How 3 Colleges Changed Their Sexual-Assault Practices in Response to a National Survey

Three years ago a survey on campus sexual assault drew national attention over its finding that one in four female college-student respondents said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact, either by force or after being incapacitated by substances like drugs or alcohol.

Fourteen percent of those respondents said they had experienced nonconsensual penetration, oral sex, or attempted rape before they graduated.

The survey was sponsored by the Association of American Universities, an organization of 62 top research universities in the United States and Canada, and in June it said it would follow up with its second Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct. The group will team up to conduct the survey next year with Westat, a corporation that provides research services to businesses and government agencies, according to its website.

With an additional six universities participating in next year’s survey, more than half of the AAU’s members will be taking part, but it is unclear what the new findings may show, or whether the response rate might improve from the survey released three years ago. In 2015, 19.3 percent of people who were contacted responded to the survey.

“Our primary goal is student safety,” said Mary Sue Coleman, the association’s president, in a June news release. “AAU universities are committed to protecting students, and we believe this survey will contribute to the growing body of research on this topic to better inform campus policies and procedures.”

The first survey’s findings did prompt some institutions to change their policies and procedures on campus sexual assault. Here are three examples of how colleges have shifted their practices since that survey:

Harvard University

In its annual Title IX report for 2016-17, Harvard University reported that it had cut half a month from the average length of its Office for Dispute Resolution’s investigations — concerning potential sexual or gender-based harassment — in comparison with the previous year. The resolution time fell from 4.4 months to 3.8 months, the report said.

The university attributed that success to its decision to fully staff the Office for Dispute Resolution after the survey.

“The result of the AAU survey was one piece of data that we looked to in expanding the resources and options for folks on our campus,” said Nicole Merhill, Harvard’s Title IX officer.

The university has seven staff members working in the Title IX Office, said Merhill, and 55 Title IX coordinators spread among the university’s academic departments, according to the report.

The report also showed about a 50-percent increase in disclosures to Title IX coordinators from 2014 to 2017.

Tulane University

Tulane University, in New Orleans, has changed how it deals with campus sexual assault since the 2015 survey. But Meredith Smith, Tulane’s Title IX coordinator, said findings from a separate survey the university conducted two years later had prompted her staff to make improvements as well.

For its study last year Tulane used the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative survey, which bases questions on perpetrator behavior, along with sexual-assault rates.

“We need to ask very behavioral-based questions so we can get the best measurements of sexual assault,” said Smith, who was on the design team of the survey. “If you ask someone, ‘Were you sexually assaulted?,’ you are going to get a lot of people who don’t identify what happened as a ‘sexual assault.’”

The survey drew a 47-percent response rate, according to a report on the survey’s findings. The report, released in January, showed that 41 percent of undergraduate women who responded said they had experienced sexual assault since they enrolled at Tulane.

In response, Tulane is hiring this year for two new positions that, in part, will help prevent sexual assault, according to the university’s website. The posts are an assistant director of fraternity life who specializes in men’s education, and a health-promotions specialist who will educate graduate and professional students on sexual assault.

Tulane has plans to start a men’s mentoring program to “promote positive men’s behavior on campus,” Smith said. It will also organize a coalition of students to plan ways to prevent sexual violence and to improve how the university responds to incidents.

Iowa State University

Iowa State University has hired a new Title IX investigator and is conducting final interviews for five more positions, which it hopes to fill by the end of November, said Margo Foreman, the Title IX coordinator and equal-opportunity director. The institution has also brought in an associate director for its Office of Equal Opportunity, who will help Title IX investigators on an administrative level, as well as a specialist in compliance with the American With Disabilities Act.

Having a position in the office responsible for handling disability-related complaints will allow other investigators to dedicate more time to Title IX and related discrimination complaints, she said.

Foreman will be Iowa State’s point person to coordinate with the AAU for the coming survey. Her group of staff members and administrators will also give feedback to Westat on the questions to be used, and will help ensure the survey falls in line with ethical standards.

Follow Andy Tsubasa Field on Twitter at @AndyTsubasaF, or email him at andy.field@chronicle.com.

Correction (10/12/2018, 3:06 p.m.): This article originally misstated one finding of the 2015 survey. It found that one in four female college students, not college students overall, responding to the survey had experienced unwanted sexual contact. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.