Women Deserve Respect On Campus
During a recent conversation with a fellow student at the library on campus, I realized that just like him there are millions of college students that believe they don’t have anything to do with rape culture on campuses across the United States.
And the problem with that mentality is simple— it doesn’t stop rape from happening and in fact it perpetuates it.
According to data obtained from the 2014 Annual Security Report published by Miami Dade College, there were two incidents of “forcible sex offenses” perpetrated on the college’s property— one of the offenses took place at the Homestead Campus and the other at Kendall.
It’s not enough to just have a dedicated tab on the school’s website to promote sexual harassment awareness. Women on MDC campuses still experience one of the major forms of sexual harassment: being catcalled while walking down the hallways of the institution that vows to protect them.
As Jamie Grant, director of Global Transgender Research and Advocacy Project, articulated in a recent blogpost published by Huffington Post.
“First-year women in 2015 are at high risk for coercion, assault and rape by the men they are eating lunch with in the dining halls, working beside in study groups, and cheering on in the stadium,” wrote Grant.
A recent survey conducted by researchers at the University of North Dakota, revealed that one in every three college men “will force sexual intercourse” upon a women if certain that no repercussions against them will occur after the fact.
Lead researcher, Sarah R. Edwards, told to Newsweek the hidden message the results of the study show.
“The number one point is there are people that will say they would force a woman to have sex but would deny they would rape a woman,” Edwards said.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women are sexually assaulted while in college.
In a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2015 revealed that in just the first year of college 15 percent of women reported being raped while incapacitated and 9 percent reported of forcible rape.
Studies like this one seek to explain the attitude of some men. Many denying to ever catcalling a woman on the street or saying that in their native culture it’s of no practice, but still remaining silent when seeing other men catcalling women on the street.
This is why we need more college-wide policies that reassure the safety of women and create safe places on campus for victims of sexual harassment. Prevention is vital for the survival of sexual harassment victims.
Men, if women truly want your attention they will let you know. So now stop harassing them.
And please stop telling women how to dress and start telling fellow men not rape them.
