A+H Plans for Harris: Overcoming Sexual Violence

7 min readApr 15, 2021

April is Sexual Assault awareness month, and this timing provides an important place to start in presenting our vision for Harris Student Government.

The University of Chicago has suffered from a history of sexual violence, and we believe the University can more effectively confront this challenge. The University’s action began in 1952⁰, after the wife of a University Ph. D. student was raped by a South Side resident. After a media paranoia ensued, female enrollment rates at the University declined. The University helped create the South East Chicago Commission, which sought to drive out crime caused by Hyde Park/Neighboring Community Members, and apparently victim blame. As the University sought out good publicity, sexual violence rates did not change⁰.

This may have been the first, but would not be the last occurrence of the University responding poorly to the issue of sexual violence. The University failed to acknowledge that most sexual assaulters came from within the University community; in fact, they sought to ensure figures on rape be kept confidential⁰. By 1992⁰, the University’s prerogative to withhold information would pop up again: the University withheld information pertaining to two sexual assaults within a car on 57th and Woodlawn/University. Since these assaults occurred on public, not University property, the University chose not to inform the student body of the present danger that evening, or ever.

Despite the setbacks that occurred in the University’s early failures, there persisted a cause for optimism: the efforts of student-activists. Following the events of 1992, the UChicago Womyn’s Union led a vigil in support of the survivors, acting as a protest against the University’s negligence. Ten days later, the University responded with a new task force⁰. Student Government held a meeting with the Provost of the College that year, holding administration to account. By 1997, Student Government allotted $2,000 of funding to test the effectiveness of women’s self-defense classes⁰. Another student group created a volunteer escort service to walk women home safely from libraries⁰. By implementing a variety of approaches, UChicago activists, SG, and noble students have historically stood up for a campus free from sexual violence; while the University has looked the other way.

Today, Sexual Violence remains an epidemic at the University of Chicago, and all institutional powers must form a collective plan to combat it. In 2015, The University of Chicago conducted a “Campus Climate Survey” to assess the degree to which students were victims of sexual violence at UChicago¹. Though only 33% of Graduate Women and 25% of Graduate Men responded, the data presented a troubling picture. Around 10% of graduate women report having dealt with stalking behavior, with just 1 in 10 of those victims reporting the incident to the University System of Record. 8% of Graduate Women report having been groped, while around 2% of Graduate Women report having been unconsensentually penetrated. For Undergraduate Women, 35% have responded that they had been groped, while 10% responded having been unconsentually penetrated. The number of women who reported to the University System for these incidents were close to zero in all categories.

In the years that would follow, the University sought to implement polices to overcome sexual violence. These included establishing the Office for Sexual Misconduct and Support², and implementing a once-annual training for all students and faculty³. By 2019, the University conducted another campus climate survey⁴.

The results show there is considerably more work to be done. Response rates overall were just 35% for graduate women, and 26% for graduate men. Those individuals incentivized with a gift card were nearly 15% more likely to respond: our first policy proposal would be to use this incentive for every participant in the survey.

In 2019, around 7% of Graduate Women report having been sexually contacted by force or inability to consent. For undergraduate women, this number is over 20%. For all students in 2019, 40% reported having been sexually harassed. Another 11% report having been stalked. Concurrently, though the number of participants in these areas may be small, we want to acknowledge the statistically higher responses for University-Wide Trans/Non-Binary Individuals, as well as University-wide BIPOC individuals.

The University of Chicago Administration, Student Governments from both Undergraduate and Graduate Schools, and members of the UChicago Community should work collectively to improve our climate. Sexual violence is a disease that threatens our collective UChicago existence, and we should devote our time and energy into eradicating it.

The Coffey-Weller plan to address sexual violence is built upon the United States CDC’s framework for Campus Sexual Violence Prevention⁵. We believe Harris Student Government (in coordination with other student governments) must reassess the University’s frameworks in: comprehensive prevention, infrastructure, audience strategies, community partnerships, and program evaluation discussions.

