Last Sunday night, the College held the first in a series of public forums on sexual assault. Several student activists, the College Sexual Assault Policy administrator Camille Hamlin-Mitchell, director of Safety and Security Bob Jones and College President Nancy Dye came together in a two-hour long question and answer panel session. Although scantily attended, this Senate-sponsored event formally acknowledged some of the weaknesses in the College treatment of sexual assault that have in the past fallen subject to student critisicm and raised new propositions of mandatory student sexual assault education.
The forum opened with questions. Forum moderator and Assistant Director of Admissions Jill Medina struggled to properly introduce the tightly structured question and answer panel. Medina then reminded students that they were to have already emailed any questions they wanted the panel to address, as no new or live questions would be answered. “You are the audience,” she told the 30-odd female students, six male students and several administrators attending. “Your role is to listen critically and comment. Comment on the paper and surveys.” After these instructions several sighs were audible in the audience. “I have been asked to give the opportunity to leave if you can’t abide by the format of this evening’s discourse,” she said.
Fielding her first question, “When will the revised Sexual Offense policy go to General Faculty? Why has it taken 10 months for the SOP [sexual offense policy] revisions to be made by the College lawyers?” Dye sprang into discussion of the role of policy in mediating and solving College sexual assault problems, emphasizing the need for other avenues of response, beyond policy changes, to concerns about sexual assault. “The policy is only good for dealing with sexual assault after it happens, only education can help prevent,” Dye said.
For students, however, the policy continues to be an item of contention. “By not defining consent, blame gets put on the survivor. There is no institutional space for support of survivors. First the policy, then there are no staff people to advocate [for the survivor] with training and understanding of what the survivor needs,” senior and Sexual Assault, Education and Ethics Task Force member Ananda Timpane said.
“We need to have two-way discussion on accomplishing goals that we [students and administration] have in common. One is holding perpetrators responsible for their actions, that means looking at our policy, the sexual assault coordinator, making sure that trainings [on sexual assault adjudication and case handling] are done by experienced instructors and thinking about mandatory education,” junior SAST representative Becky Hempel said.
Sitting on the panel as a vocal anti-rape activist and facilitator from the student group Men Can Stop Rape, senior Benjamin Joffe-Walt emphasized the importance of anti-rape education for men and women. “There should be mandatory educational events, peer-led but supported by administration. [The admistration should offer] the money for this to happen, the trainings for men like myself who would like to do this sort of education but have never been formally trained,” he said. “If men leave this campus feeling that there is no consequence for sexual violence then the College has fostered a real problem,” Joffe-Walt said.
The link between behavior such as drinking and assault came under fire, compared to blaming poor border security for the demand for drugs. “We need to create sexual assault as a crime, not as a misunderstanding,” Hempel said.
Significantly, members of the administration echoed students’ concerns with acknowledgment of flaws in previous efforts at sexual assault education. “We do have mandatory education for staff and faculty on sexual offenses and the policy. It is funny that we have made this mandatory at Oberlin in the workplace but not for students,” Dye said.
“There was a sexual assault education coordinator but that position got lost with the last [College] administration. I think that policy is about to be overturned,” Sexual Assault Policy Administrator Camille Hamlin-Mitchell said. Before this semester, when Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith appointed Health Education and Wellness Coordinator Lori Morgan Flood to the job of interim Sexual Assault Education Coordinator, educational programming regarding policy as well as all other aspects of sexual assault had fallen solely under the job description of Hamlin-Mitchell. Over the past few years, Hamlin-Mitchell’s student education has centered on orientation panels and the popular performance “Sex at 7:30.” “We could strengthen the orientation program on sexual violence and related issues. If and when we have another person on board to deal with education I would like to be partnered with them,” Hamlin-Mitchell said.
Later in the evening, students suggested remaking the orientation program into a two-part course with a variety of student, faculty and administrator-taught elective sessions and spread throughout the semester. In theory, this mandatory education would contribute two credit towards graduation.
An apology ended the forum. “I am sure that this formatting has been frustrating for many of you throughout the evening,” Medina said.