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Campus Sexual Assault

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Sexual Assault on College Campuses Sexual assault on college campuses is a subject that comes up commonly in media today, usually due to the fact that these assaults happen on a regular basis. About one in four women and one in seven men are victims of some form of sexual violence during their college experience (Abooali). In most occurances when speaking about sexual assault on campus, people are talking about what the main cause of these cases of sexual assault could be, and if there is any way to prevent it from happening. There are many factors that play into these sexual assaults such as alcohol consumption, peer pressure, society's normalization of these assaults, and party culture. The term sexual assault is used by researchers …show more content…

The Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act was set to take effect in March of 2014, but even after that began, the numbers still stayed the same. Even if the numbers had changed, this Act was set to take place on very few campuses, therefore it wouldn't have made a large difference. The large amount of college campuses that do not make any changes in policy to assist in preventing these circumstances is very troubling, considering the substantial detrimental effect sexual assault has on students. Sexual violence has a long term impact on its victims; those impacts range from health problems to psychological issues that include chronic illnesses, injuries, sleep disturbance, sexually transmitted infections, depression, humiliation, suicidal ideation, and trouble concentrating (Abooali). For women in particular, the list of detriments goes even farther and includes unwanted pregnancy, lack of ambition, contribution, and self-esteem, particularly for those in ethnic minority groups such as African Americans and Hispanics (Abooali). If sexual assault isn't a big enough issue on it's own for college campuses to take action, these after-effects should kick these institutions into high gear on ways to prevent this from …show more content…

Due to the large amounts of research on these events, there has been more legislative action taken to prevent sexual violence on college campuses (Abooali). These acts include, but are not limited to: the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act of 1990, which was renamed in 1998 to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act; Campus Sexual Assault Victim’s Bill of Rights of 1992, Campus Sex Crimes and Prevention Act of 1998, National Campus Safety Awareness Month of 2008, and the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. All of these acts, along with others, have been set in place to assist in the prevention of sexual assault on college campuses. Although these events still continue to happen, there will be more developments and advancements in the prevention of these assaults in the coming years. The more notice that is drawn to sexual violence on college campuses, the more these assaults will stop

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