My dad once bought me pepper spray and told me it would be a college necessity. He sensed correctly that this campus was a dangerous place for women. Like many other universities, UNC is a place that has repeatedly failed its community by not fully addressing the issue of sexual assault.
It tends to be treated too light-handedly, even by this board at times. It’s easier to ignore an issue when it occurs behind closed doors — both physically and institutionally. Colleges and universities continue to opt into incentives that allow these institutions to not fully engage with the scope and seriousness of the sexual assault problems.
This year, the University announced that it will use the Association of American Universities survey on sexual assault on campus. The University is not required to release the data from the survey, but it has said it will. This is a welcome step in the right direction, and one that I hope the University will honor. UNC, as a leader in the conversation about sexual assault, should urge its peer universities to also release this data.
The silence surrounding the issue, the lack of reliable information about previous assaults, and a continued lack of sanctions for offenders are all part of a collective institutional and cultural denial. I would like to see a campus committed to uncovering the seriousness of this problem before it pretends to have the tools to fix it. Break down the doors.
