Sexual violence and rape culture are important issues colleges and universities around the world are dealing with on a daily basis. One would think institutions would work towards a better and safer environment for their students but the reality is far from what everyone thinks. Universities often excuse themselves from the situations, don’t visualize the incidents, make the circumstances silent, and blame the victims instead of bringing justice to them or expelling the assailants. Not only do they act mistakenly but they also attack the problem wrongly. Institutions and its members promote rape culture because they don’t take matters into their own hands and repeatedly fail to tackle sexual violence, not because they can’t but because they don’t want to.
Around 1 in 5 women may experience sexual assault at college. “An average of 21% of female undergraduates told researchers they’d been sexually assaulted since starting school in a Bureau of Justice Statistics-funded study of nine unnamed U.S. colleges and universities published earlier this year” (O’connor & Kingkade, 2016). “More than 90% of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assault” (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000). The reason why this article focuses on rape and sexual assault against women is because 91% of the victims are female while 9% of them are male. Now what can a young man or woman expect going into college with these statistics? How is this an example of institutional negligence? Well, most victims don’t report because they know how things will most likely turn out for them or are afraid that they won’t be taken seriously. Their school might blame them, ignore them or worst, stay silent.
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How universities are opening their legs to rape culture.
Violation by Omission