Last winter, Washington Senator Patty Murray and Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey introduced a piece of legislation which aimed to prevent sexual assault on college campuses. They called their legislation the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (the Campus SaVE Act for short).
Sexual Assault has been called “the silent epidemic” on college campuses because of the secrecy and embarrassment that often surrounds it. Although 1/5 of women report being sexually assaulted during their lifetime, additional studies are beginning to suggest that the number may be much higher than that due to a lack of reporting assaults. Additionally, almost 50% of assaults are perpetrated by someone known to the assailant, suggesting that perhaps the danger of assault lies not in dark alleys or with strangers, but instead with college students’ acquaintances and friends.
And although it has been a while since the implementation of the act, Congress and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights have stepped up to the plate in the past month by listing tangible things that campuses can do to help eliminate sexual assault across the nation.
How will this look on your college campus? This new act allows students affected by the assault to make any changes necessary to their housing, academic or social lives with the help of that student’s home institution. SaVE has also established a universal set of rules for investigating sexual assaults across all US campuses.
In addition, universities are now required to report their methods of programming to the government, and new types of education for first-year and transfer students will also be implemented across the nation, as well as funding to help instigate studies on the most practical and successful methods of sexual violence education.
Despite it’s positive qualities, the SaVE Act has proved controversial on many campuses because of the nature of the new implementations. Some critics wonder if the act will give resources to the alleged victim without attending to the alleged assailant, given that the crime has not yet been proven. Others argue that a set of rules cannot change the hook-up behaviors that are engrained in the college culture.
So what do you think? Can The SaVE Act really work on campuses?