If you’ve been following the news circuits, you know that the Columbia University administration has cancelled fall Bacchanal due to concerns over excessive drinking and sexual harassment. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the administration has also placed the annual spring concert under review.
The Bacchanal Committee released its statement on Monday detailing the University’s decision to cancel the event, triggering a media storm from student organizations, as well as coverage from the New York Times, Jezebel, and New York Magazine.
Students have been extremely vocal about their disappointment in Columbia’s handling of the rampant sexual misconduct on campus. And the Columbia administration has faced very public scrutiny for it.
Since 23 students filed a federal lawsuit claiming the mishandling of sexual misconduct back in April, students have received countless emails from the administration expressing their “vigilance.” Still, sexual assault—and the college’s lack of resources to handle the aftermath—remains a salient issue on campus. And the students are speaking out.
Following Bacchanal this past spring, the Columbia Spectator released an op-ed entitled “Bacchanal is not an invitation for sexual harassment.” The article didn’t serve as a criticism of Bacchanal, so much as it posed a commentary on the lack of accountability surrounding sexual assault on campus. The article reads:
“We deserve this day. We deserve to forget about school and work and the stress of going to Columbia for a day. Columbia is a hard place to go to school…We deserve our day to pretend that we are a school that provides its students with a fun environment and a strong community.”
The piece goes on to implore Columbia students to take responsibility for their behavior – to refrain from ass-grabbing, body-grinding, and disrespecting female bodies. [The Bacchanal Committee had proposed several ideas to prevent such behavior this year, through the use of student monitors and bystander intervention].
Though the cancellation appears to be one of the first active responses amidst overwhelming inaction on the part of the administration, the decision reveals a failure to address the nuances of the issue of sexual assault on campus.
But, is Columbia’s decision to place the spring concert under review really the worst thing for the student body? We’re not so sure. Misguided? Perhaps. But if action is what students want, then the administration’s attempt to look into one of the campus’s largest social events – where drinking, drugs, and sex are such conspicuous players in the day’s festivities- may not be so terrible.
In a statement released Tuesday, University deans urged:
“We are committed to providing an academic and living environment that emphasizes integrity and respect, and we want to make sure that we begin this academic year by maintaining a campus environment that is safe and welcoming for all members of our community. While we do want students to relax and come together as a community, and know that many students look forward to Bacchanal, we do not believe a new large-scale fall concert is the best way for it to happen.”
Still, students have deemed the university’s recent action a “band-aid” more than a solution. Band-aid it may be, but lets not overlook the administration’s recent initiatives.
Among them? A whole lot. In their statement, the deans reminded students of…
“…a new, soon-to-be-announced Gender-Based Misconduct Policy for Students based on recent guidance from the White House and the U.S. Department of Education, and many other actions, including enhanced mandatory training of incoming undergraduates about sexual violence on campus and the meaning of consent, as well as bystander training, which are beginning this summer, plus continuation of training on an ongoing basis during the school year. We have expanded professional staff in the Office of Sexual Violence Response to ensure 24-hour, on-call access to professional staff, while keeping fully intact existing access to peer advocates. We are also opening an additional location for the Rape Crisis Center in Lerner Hall, which will provide a fully accessible alternative to the current location in Barnard’s Hewitt Hall, and have created a new website, http://titleix.columbia.edu, that provides resources for students, faculty and staff. President Bollinger has also created a new Executive Vice President for Student Affairs position, a role that will be responsible, in part, for combatting sexual violence, and the University Senate has vowed to remake the Presidential Advisory Committee on Sexual Assault to increase student representation and the Committee’s transparency. We also plan to release annual aggregate data reporting sexual misconduct in the near future and will be instituting an annual campus climate survey.“
The Coalition Against Sexual Violence stated, “Harassment and assault at Bacchanal may be more visible, but sexual violence is prevalent throughout the year, and will happen in Columbia residence halls, buildings, and events whether or not this event takes place”
And we have to agree. The issue of sexual assault cannot be solved in the swift revocation of a school-wide event. The cancellation was a strategic move that has obviously backfired, and – though it may be a step in the right direction – seems a missed opportunity for change. But it is not the only, and almost certainly not the last, endeavor the university has taken to combat sexual assault.
At Her Campus Barnard, we value a campus that is safe for her – this has to include feeling both heard and helped by the administration when it comes to concerns over sexual health. We urge the administration to arrive at a solution that allows her that right, while allowing her to engage with her community, attend school events, and speak openly when those rights have been violated.