This study evaluated a new sexual assault prevention-training module, the Experimental Leadership Challenge (ELC), designed primarily for officers in training at Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs. Students who experienced the ELC module gave it significantly higher effectiveness scores than scores given to other programs experienced by students who did not take the ELC module. Of the most commonly used trainings, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Training and Sexual Harassment/Assault and Response (SHARP) Training actually received the lowest effectiveness scores. Although short-term impact scores and commitment scores did not differ significantly between the ELC module and other trainings, students rated the ELC module as having a greater effect on their commitment towards addressing the problem of sexual assault than those who had other trainings. ROTC Commanders should consider supplementing existing programs with approaches mentioned by officers in training as particularly effective to improve and diversify the current mandatory training.

The present research seeks to identify the risks, rewards and challenges associated with hypothetical restorative justice based responses to sexual misconduct at the University of Oregon. Prior to this project here was limited research directly applicable to identifying these risks, rewards and challenges because no university-based restorative justice programs designed to respond to sexual misconduct existed to be studied. The present research uses a literature review to investigate the nature of restorative justice, sexual misconduct, and the laws and statutes that govern both at the University of Oregon. The literature review is supplemented by qualitative data gathered from a series of personal interviews with specialists on the subject. The research shows that restorative justice offers a potentially valuable supplement to existing university responses to sexual misconduct, albeit one that has a variety of limitations and barriers that would need to be surmounted in order for it to be beneficial.

In the fall of 2014, Jian Ghomeshi, host of CBC’s Q, was accused of sexual assault and harassment by a number of women. The women who came forward were criticized for the delay in reporting the incidents. As a response, two female Canadian journalists started the hashtag #beenrapedneverreported as a way of using networked media to foster alternative dialogue about sexual assault, ostensibly so women who have experienced rape could control the conversation and say how they understood their own experiences. The literature on sexual assault suggests that discussions of rape involving members of the general public are shaped by myths that foster victim blame and lead to survivors being silenced about the assault. I decided to look at whether or not posters created an alternative discourse around rape by comparing constructions of rape on the hashtag with the common rape myths present in mainstream conversations. I employed a social constructionist lens to approach the data to allow for multiple interpretations of these myths and to explore the way posters discussed sexual assault. In particular, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of 8250 tweets that were posted to the hashtag between October 30, 2014 and June 26, 2016. The findings indicate that each myth identified in the literature was reproduced in the discussion, suggesting that they continue to have salience in the ways that all people, including victims, understand rape as a crime. A number of posters accepted the myths and used them to construct their own understanding of why their rape was not reportable because they felt that it was their fault. This suggests that there is still a long way to go to challenge these myths as they are internalized by some survivors. However, most posters reproduced the myths to explain how the attitudes were mobilized against them by others, in effect, silencing them. This created an alternative discussion of how social assumptions work against female victims of rape at a variety of levels. These assumptions occur not only within policing agencies and the criminal justice system but also within family and friend support networks. A smaller proportion of posters actively contested the myths primarily through discussions surrounding consent. In particular, sexual assault was construed as denying women their agency to choose what happens to their body and rape was constructed as a loss of agency/autonomy. Posters put forward that women have a right to control their own body and that choice/control is taken away by the rapist. From this perspective, rape is not a sexual crime but a violent crime that denies human agency/personhood of the victim. This suggests that the consent debate is a key moment of feminist politics and this transgressive construction of rape upends the social assumptions about female and male sexuality.

Rape culture remains a major issue on college campuses today in the United States. Significant research has been conducted on rape on college campuses in the United States, examining factors such as alcohol, cost of a date, relationship between the victim and perpetrator, apparel of the victim, sexual history of the victim, etc. However, no studies have yet investigated factors that impact rape culture in France. This study will investigate factors that impact both blame attribution and perceptions of sexual assault in the United States and in France. Participants (N=249) were shown a short vignette involving a rape scenario, and then asked questions about who was at fault for the rape, as well as their perception of the situation. Results showed that alcohol use, the cost of a date, and participant country of residence all impacted how participants attributed blame, as well as impacted their overall perception of the scenario. More specifically, participants were less likely to classify a scenario as “rape” when alcohol was involved, when the cost of a date was high, and when the participant was French. These results indicate that we need to rethink the way society approaches issues of sexual assault, in the United States and in France.

