Take back the night

This Thursday night, students will take to the streets to fight against sexual violence. As part of Columbia’s annual Take Back the Night march, they will walk up and down Broadway, replacing the sounds of nighttime traffic with chants and cheers to “take back the day, take back the night,” reminding us that “whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.”

Last May, Spectator ran an anonymous opinion piece describing an experience fraught with procedural errors and what the writer calls “egregious flaws in the Disciplinary Procedure for Sexual Assault.” Because of a federal law protecting students’ confidential records, the University was unable to respond directly to the writer’s claims, but the specific veracity of the writer’s claims is not as important as the possibility of their veracity. It’s disconcerting to think that a panel might recommend a respondent’s expulsion after a full hearing of the case, only to have the final consequences lay in the hands of a dean of students. While a judge is present throughout cases, the dean of students is not required to be present for student hearings at all—while a judge’s sole role is to listen to cases and deliver fair rulings, a dean of students holds so many roles that he or she may be untrained with the aftermath of sexual assault or lack other experience. A dean of students almost necessarily holds multiple interests, and it’s this person who could conceivably lessen the punishment of expulsion into a warning, with no recourse for the complainant.

And while no justice system is perfect, it is much more difficult to imagine a state court failing to inform the victim of a defendant’s appeal, as the writer claims Columbia did, or suffering from the kind of incompetency and procedural errors that the writer describes throughout the University’s process.

Not that taking one’s experiences to the police is a palatable option for many students, given the University’s disciplinary hierarchy. According to the University’s Policy and Procedure Against Sexual Assault, “if a criminal investigation is underway or if the student has chosen to file a complaint with the police or the District Attorney’s Office, the disciplinary procedure will be suspended pending the outcome from the DA’s office.” Full investigations and trials infamously can take months—while, in the meantime, the victim will have no options if his or her rapist lives on the same floor, takes the same classes, or participates in the same clubs. The result is an unfair choice between pursuing justice in a court of law and not having to confront one’s attacker in a 9 a.m. discussion section. Because of the nature of residential college life, especially on a campus as small as Columbia’s, students are forced into avoiding full investigations (and bad press), at least until the University reaches its own verdict.

The legal system has one aim—to seek justice—but does the University? Fourteen forcible sexual offenses were reported on campus in 2009, according to Columbia’s 2010 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, either to Public Safety or the police department. Given studies by the Department of Justice that claim one in four college women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape before she graduates, it is safe to assume that many more sexual offenses on campus go unreported. After all, though the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report considers knowledge of unreported crimes from leaders in academic and student life, such as deans, coaches, and administrative heads of student groups, the report fails to include information from the offices students are most likely to turn to in the case of sexual assault: Counseling and Psychological Services and the Ombuds Office. The University claims this is because “the law does not impose a reporting obligation on persons with counseling or pastoral obligations,” which still does not explain the choice to exclude anonymous knowledge of crimes from these two offices. The practice also precludes the possibility for students to have their experiences included in security briefs without going to trials or hearings. It’s a subtle manipulation of data that underrates the true frequency of sexual assault and rape on campus.

The result is a culture of sexual violence that’s impossible to talk about properly because it’s impossibly defined. “Consent is Sexy” posters featuring strawberries and bananas may look cute on dorm room walls, and NSOP workshops may provide the semblance of awareness to nervous parents, but these conversations take place only in very limited contexts. Let this Thursday’s Take Back the Night march be a message to the University to reform its policies regarding sexual assault so that students are provided with safety when coming to it for help, not just for condoms.

Aarti Iyer is a Columbia College senior majoring in creative writing. She is the former editor-in-chief of The Fed. Culture Vulture runs alternate Tuesdays.