid, because they are. Every woman has a right to say yes or say no without any fear of consequence. Every woman has a right to feel violated, or uncomfortable, and to go as far as she wants to go. All I’m saying is, what happened next reflects the flaws within many university guidelines concerning sexual assault.

Eventually, R.M. pressed charges that didn’t pan out. Nevertheless, the university placed restrictions on Bonsu that eventually led to a campus ban. He was ostracized from his fraternity, from his jazz band, from everything he had loved. He was eventually found not responsible for sexual misconduct, but still the school held up its ban. He tried to apply to other schools but was not accepted.

It’s uncomfortable, because no one wants to side with the perpetrator, but the truth is that the university was acting unfairly because of governmental pressures.

“The interim restrictions, the full-bore investigation and adjudication even though R.M.’s own statement does not describe a sexual assault—were mandated or strongly encouraged by federal rules that govern the handling of sexual assault allegations on campus today,” wrote Yoffe.

This isn’t a singular event. Definitions of sexual assault have become increasingly vague and troubling, under pressure of federal mandates and negative press.

At Brown University, a training video on consent expressed that “consent is knowing my partner wants me as much as I want them.”  This is absurd because of its vagueness in direction, and because it implies that partners should just know when sex with their partner is consensual. Consent is about having an open and honest conversation, not about reading minds.

At the University of Tulsa, and many other schools, guidelines state that students cannot give consent while under the influence, without specifying what amount of alcohol consumption is too much, and where the line must be drawn. If someone consents at one beer versus eight shots, does that count as sexual assault?

As recent as last month, four feminist scholars from Harvard University wrote a letter to the Department of Education addressing this very issue:

“Definitions of sexual wrongdoing on college campuses are now seriously overbroad..they often include sexual conduct that is merely unwelcome, even if it does not create a hostile environment, even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and even if the accuser’s sense that it was unwelcome arose after the encounter.”

With increasingly harried and imprecise methods of defining and addressing sexual assault issues, universities have created an environment of fear and guilt surrounding this issue.

As the authors of the letter wrote, “the definitions often include mere speech about sexual matters…they are so broad as to put students engaged in behavior that is overwhelmingly common in the context of romantic relationships to be accused of sexual misconduct. Overbroad definitions of sexual wrongdoing are unfair to all parties, and squander the legitimacy of the system.”

In fact, populations of men and women defensive of their behaviour, rather than understanding of the seriousness of sexual assault have become increasingly common. They are a product of a hostile environment where students feel that any of their actions could be construed as sexual assault or harassment.

By not properly defining sexual assault, schools have minimized the validity of sexual misconduct as an issue. As a result, schools label everything as sexual assault, and in doing so have mocked the true gravity of being sexually assaulted.

Sexual assault is a somber, unrelenting monster of an issue. In my time as a college-going female, I have seen sexual assault chip away at its victims, leaving fragments of women I once knew to be brighter, happier.

Title IX, in some ways, has created a malicious atmosphere prone to people inclined to blame the victim, and make light of the consequence of sexually assaulting someone.

Image by Know Your IX

However, what stings the most for me is that most administrators are blind to the adverse effect of their policies.

They’re overcompensating to make sure they adhere to government standards of addressing sexual misconduct, and don’t really care about the consequences because they care too much about the funds.

What is apparent in all of this though, is that universities don’t care about me or my level of comfort, or how safe I feel walking alone at night — as long as funding is on the line. So long as this threat exists, schools will first do everything they can to keep their heads above water — even if it means following a ridiculous set of rules.

Then, maybe — maybe — they’ll hear me out.

Ultimately money and fear, the true vices of humanity, tends to trump empathy and proper understanding. And frankly, I don’t know how the government didn’t anticipate that when they passed the guidelines that used money to instill justice.

The power to make rules concerning sexual assault for public institutions comes from Title IX, an outstanding federal law written in 1971.

Title IX was originally used to empower women in the 1970s, and to a certain degree it reignited the women’s rights movement. Title IX originally codified the notion that institutions could not discriminate based on sex and this set of guidelines supports, rightfully so, the idea that students who suffer from sexual assault and harassment are being deprived of equal and free access to an education.

Prior to Title IX, however, women like me were not considered equal to men. Men were given more academic opportunities, like scholarships, while women were considered unequal — only 1 percent of athletic budgets went to female sports played at a college level.  Title IX changed all that. While there are definitely more battles to be won, we’re still slowly moving towards true equality.

Yet, Title IX’s modern interpretation is setting us back. These battles, battles for safe campuses and equality, need to be won with justice and a societal sense of empathy and respect for women. Not with fear of losing federal funding — ultimately, fear will always backfire and lead us to a place from which it is even harder to recover.

There is a counter-argument to all this, I know. That something is better than nothing. But if it’s a flawed something, does that still ring true?