TW: Sexual Assault
Adopting The Survivors Bill of Rights (SBOR) on a college campus should never have been a question; however, until this semester (Spring 2022) it was never a part of the resources provided for sexual assault survivors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The Survivors Bill of Rights Act, passed by Congress in 2015, establishes several rights for sexual assault survivors including free medical examinations, free sexual assault evidence collection kits, and free preservation of the collection kits for 20 years (H.R.5578, 114th Congress, 2015). The Survivors Bill of Rights provides a required foundation of support for sexual assault survivors, but, like any other resource, without proper publication, it doesn’t help much.
Prior to the adoption of the Survivors Bill of Rights at UMass Amherst, it was difficult for sexual assault survivors to get the support they needed without formally reporting an incident, something that can be too traumatizing for many people. The support for survivors at UMass Amherst was described as “underpublicized and inaccessible” by members of the UMass Student Government Association (SGA), as they called for support for the adoption of the SBOR (The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, 2021).
The members of UMass SGA have worked tirelessly since 2015 in order to pass the SBOR on Campus. In March 2021, they proposed a referendum question recommending that UMass adopt the SBOR to the student population. Since then, they have successfully passed the SBOR at UMass, and this fall, the leaders of SGA met with administrators on a bi-weekly basis to secure the final (but still living) version of the SBOR at UMass.
Although the SBOR was finally implemented at UMass, there is still much to be done to strengthen the support system for sexual assault survivors everywhere. The students that pushed to pass the SBOR previously expressed how different the resources and support for sexual assault survivors look to administrators than it does to students, particularly survivors. The resources are hard to find and can be intimidating. A poster in the bathroom with a phone number for a hotline is not enough, and I haven’t seen many other accessible resources. The student involvement in passing the SBOR is exactly what UMass needed, and assuming the administration continues to listen to its students, support for sexual assault survivors can continue to strengthen.
Soon, look out for more surrounding SBOR at UMass Amherst, including an inside look at the SGA’s crucial role in its implementation.
Find sexual assault resources at UMass here.
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