When an opportunity comes up for an additional $300,000 to help the victims of sexual assault and prevent further ones from happening, you’d think that AU would be all over it. In addition to the programs we already have, getting that extra funding would be a big step toward reducing rape on campus. Nothing too controversial there, right?
Wrong. When the University decided to apply for a Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) grant, they failed to follow through on their original decision. And one of the main reasons was that the grant requires all incoming freshman to complete a sexual assault education program, like AlcoholEdu, except it’s actually mandatory. And that’s a reason I just flat-out don’t understand.
Seriously, can anyone give me one good reason not to make sexual assault education mandatory? I’m sorry, but is it too much of an annoyance for freshmen to find a stop on their account because they didn’t complete SexualAssaultEdu? The consequences of having a student body uneducated about sexual assault far outweigh the mild annoyance of having to do this course.
Incoming freshmen are about to enter a world that’s completely new and will confront them with situations they’ve never considered before. Yes, there is usually a rape component to high school health (although, who knows what you learn in abstinence-only programs), but it’s often a very “No means no!” based program. And sex in college is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
This type of education actually can help students understand sexual assault. Despite the complaint that AlcoholEdu is “cheesy,” it actually seems to work. Study after study finds that students who enter freshman year without completing AlcoholEdu have a significantly higher chance of engaging in “problematic drinking,” “high-risk drinking-related behavior” and overall drink considerably more than their peers who complete AlcoholEdu. There’s no data on SexualAssaultEdu specifically, but it’s probably fair to extrapolate that these online programs are somewhat effective.
So why not make SexualAssaultEdu mandatory? And why let that stand in the way of getting even more funding for sexual assault prevention and programming? There’s almost nothing you can do that’s crossing the line in terms of preventing sexual assault.
Emi Ruff-Wilkinson is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences and the winner of The Eagle’s Next Great Ratner contest.
