Campus Tour Guides Should Know the Facts About Sexual Assault

My daughter and I recently returned from a whirlwind tour of six colleges in the Northeast. We were part of the annual spring migration of high-school students and their parents who take part in campus tours and information sessions. These are meant to attract students to the college and make parents feel good about parting with nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

But it’s not just about the money: We’re also parting with our children, giving over their physical protection and intellectual development to administrators, faculty, staff, and students. So my daughter and I both had some questions for the tour guides about an issue that keeps rearing its ugly head on campuses nationwide — sexual assault.

We are not just any mother-daughter team. I’m a professor who has been involved in gender equity for 15 years. My daughter is in the midst of creating a high-school curriculum on consensual sex for a class project and is interested in discussions of social justice.

So she decided that she would ask every student tour guide how their institution handles sexual assault. This seemed reasonable since at each college, the admissions representative suggested that we ask the student tour guide questions about what it is like to be a student at that school. And it seemed especially relevant since a new study indicates that between 2001 and 2013, reports of sex crimes on college campuses have more than doubled.

The answers we got were mostly pathetic.

At our first stop, a large urban research university, the tour guide said, “I’ll talk to you about that later,” and after a few minutes told her, over the constant querying of a young man about the location of the rec center, “Oh, we handle it really well. They bring in the lawyers and everything.” A university administrator, a colleague of mine we met with while on campus, set the record straight and told us that they have a process that includes the campus health center and campus police before contacting the campus lawyers.

Still, we were hoping to hear about a continuing process for educating against rape culture and preventing sexual assault, beginning with freshman orientation and continuing in multiple forms and venues for the next four years.

We wanted to know that skilled and knowledgeable people were available to students and others to assist during and after crises, and should lawyers come in, they are there to protect the victims’ rights. We wanted to hear that the students themselves were engaged with advocating against sexual violence and that the campus was utilizing the best practices available.

At our next stop, a mid-size private university in a suburban location, my daughter again asked the question and was told with great excitement, “We handle this really well, and every member of every club has to take bystander training.” We were both pleased to hear that bystander training is required — that and the green dot antiviolence campaign to reduce personal violence have been found very effective at reducing the incidence of sexual violence.

But after that tour ended, we picked up a copy of the student newspaper and read a front-page article that presented key points from a student-prepared report about sexual violence on campus. The report gave the university grades on 12 measures: On seven of the 12, the university received a D or an F, including an F for the campus campaign against rape culture.

The next day at a small rural college,students and parents were given separate tours. I asked the question, and the guide stepped aside from the group and said softly just to me, “I wasn’t going to cover that, but we handle it really well.” I was surprised not by the guide’s admission that she wasn’t going to cover it, but by the mantra of, “We handle it really well!” That mantra did not explain how sexual assault was handled, and it seemed like the guides had no idea how to answer the question. Yet, there are numerous good resources available to colleges and students about how to really “handle it well,” like the government website Not Alone.

Not all the colleges we visited fell down on the job. At one, in a small town near summer resorts, our tour guide did give us a substantive answer — and, notably, he was our only male guide. When my daughter brought it up, he became thoughtful and said, “There has been a lot of campus activism around this issue, including a student-made documentary and a student-led group for men to discuss issues of masculinity.” My daughter nodded her head and told the guide that was an interesting answer and the first to reveal campus activism. It made her feel like there was an open campus conversation, and I was thrilled that we received what seemed like a genuine response.

Were we expecting too much? Of course, tours and information sessions are in-person public-relations materials, and campus sexual assault is not something that colleges want to feature. But when as many as 20 percent of all women will experience sexual violence in their lifetimes, and a 2015 survey by the Association of American Universities found that 23 percent of undergraduate women respondents experienced some form of sexual assault, shouldn’t college tour guides at least be prepared to answer questions?

Maybe our tours were exceptional. But the eerily similar “We handle it well” language suggests that ignorance, if not subterfuge, abounds. If so, it is time to rethink the campus tour so it is less a snow job and more a meaningful discussion of both the academic and life resources available to our children. Campus administrators are appropriately being held responsible for social climate as well as instruction these days; those who are representing colleges should be knowledgeable about important issues like campus sexual assault.

I would like to live in a world where I send my daughter to a college that is proud to discuss how it handles difficult issues, where learning how to have difficult conversations is a part of the educational process.

I am not sure that I can bring myself to do one more info session or tour, but if I do, I’ll be looking for more openness and honesty.

Beth Mitchneck is a professor of geography at the University of Arizona.