{"id":30982,"date":"2016-06-07T02:05:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T09:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/new-study-reveals-disturbing-findings-about-sexual-assault-on-ua-campuses\/"},"modified":"2016-06-07T02:05:31","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T09:05:31","slug":"new-study-reveals-disturbing-findings-about-sexual-assault-on-ua-campuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/new-study-reveals-disturbing-findings-about-sexual-assault-on-ua-campuses\/","title":{"rendered":"New study reveals ‘disturbing’ findings about sexual assault on UA campuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Results of a new study<\/a> looking at the sexual victimization of University of Alaska students has alarmed Saralyn Tabachnick, executive director of Juneau\u2019s AWARE.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find the results disturbing. This is 100 percent preventable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

An estimated 11.4 percent of University of Alaska students \u2014 or one out of every nine \u2014 experienced sexual misconduct, sexual assault or both in 2015. That\u2019s according to results of a study by the Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center at University of Alaska Anchorage released Monday.<\/p>\n

For University of Alaska Southeast, that number is slightly higher at one out of every eight students, or an estimated 12 percent of the total undergraduate and graduate student population of 2,364.<\/p>\n

While Tabachnick said the results are disturbing, she said they\u2019re also not surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut wouldn\u2019t it be wonderful to live in a culture where it was a surprise, where violence like this is not the norm?\u201d she asked by phone Monday.<\/p>\n

This is the first time the UA system has publicly released such figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese numbers help us go from anecdote to actual data,\u201d said Lindsey Blumenstein Ph.D., assistant professor at the UAA Justice Center, in a phone interview Monday. She led the study. \u201cWe just had never looked at a victimization survey of our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

University of Alaska campuses are federally required to release crime statistics, which include sex offenses reported to administration. Many instances of sexual assault and misconduct go unreported.<\/p>\n

The study\u2019s estimates are based on 1,982 responses to an online student survey conducted between February and March of this year. The survey was designed to establish baseline estimates of sexual misconduct and sexual assault committed \u2014 on and off campus \u2014 in the preceding year against students enrolled at UA during the 2016 spring semester. Questions were modeled after recommendations by the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.<\/p>\n

Blumenstein said getting baseline estimates is necessary when trying to stop sexual misconduct and assault.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to evaluate a prevention program and you want to know if it\u2019s working, you have to know what was happening before you put the prevention program in place to see if things went up or down. So these are the first public numbers that we have available about sexual victimization for UA students,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In the past few years, UAA, University of Alaska Fairbanks and UAS have followed national mandates to improve sexual assault prevention efforts and stay compliant with Title IX, the federal law that protects people from discrimination based on sex or gender and guarantees access to education in institutions that receive federal funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we have to ask the tough questions if we want to be able to make change. We have to be able to ask what\u2019s gong on in order to know where we need to be putting our efforts. And while this is a big problem across the nation, the prevention programs are still in their infancy to a certain extent because this isn\u2019t something we\u2019ve been focused on for that long a period of time,\u201d Blumenstein said.<\/p>\n

In the survey, sexual misconduct refers to unwanted, uninvited or coerced sexual touching or sexual commentary. Examples include kissing without permission, grabbing, fondling, taking a sexual experience further than wanted, or lewd comments that make a person feel uncomfortable, uneasy or unsafe. Sexual assault refers to nonconsensual or unwanted sexual contact with penetration.<\/p>\n

Of the students statewide who experienced sexual misconduct, sexual assault or both, nearly a third experienced at least one attempted or completed sexual assault. Just looking at UAS, about 110 students were victims of at least one attempted or completed sexual assault.<\/p>\n

Blumenstein said the numbers are similar to what other universities and colleges around the nation are finding, but she said the results are likely conservative.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the survey was done online, there\u2019s still a lot of shame, a lot of stigma, a lot of victim blaming that goes on with victims of sexual violence and it\u2019s very difficult for people to come forward about their experiences,\u201d she said. \u201cI think these number are accurate, but I think they\u2019re conservative. I think it\u2019s possible they could be a little higher.\u201d<\/p>\n

UAS Title IX coordinator Lori Klein was out of the office and could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n

[How UAS handles sex assault complaints on campus is changing<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

The UAA Alaska Justice Center plans on releasing more data from the survey in the coming months. Blumenstein is positive the UA branches will utilize the numbers to affect change, and she hopes UA students and the community as a whole will do the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want a holistic community approach. We want to be working from all angles and have community-wide resources and prevention to help deal with this issue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

AWARE\u2019s Saralyn Tabachnick agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have these results and they\u2019re being shared. Ideally, people are becoming more aware and awareness can lead to a greater change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

AWARE already works closely with UAS on prevention efforts, offering trainings to students and faculty, and presenting in classrooms, new student orientations and workshops. Tabachnick hopes to make an AWARE advocate available on the UAS Juneau campus for a few hours every week starting this fall. But there is still more every one of us can do, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery person in the community can recognize that this is not OK. Any time they hear jokes or something offensive or witness something that is sexual misconduct or objectifying to women, they might step in some way,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can call AWARE and learn how to step in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n

Related stories:<\/p>\n

UAF admits mishandling of sex assault cases<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Still atrocious, still unacceptable’: Survey shows 50 out of 100 women statewide experience violence<\/a><\/p>\n

New AWARE housing helps women find independence, self-worth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Results of a new study looking at the sexual victimization of University of Alaska students has alarmed Saralyn Tabachnick, executive director of Juneau\u2019s AWARE. \u201cI find the results disturbing. This is 100 percent preventable,\u201d she said. An estimated 11.4 percent of University of Alaska students \u2014 or one out of every nine \u2014 experienced sexual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":30983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30982"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}