UCD's rape outreach touted
Sacramento Bee 2/16/07
No one is saying UC Davis has more crime. Experts say other schools probably have similar numbers but aren't doing as good a job with outreach programs and counseling services to make victims feel comfortable about reporting rape and other sexual assaults.
Last month, at a meeting of UC campus leaders, UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef called for a standardized approach to sexual-assault prevention programs across the 10-campus system.
"I'm convinced that, working together, we can more effectively confront this 'silent epidemic' that surely exists on all of our campuses," Vanderhoef wrote in an e-mail to campus chancellors before last month's meeting.
Daniel Carter, vice president of the national watchdog organization Security on Campus, said UC Davis deserves credit for addressing a problem that affects most college campuses equally.
"Ones that acknowledge and deal with it are safer than ones that don't," said Carter. His organization called for an investigation into how UC Davis and other UC schools compiled their sex-crime data in the late 1990s for a federally mandated crime survey.
UC Davis since has broadened the way it counts sexual assaults on and near campus. They now include reports made not just to police but to counselors, dorm staff and other school officials. In 2003, a state audit suggested the school was even casting too wide a net.
For 2005, the most recent crime data available, UC Davis reported 50 sexual offenses on or near the Davis campus and its Sacramento medical center -- three times greater than other UC schools.
Jennifer Beeman, who heads the sexual-assault prevention program at UC Davis, said at first glance, the statistics make the campus look like "the rape capital of the world."
"What that tells me is those students on those (other) campuses don't know where to go for help," she said. "If people know where to go, your numbers are going to go up. We just have more people who come forward and more people who get help."
Implementing a systemwide program ultimately could put other campus statistics in line with those of UC Davis, but Vanderhoef said that's not his motive.
"It's not embarrassment ... that causes us to propose such a UC-wide initiative," Vanderhoef said. "It's the right thing for us to do."
Officials at UC headquarters in Oakland said the other nine campuses should follow UC Davis' lead. The systemwide president's office is pursuing a $1 million federal grant that would use the UC Davis sexual-assault prevention program as a model for other campuses.
"This is something that is on the fast track," said Clint Haden, director of campus life for the UC system.
UC Davis has expanded its prevention and counseling services with the help of $1.9 million in federal violence-prevention grants since 1999. The school set up a 24-hour counseling hotline and sends campus advocates to accompany victims to the hospital, to law enforcement interviews and student disciplinary hearings.
"We help probably four or five people a week with restraining orders," Beeman said.
In a series of provocative skits that play out every fall in freshman dorms and Greek houses, a male student discusses his realization that he uses alcohol to wear down women.
"I had the advantage of being completely focused on what I wanted," the student says, according to the script. "They had the disadvantage of being not quite sure what was going on."
Then there's the Potty Mouth Project, which features a bathroom stall set up on the campus quad.
"We copied down things that were actually written in men's bathroom stalls and library cubbies ... to raise awareness about the violent, hateful things we take for granted every day," said Tyler Felix, who is involved in the campus club Men Acting Against Rape.
The group is raising money to sponsor a houseboat on Lake Shasta over Memorial Day weekend, to give party-goers a refuge from the revelry.
And if the number of sexual offenses reported to school officials and police continues to go up, all the better, advocates say.
"We run into the same issue here, where parents say, 'Oh my gosh,' " about rising crime statistics, said Roberta Gibbons, associate director of the University of Minnesota sexual-assault prevention program.
The college has received about $1.2 million in federal grants since 1999 to expand its outreach efforts. The amount of traffic in the sexual-assault counseling center increased by 60 percent in the last four years.
"This means people are getting help," Gibbons said. "More people are coming forward. They understand what sexual assault is, that, 'Wow, that wasn't really OK what happened to me Saturday night.' "