I think there is a lack of communication, not only in West Chester University’s student body, but also in our society as a whole when it comes to sexual misconduct. After Casey Tobias’s article “Student’s demand better reporting policy on sexual misconduct crimes,” I observed through the comments on The Quad’s website, Facebook, and through word of mouth that not all students on campus agree with Tobias’s summary of the sexual misconduct discrepancy at WCU and the issues surrounding it.
Before I say anything else, let me be clear: I did not write this article to call anyone out or tell someone they are wrong. I did not write this to claim that someone is not entitled to their opinion or that their opinion must agree with mine. This article is a response and a request to both the students and the administration of WCU to consider the real problems at play.
The issues at hand with the sexual misconduct policy are about information and accountability. These two subjects are not necessarily what might first come to mind in conjunction with the sexual misconduct discrepancy, but that is where the miscommunication has divided WCU. When it comes down to it, sexual offenders need to be held accountable for their actions and the students of WCU deserve and demand to be informed about the campus they call home for eight months out of the year.
At the President’s Breakfast on Nov. 6, President Greg Weisenstein commented that only sexual misconduct that could be identified as an ongoing threat was going to be reported in timely warnings. Upon being asked to clarify that statement, he went on to explain that a large majority of the sexual misconduct reports given to Public Safety are situations of sexual assault in which the attacker was known to the victim beforehand, such as students in relationships. He classified these situations as isolated events, not ongoing threats, and therefore they would not be found in timely warnings.
It is my understanding, gathered from President Weisenstein’s explanation, that only serial offenders are important enough to hold accountable for their actions, in the eyes of the administration. I imagine that the 48 students who reported sexual assault on campus this semester, and were deemed not important enough to be reported to the student body, might disagree. The statistic of 48 sexual assaults on campus in the 2015 fall semester has been thrown around a lot in the conversations about the sexual misconduct policy, but this statistic is not a number. These are real students who attend this campus with real flesh and blood attackers, and these students deserve to have their attackers held accountable for the trauma they inflicted just as much as a serial offender.
I am a part of this student body, and I am not a statistic. I have a name, I bleed, and I feel fear. And when I was cornered in a stairwell in a dorm building by a drunken student twice my size, I can tell you, in that moment, my fear for my safety was no less important or real than that of someone in a similar situation with a less familiar attacker. Fear and trauma are not things we should be quantifying for the sake of ranking what is important to inform the student body and what is not. If an abuser in a relationship is not held accountable for their sexual assault by the school and Public Safety because he/she is not an ongoing threat, what is to stop this abuser from moving on to another relationship? If the abuser had 10 relationships a semester and abuses each of his or her partners, does this make them a serial offender, even if they are known to the victim? Someone with the moral capability to commit sexual assault once has the capability to do it again. In short: there is no such thing as an isolated event. Every sexual abuser is an ongoing threat.
The logic behind our current sexual misconduct policy is flawed and does not reflect the desires of the majority of the student body. Some victims do not want to share their trauma, and that is their prerogative, but for the victims who desire to speak out about their experience, the student body wants to hear them. We deserve to be informed about the campus we call home, and lulling the student body into a false sense of security by not informing us is a lie by omission. Victims deserve to have their attackers held accountable by their peers.
I propose that the administration should work with Public Safety to create an email subscription that students can sign up for which will update them with the timely warnings for sexual misconduct. That way each student can decide for his or herself whether they would like to be informed. But it should not be up to the administration to decide that for us. If you think this is a plausible solution, I encourage you to send an email to Michael Bicking, Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety, at mbicking@wcupa.edu, Lynn Klingensmith, Director of Social Equity, at LKlingensmith@wcupa.edu, and President Weisenstein at President@wcupa.edu.
Don’t let yourself or your peers be swept under the carpet. We are important. We deserve to be informed.
Veronica Mattaboni is a fourth-year student majoring in English with a minor in creative writing. She can be reached at VM785925@wcupa.edu.