{"id":1082,"date":"2019-03-19T15:22:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T20:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2019-03-28T16:34:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T21:34:04","slug":"sexual-assaults-down-or-up-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/blog\/2019\/03\/19\/sexual-assaults-down-or-up-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexual assaults on campus down or up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Nicole Girgen and Madelyn Swenson<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: The content of this article may be triggering if you have been or are sensitive to sexual assaults.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Winona State University\u2019s Annual Safety Report,\u00a0cases of sexual assault reported on campus are down\u00a0from six in 2016 to three in 2017. Chris Cichosz, Winona State\u2019s director of security, Lori\u00a0Mikl\u00a0WSU\u2019s Title IX coordinator, students apart of the Gender Based Violence (GBV) organization\u00a0and the annual campus climate survey say it doesn\u2019t mean the assaults are down.<\/p>\n

Mikl\u00a0said just because reports are down on campus does not mean that sexual assaults are not happening as often. Cichosz and GBV students agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the prevalence of sexual assault is down at all,\u201d\u00a0Mikl\u00a0said. \u201cI just think that students are right now a little\u00a0more leery\u00a0of coming forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mikl\u00a0said the decrease in reports could be because of a few factors.<\/p>\n

Mikl\u00a0said one factor is how reporting assault is portrayed in the news media.\u00a0She said there is backlash for victim\/survivors who are coming forward.<\/p>\n

GBV students, Molly\u00a0Sarbacker, Jacob Hansen, Tom Cameron and Emma Severson\u00a0said they agree with this statement.<\/p>\n

Increasing reporting: a video message<\/a><\/p>\n

Mikl\u00a0and GBV students\u00a0also said some circumstances\u00a0may\u00a0contribute.\u00a0Including:\u00a0fear of coming forward, outing the aggressor and the stigma behind sexual assaults.<\/p>\n

Molly\u00a0Sarbacker, junior student a part of GBV,\u00a0has been through the process of reporting through the university.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0Sarbacker\u00a0went to the Title IX\u00a0office,\u00a0she had GBV coordinator Heather Gerdes go with her, a service that the organization provides to anyone.<\/p>\n

Sarbacker\u00a0said the process was traumatizing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it\u2019s a traumatizing experience to go through reporting and to share your story over and over and over again,\u201d\u00a0Sarbacker\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Mikl, all decision makers and those on the panels that hear the case are trained in how to do so.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0reporting\u00a0process itself is different for everyone.<\/p>\n

A victim\/survivor can report to security, a resident assistant (RA), a trusted friend, the police or others.<\/p>\n

According to both Cichosz and\u00a0Mikl,\u00a0the way most victim\/survivors report is through an RA or security.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/GirgenSwenson_SexualAssault.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

Cichosz said there is always room for improvement in the process and\u00a0he is open to feedback from victim\/survivors who have gone through security.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is always room for improvement,\u201d Cichosz said. \u201cI think letting victims know what their options are, I think we can always do better at getting that information out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob Hansen, a sophomore student a\u00a0part of GBV, said there is a universal \u201cred zone\u201d where most assaults occur.<\/p>\n

The red zone starts in September and goes through Thanksgiving. There is an increase in reports,\u00a0for many reasons.<\/p>\n

How to help intervene: a video message<\/a><\/p>\n

Hansen said some of the reasons are the first football game, homecoming, welcome week\u00a0and\u00a0the warm weather leading to more parties.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Department of Education\u00a0may be\u00a0making changes to the Title IX rules for campuses.<\/p>\n

These would include more rights for those who are accused of committing a sexual assault.<\/p>\n

Tom Cameron, a sophomore student a part of GBV, said\u00a0he\u00a0has\u00a0high hopes for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t really say any specifics so far just because this information is still in the works and we are still figuring out how we can go about this,\u201d Cameron said. \u201cBut the future is looking good. We can say that for sure. We\u2019re definitely\u00a0brainstorming everything we can and all the options for right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Nicole Girgen and Madelyn Swenson Editor’s note: The content of this article may be triggering if you have been or are sensitive to sexual assaults.\u00a0\u00a0 According to Winona State University\u2019s Annual Safety Report,\u00a0cases of sexual assault reported on campus are down\u00a0from six in 2016 to three in 2017. Chris Cichosz, Winona State\u2019s director of … Continue reading Sexual assaults on campus down or up?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":1111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,467,466,302,115,49],"tags":[29,469,472,483,116,6],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-college","category-life","category-safety","category-security","category-winona-state-university","tag-campus","tag-college","tag-life","tag-safety","tag-security","tag-winona-state-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/tealribbionHZ.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educate.winona.edu\/winona360\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}