48% of Female Undergrads at Duke Say They Were Sexually Assaulted While Enrolled, Up Sharply From 2016

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Nearly half of Duke University’s female undergraduates say they have been sexually assaulted since enrolling at the university, a sharp increase from the proportion in 2016, according to a report released on Thursday.

Complaints of both sexual assault and sexual harassment increased from 2016 to 2018. It was unclear, the report says, whether that reflected more incidents or a greater awareness of and willingness to report sexual misconduct, given the national attention the problem has received over the past few years.

The report was based on confidential surveys. The latest, conducted last spring, found that 48 percent of the undergraduate women and 14 percent of the undergraduate men who responded said they had been sexually assaulted while they were at Duke. That is up from 40 percent for women and 10 percent for men in 2016.

The survey was sent to every undergraduate and graduate student at Duke who was over the age of 18. Some 6,782 responded, a rate of 40 percent. The survey defined sexual assault as “any unwanted, nonconsensual sexual contact,” including sexual battery and rape. It did not include sexual harassment or coerced sexual contact.

Duke’s vice president for student affairs, Larry Moneta, said the university’s numbers don’t appear to be out of line with what the Association of American Universities has found at similar institutions.

In 2015 the AAU conducted a multicampus survey that found that one in four female undergraduates reported being the victim of sexual assault or misconduct. More than 150,000 students at 27 universities — 26 AAU members and one nonmember, Dartmouth College — responded. Duke did not participate in the 2015 survey.

The association plans to conduct a follow-up survey this spring. If the results of Duke’s survey are any indication, reports of sexual assault may well be up on other campuses that have instituted procedures to encourage students to recognize and report sexual misconduct.

In 2017 the AAU released a report describing dozens of steps universities had taken to strengthen their policies. The steps include enhancing support for victims, developing interventions for specific student populations, and focusing more on bystander intervention. An AAU spokesman said he could not comment on Duke’s survey results or how they compare with those of other universities.

The 2016 Duke survey found that while students generally felt safe on the campus, they weren’t happy with the university’s procedures for responding to sexual misconduct. Since then, the university has published annual reports showing how many complaints it received and how they were handled. It has also expanded bystander intervention and other training during and after student orientation.

‘Not Doing a Good Job’

Last spring Duke conducted the survey again, to see if anything had changed. In the report released on Thursday, both undergraduates and graduate students generally felt better about the campus climate surrounding sexual assault, including overall awareness of the problem and willingness of bystanders to take action.

Still, “a sizable percentage of undergraduate women in particular continue to feel that university leadership could be doing more to protect the safety of students generally, and more than half of undergraduate women continue to feel that Duke is not doing a good job of preventing sexual assault in particular,” the report says. The survey was conducted under a contract between Duke and RTI International, an independent, nonprofit institute.

Both surveys found that very few women who said they’d been sexually assaulted reported the incident to the police or to university officials. They were more likely to report it to roommates, friends, or family members. Those who did report it to the authorities generally found the response helpful.

Reports of sexual harassment also increased from 2016 to 2018. While complaints from gay, lesbian, and bisexual students were down, members of those groups were still disproportionately affected. The most common complaints involved unwanted sexual advances, sexual comments, and sexual jokes.

Most incidents involving women happened off campus. For male undergraduates, the complaints were more likely to involve activity on campus.

Many victim’s-rights groups worry that off-campus rapes will continue to be swept under the rug if the Education Department’s proposed Title IX regulations are approved. Colleges would be required to investigate only cases that happened on their campus or within an educational program or activity.

The most common time for undergraduate women to be assaulted was during September of their freshman year, the survey found. More than half of the assaults, of both men and women, involved drug or alcohol use by the perpetrator or the victim.

Moneta said he wasn’t surprised by the findings. Based on conversations with students, he said, he expected the numbers to be higher. While the scope of the problem is troubling, “I believe we have empowered victims to recognize behaviors they felt were normal that they realize now were a violation,” Moneta said. “They’re also more willing now to acknowledge they’ve been victimized.”

When he asked students how many undergraduate women would report, over the course of their four years, experiencing an unwanted kiss or a deliberate brush on the dance floor or a party that made them uncomfortable, they estimated 90 percent would, Moneta said.

A Duke student took a more critical view. “I can’t say we’re particularly surprised, but we’re disappointed by these numbers,” said Tara Smith, a junior and member of Duke Students Against Gender Violence. She’s particularly worried about the number of assaults that happen off campus and the additional limits that a revised Title IX procedure might place on the university’s ability to investigate them.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.