UPDATED: Oct. 15, 2018 at 7:50 p.m.

Syracuse University’s Student Association is compiling a report on campus sexual assault and relationship violence to assess how sexual assault is handled at SU, SA’s leadership has said.

Kyle Rosenblum, SA’s vice president, is spearheading work on the Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Report. Rosenblum and SA President Ghufran Salih said they hope the report will pressure university administrators to change how sexual assault is handled on campus.

Salih said the report will gauge percentages of sexual assault and relationship violence on campus through a survey that will ask students about wait times at the Counseling Center and the number of people who have had issues reporting their experience. This will help identify issues with university policies, she added. The report will use data from surveys conducted in the past. 

Rosenblum said he is organizing a task force comprised of representatives from Students Advocating Sexual Safety and Empowerment, the policy studies program, the SU chapter of It’s On Us, the SA assembly, the iSchool and from Greek life. The task force will collect data from SU, peer institutions and national organizations, Rosenblum said. SU’s Title IX office and Counseling Center will help SA to compile the report, but the work is being done independently of the university, he added.

“What we’re trying to get out of the survey is what resources do we have on campus that are working for students who are victims of sexual assault and relationship violence,” Salih said.

Rosenblum said he’s talking to SU administrators about sending out a survey specifically related to sexual assault and relationship violence in the future. SA doesn’t plan to send a survey itself because much of the data has already been collected through SU’s Campus Climate Survey, he said.

The approach of this report will be similar to that of SA’s Mental Health Report in 2016, said Joyce LaLonde, SA’s former vice president.

“It’s bringing tangible data and recommendations to an issue that needs to be addressed,” LaLonde said in an email. “And it’s using student work and voices to do it.”

The report’s timeline is still tentative, Rosenblum said. SA plans to do most of the research during this semester and the beginning of the spring 2018 semester and have the results and recommendations released before the end of the 2018-19 academic year.

Salih and Rosenblum said they believe the report will be a “wake-up call” to the university about issues in its support for victims of sexual assault and relationship violence. They said they want to push SU to make more effective change in how sexual assault is handled on campus.

“These are statistics that not only students are afraid of, but the university is afraid of,” Salih said. “It’ll shine a light on the harsh reality that this is very prominent on our campus.”

CLARIFICATION: In a previous version of this article, the source of the data used to compile the Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence report was unclear. Also, the partnership between the Student Association and Syracuse University’s Title IX office and Counseling Center to complete the report was unclear. SU’s Title IX office and Counseling Center will be used as a resource, but will not help complete the report. 

Published on October 14, 2018 at 8:58 pm

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