PROVIDENCE – Something really powerful is happening, possibly an epidemic in the works. Women who have been raped on their campuses are bravely coming forward to say enough, basta, no mas.

In late April it was a Brown University student, the following day we heard from students at UCLA and DePaul. Amherst College was in the news a few months earlier. The list of women speaking out gets longer by the day. Today’s students are so damn smart that they effectively use all the social media as well as alumni and development lists to further the cause of stopping rape on campus.

As someone who has been an outspoken sexual assault advocate and educator – usually at some cost – I say thank you to all the young women for what you are doing. Your courage is contagious.

Sexual assault on college campuses has been in the news – on and off – for the past 25 years. Most recently the White House has jumped in to the fray by issuing strong statements and recommendations about how campuses should address sexual violence, including education, advocacy, policies, and judicial systems.

They’ve also engaged in some public shaming by releasing the names of the institutions who are under investigation by the Department of Education for Title IX violations.

More than parity and equity in athletics
Since it was passed in 1972, Title IX has banned sex discrimination throughout the college and campus community. And it’s not just about parity and equity in athletics. It also prohibits sexual harassment, including sexual violence, on campus.

Title IX requires colleges to investigate sexual assault cases that are reported to university officials whether the student verbally tells someone at the university or puts it in writing. Universities must take steps to investigate such reports even if a student chooses not report to local law enforcement.

Often victims choose not to report to the police and decide to seek recourse through the campus judicial system. Many argue that campuses should not be hearing cases that are also capital offenses, arguing that students should let the criminal process take over.

Many of us feel that the choice of how to proceed when a sexual assault has occurred clearly belongs to the person who is victimized. It should not be the decision of the university to report the case to law enforcement. [Universities are required to report all sexual offenses on an annual basis but the numbers are in the aggregate and no names are used.]

I wish the track record of the criminal justice system was better in handling sexual assault cases but as an advocate, I always offer that as an option to a victim of sexual assault.

In discussing the criminal process it’s important to explain as thoroughly as possible what will happen. A university should, in theory, be able to hear cases that involve sexual misconduct and a breach of the campus’ code of conduct or tenets of behavior.

It requires a significant commitment to train hearing panels. But it’s do-able. And universities can hear cases in a timely manner, as required by Title IX and other university policies and procedures. Students can and have done both: gone to the police and allowed a university hearing to take place.

55 colleges make list for possible violations
In 2013 there were 55 colleges who made the Department of Education list for possible violations. And while transparency is a good thing, as long as the Department of Education fails to impose sanctions on universities that are violating the law, it only serves as a reminder that sexual abuses on college campuses will continue to be tolerated.

About three years ago Yale University received a 26-page Title IX complaint, filed by 16 students and alumni, charging that its campus was a sexually hostile environment.

The federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation. One of the incidents the group described that was particularly offensive involved men who were pledging a fraternity; they gathered in a public spot on campus and started chanting, “No means yes, yes means anal.”

However, the OCR’s findings were that Yale was in compliance with Title IX. If that chant doesn’t demonstrate a hostile climate, I’m not sure what does.

The sad reality is that universities in the United States rarely expel students for sexual assault. A 2010 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that only 10-25 percent of rapists were permanently separated from their universities.

Because of the way universities handle sexual misconduct, it is often the victim who drops out of school. In fact, a survey I conducted of female students transferring into Brown University in the early 1990s revealed that one of the top reasons women may transfer colleges is because they've been sexually assaulted on their campus.

Anecdotal evidence shows that this is still the case at many universities. Women leave because it’s not tenable to see the perpetrator on campus. Sometimes, men have been found responsible for sexual misconduct and merely been placed on probation or suspended for a short period of time.

Some improvements
That said, I have seen some improvements in two decades time. In the 1980s, female students who disclosed a sexual assault to the dean’s office were sometimes told that their experiences sounded “like a little romance gone wrong.”

During that era, students organized to protest what they saw as a hostile environment and through their activism, some important changes to campus sexual assault policies took place.

Today many campus administrators receive training in Title IX and know what is required of them when a student comes forward and discloses a sexual assault. More and more campuses have on-site rape crisis teams available 24/7 to students who feel they’ve been sexually assaulted, sexually harassed or are in violent relationships.

Advocacy for victims is more visible now. Educational strategies have improved in the past 20 years. Many campuses now have mandatory educational programs for first-year students and transfer students. In the early 1990s I was lucky enough to work with some talented students at Brown who developed a peer-led intervention theater piece, which addressed nonconsensual sexual encounters. Today, 24 years later, that skit lives on at hundreds of campuses in the U.S.
So there has been change.

But not enough. A National Institute of Justice study put the number of college women reporting a rape or attempted rape while at college at between 20 percent and 25 percent, but campuses remain reluctant to deal with the issue head on.

In the same study, some 25 percent of American college males admitted to sexual coercion of some form, but there’s little outrage.

Questions we need to be asking
The questions we need to be asking are: What factors contribute to a campus climate that enables offensive and often illegal behavior perpetrated by predominantly male students? What can be done on campus to address rape culture? Why don’t more university presidents make bold statements to incoming students and their families about their institution's policy on sexual assault and harassment? Is sexual assault awareness, education and advocacy good for a university’s fund raising efforts? What do parents of high-school students need to know about sexual assault policies and procedures at the institutions to which their children are applying?

Campuses like to promote the steps they take to ensure safety on campus. How often do campuses tell prospective students and their families that the real threat to their son or daughter’s safety may be the student who lives next door in the residence hall?

What’s needed is primary prevention, but how best to do that is up for debate. In addition to peer education, one approach that seems to work is “bystander education,” an attempt to stop sexual violence by teaching all students – men and women – that they have a responsibility to step in and try to stop something they see that could lead to sexual assault.

Many sexual assaults are preventable if people take the time to intervene. When I ask students whether they’ve ever seen a situation at a party that they knew was problematic, they all say they have. Yet when I ask how many of them have ever intervened, very few admit to doing so.

We also need to start asking the right questions when a rape has occurred on campus. Questions about how much she had to drink, what she was wearing, and why she was in his room are inappropriate and point a finger at the victim.

Our prevention campaigns need to be targeted at men, since most of the time, they are doing the raping. Think about all the messages we send to young women about sexual assault. It’s always about having a friend with them, not drinking out of any container, not being alone at night, and knowing their alcohol limits. Where are the campaigns that market messages to men about consent, respect, and sexual communication?

Talking to boys about masculinity
And, if we are really serious about primary prevention, we need to start way before college. We need to start talking to boys about masculinity and what being a real man is all about.

We need for young men to know that sex without consent is never OK, and that a real man does ask if she/he wants to get busy, get down, knock boots or whatever.

Universities need to continue to talk about sexual assault. The times they are a changing. Fortunately. We need to not shy away from these discussions, to not let the fear of how-will-the-alumni-feel-about this get in the way of doing the right thing for students. In the end, sexual assault peer education, sound policies and procedures for adjudicating cases and strong advocacy might result in more, not less, alumni giving.

This newest round of media attention about sexual assault on campus provides a glimmer of hope. I’m retiring soon after 35 years in higher education: too many disclosures to count, gazillion workshops on sexual assault, hundreds of conversations with men about consent, hours in the emergency room with victims, tons of middle of the night phone calls, and way too much victim blaming. Maybe this time we’ll get it right.

Toby Simon is the director of the Gertrude Hochberg Women's Center at Bryant University.