In highly disturbing, bud sadly not altogether surprising news, the University of Texas has found that 15% of female students who answered a questionnaire are victims of rape on the school’s campus.
More than 7,500 students (a response rate of over 17%) at UT Austin participated in a CLASE survey, which incidentally was “the most in-depth survey of sexual assault and misconduct in the nation ever undertaken by an institution of higher education.”
The results show just how necessary that was.
“CLASE found that 15 percent of undergraduate women at UT Austin reported that they had been raped,” university President Gregory L. Fenves reported in a statement. These sexual assaults were either in the form of force, threatened force, incapacitation, or coercion.
“This survey reveals a problem in our university, as well as society, that has existed in the shadows for too long,” Fenves continued.
Sadly, the statistics didn’t end there; the survey also found that 28% of women on campus were victims of “unwanted sexual touching,” 12% of “attempted rape,” 13% of harassment by a faculty member, with 30% of that harassment sexist and gender-related.
“We must not be silent anymore, and we must not be afraid to face this problem,” Fenves said.
We couldn’t agree more. As shocking as this survey is, the results mirror a problem that goes far deeper than the University of Texas. One in four women report surviving rape at some point in their lifetimes, and 5% of college women are victims of rape each year.
Hopefully the University of Texas will take this survey’s results seriously to systematically work to eliminate rape culture at the school. Hopefully the rest of the country will follow suit.
