SA hosts discussion on Survey on Unwanted Sexual Experiences results

By Anita Alem     10/15/15 6:03am

Over 300 students attended the Student Association “It’s Up to Us” meeting to discuss the results of the Survey on Unwanted Sexual Experiences. Students discussed the possibilities of creating a mandatory sexual education course, improving Orientation Week programming and encouraging casual, everyday discussions on sexual violence. The SA offered a free television to the college with the most members attending the meeting; the winner will be announced at Senate on Oct. 14.

SA President Jazz Silva said this meeting was not intended to inform the student body, but to allow for a discussion to occur.

“This is our time to listen to you all, and your time to listen to each other,” Silva, a Sid Richardson College senior, said. “This is 95 percent going to be a discussion. If you leave here and you had something to say and you held it in, that's not going to feel so good.”

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Before Silva opened the floor to student comments, representatives of the SA Wellbeing Committee, the Students Transforming Rice Into a Violence-Free Environment Coalition and Rice Women’s Resource Center presented briefly on the resources and services they offer, as well as their plans to address sexual assault. The RWRC also reviewed the results of the survey itself.

Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson said he felt the conversation surrounding the SUSE results indicated students feel the culture of care is only in reference to alcohol, and said he affirmed its application to all aspects of wellbeing.

"Despite the efforts we have made, there is serious violence taking place on this campus and people are being hurt,” Hutchinson said. “It is incumbent on everyone in the community to stop the violence and make sure no one gets hurt."

Hutchinson said he encouraged all resources at Rice and the entire student body to partner with the administration and take a national leadership role in addressing sexual assault.

Silva began the discussion by asking whether students were surprised by the SUSE results.

Several students said they did not feel O-Week emphasized the prevention of sexual assault enough.

"We see this 1 in 4 women, 1 in 14 guys [experiencing sexual misconduct] —that's a cultural problem,” one freshman said. “That's the culture at Rice. We need to hammer in during O-Week that culture of care not only applies to alcohol but sexual misconduct as well.”

However, Jones O-Week coordinator Akeem Ogunkeye warned against viewing O-Week as a fix-all for culturally rooted issues and said students may barely remember what they learned.

“O-Week is just a week and there's only so much time we have,” Ogunkeye, a junior, said. ”At the residential college level, we can have discussions continually that happen more than just during O-Week.”

Several students, including Silva, said they agreed it was important to address the fact that entering students have varying degrees of sexual education and experience. Claire Randolph, a representative of the Queer Resource Center, said she thought it was necessary to bring all students to a basic level of sexual education, including definitions of consent and sexual violence, through an avenue other than O-Week presentations.

“Around 40 percent of our students are from Texas, and Texas does not have mandatory sexual education in schools,” Randolph, a Jones College junior, said. “It's abstinence-only. If there's a baseline lack of understanding, it can't be fixed in one session."

Martel College senior Abigail Rodgers said she wanted Rice administration to make the qualitative information from the survey available so students could understand when and where sexual violence is occurring on campus. Associate Dean of Undergraduates Matthew Taylor said the third-party data analysis group had not yet provided the qualitative information but that there are plans to acquire the data.

One student said she felt the Rice community lacked casual discussion of sexual assault.

“"We as a community need to just talk about it — you can go to dinner and you can take the time to talk about [sexual assault],” she said. “That's something that anybody can do."

Students also spoke negatively of the prevalence of relationship violence, the closeness of the college system and the isolation felt by unhappy students because of Rice’s title as having the happiest students.

Hutchinson said he agreed that putting meaning to the numbers of sexual assault through personal stories is important, but survivors cannot be expected to share their experiences.

“You can't put any pressure on anybody to share their story,” Hutchinson said. “You just have to be willing to listen when people are ready to talk.”

Hutchinson said any further information-gathering will be done after consulting with undergraduate and graduate students.

"We are cognizant of the fact that people can get survey fatigue, particularly when it is a survey about an extremely challenging subject that might be personally difficult for some individuals,” Hutchinson said. “We don't want to just randomly keep going back with more and more questions. It has to be done very thoughtfully.”

Silva said the student body would use this information to move forward and come up with solutions together.

"This is not the SA who's going to solve this problem,” Silva said. It's not the administration that's going to solve this problem. It's all of us."

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