Using panel data from 31 small, liberal arts colleges from three academic years 2014-2017, I explore how the incidence of sexual assault is related to institutional characteristics. I use the number of sexual assaults per 100 students (sexual assault ratio) as my dependent variable and the following as my independent variables: total number of undergraduate students, female to male ratio, majority racial percentage, percent accepted, percent of students awarded financial aid, cost of attendance, religious affiliation, whether Greek life is available and racial percentages. I include racial percentages as additional independent variables in two of my regressions to analyze the relationship between these percentages and the majority racial percentage. Using a linear fixed effects model, it is concluded that increasing the total number of students, majority racial percentage, and cost of attendance decreases the sexual assault ratio of a college campus at a statistically significant level. Furthermore, using an OLS linear regression model to analyze cross-sectional college variation, I find that an increase in the total number of undergraduate students, female to male ratio, and percentage of students on financial aid is correlated with a decrease in the sexual assault ratio while an increase in the cost of attendance and percentage of White students is correlated with an increase the sexual assault ratio. If the impacts can be interpreted as causal, then the results of this study can help academic institutions understand how campus climate can affect the safety of their students and also assist college administrations with improving sexual assault prevention programs.

Rape cultures in the United States facilitate acts of rape by influencing perpetrators’, community members’, and women who survive rapes’ beliefs about sexual assault and its consequences. While much of the previous research on rape in university settings has focused on individual attitudes and behaviors, as well as developing education and prevention campaigns, this research examined institutional influences on rape culture in the context of football teams. Using a feminist poststructuralist theoretical lens, an examination of newspaper articles, press releases, reports, and court documents from December 2001 to December 2007 was conducted to reveal prominent and counter discourses following a series of rapes and civil lawsuits at the University of Colorado. The research findings illustrated how community members’ adoption of institutional discourses discrediting the women who survived rape and denying the existence of and responsibility for rape culture could be facilitated by specific promotional strategies. Strategies of continually qualifying the women who survived rapes’ reports, administrators claiming ‘victimhood,’ and denying that actions by individual members of the athletic department could be linked to a rape culture made the University’s discourse more palatable to some community members who included residents of Boulder, Colorado and CU students, staff, faculty, and administrators. According to feminist poststructuralist theory, subjects continually construct their identities and belief systems by accepting and rejecting the discourses surrounding them. When community members incorporate rape-supportive discourses from the University into their subjectivities, rape culture has been propagated. / Arts, Faculty of / Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, Institute for / Graduate

Employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology among undergraduate students at the University of Ottawa, this research has explored attributions about sexual assault and the role of perceived intoxication in the context of female and male victims of sexual assault. The use of qualitative methodology and the application of a feminist critique of attribution theory and its contemporary application to rape perception research have contributed to a better understanding of these judgements and the varied ways in which undergraduate students apply the core constructs of responsibility and blame to sexual assault, while simultaneously highlighting the limitations of typically positivistic research in this area. Analyses suggest that the judgements students make about the victims and perpetrators involved in sexual assault are varied and complex, and future research employing a similar methodology and theoretical lens among other populations, both within and outside post-secondary spheres, is warranted.

No description available.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that women who exercise regularly increase not only their physical strength but also their mental strength, which has been conceptualized as self-confidence, assertiveness, and self-esteem. Empirical investigation into this area of research, however, is scarce. One study found that self-reported victimization rates of female athletes were significantly lower when compared with another study's female non-athlete sample. More recently, research found significant differences in levels of self-esteem and sexual victimization rates between female collegiate varsity athletes and the general female college population. The current study is a subsequent analysis of the data used in the aforementioned study. Data were collected from an undergraduate population of females in a mid-sized western university. Subjects were drawn from four varsity athletic teams and from two general classes. Measures of sexual victimization, self-esteem, and exercise habits were administered. The current study found that frequency of exercise, intensity of exercise, duration of exercise, and self-esteem, were not related to victimization at a statistically significant level. This was true for the sample as a whole, and when varsity athletes and non-varsity athletes were considered separately. Though it did not reach statistical significance, further analysis revealed that varsity athletes were three times less likely to report victimization than non-varsity athletes. Gender stereotype of exercise was not able to predict victimization scores over and above frequency of exercise, intensity of exercise, duration of exercise, and self-esteem, among non-varsity athletes. The variable of gender stereotype of exercise demonstrated that subjects who reported female-stereotyped exercises were three times more likely than those who participated in gender-neutral exercises, and eight times more likely than those who participated in male-stereotyped exercises, to endorse statements of sexual victimization. These results, however, were not statistically significant. Though neither research hypothesis was supported, analyses indicated that further investigation into variables that buffer one against sexual victimization relative to self-esteem and choice of exercise habits is merited.

No description available.