To improve upon existing infrastructure and comprehensive prevention, we need to create more visibility for Sexual Violence Prevention Staff. Considering that barely any students have participated in in-person courses (including the new Class of 2023), we need to ensure a team of University and student leaders can shift the culture on campus to prevent violence from existing in the first place. Key to a successful prevention strategy is a trauma-informed approach. Our approach will seek input from organizations whose members have experienced sexual violence, to re-assess the University’s infrastructure in supporting survivors. We must also re-evaluate our existing mechanisms in place after a member of our community becomes a victim of sexual violence, ensuring maximum concern is given, privacy concerns are heeded, and so that a student is given his/her own time scale to recover. We will also prioritize the reinforcement of a culture that counteracts victim blaming. As Harris welcomes a new class each autumn, SG should begin a healthy dialogue: perhaps with leaders of various community identities.

As with each of our policy goals, a Coffey-Weller administration would be accountable, transparent, and active. We believe social media can and should be engaged to reaffirm a commitment to bystander training and sexual violence training that would otherwise only occur once per year. Our administration recognizes that one specific activity type (annual video) has proven to be more ineffective than a strategy that confronts sexual violence at the individual, relationship, community, and societal level⁵. As such, maintaining consistent messages, relying on Federal and University data, and maintaining strong coordination/cooperation with Administration, Other UChicago SGs, and within our student body itself will create a stronger campus climate. In each of our plans, we firmly believe strong leaders listen more often than they speak, and will incorporate student feedback from across communities and historically marginalized groups. We also believe the University of Chicago should engage parents and families as an audience for prevention strategy. Students often look to parents/guardians for guidance, and UChicago has the institutional ability to enhance the University’s response to sexual violence on campus.

Concurrently, we believe perpetrators should be held accountable. As Co-Presidents of SG, we would meet and pressure UChicago administration to recognize Greek organizations, so that oversight and accountability lie beyond the Panhellenic Council as an institution. The University’s decision not to recognize fraternities, the location where the 2nd most sexual violence was reported in the 2019 Campus Climate Survey⁴, signals the University’s goal to avoid legal repercussion ahead of protecting victims. This must change. The University should reflect inwardly about the campus they offer: which includes speaking candidly about the progress or regression that has occurred in this field. Choosing to collect and release data once every four years is insufficient for the Harris community: as two year students, Harristas’ experiences should be reflected in the University’s approach to combatting sexual violence.

Beyond the measures stated above, we pledge to seek policy advice from leading interest groups, such as RAINN⁶. We would seek input from “Our Resilience”⁷, an organization dedicated to the healing of survivors, in helping to evaluate our University’s infrastructure in offering resources for sexual violence survivors. We would lobby the University of Chicago to publicly join us in calling for the elimination of criminal statue of limitations for felony-level sex crimes, which currently stands at 10 years⁶. Lastly, we would seek to catalyze healthy, non-violent masculinity as described by the Healthy Masculinity Action Project⁸.

In each of our policies, we would prioritize an evidence-first, data-centric approach to overcome pressing societal challenges. We believe in holding Harris and UChicago Administration accountable to follow their own principles, and plan to do the same. Critically, we believe these reforms should create a template, not a one-time solution to counteracting sexual violence at UChicago Harris. We are running to inspire a long-term movement in how Student Government views its role- one that we plan to share with the next administration after we graduate. Come Spring 2022, we seek to create a full report on our engagement with UChicago administration, Harris students, and all resources at our disposal in addressing this issue. We hope that our item-by-item report on our successes and failures will effectively prepare the Class of 2023 and our successors to continue where we hope to have left off: further along the journey to overcome sexual violence at UChicago Harris.

0. https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/5/1/special-problem-university-chicagos-troubled-histo/

A+H Plans for Harris: Overcoming Sexual Violence

Written by Aidan Coffey