One in Five Female Undergraduates Reports Sexual Attacks, Survey

By R. Siva Kumar - 23 Sep '15 09:25AM

In a survey of 150,000 students at 27 American universities, including the Ivy League schools, it has been found that one in five, or about 20 percent of female undergraduates, have been victims of sexual assault and misconduct.

It was a survey undertaken by Westat under the aegis of the Association of American Universities, according to HNGN.

The maximum responses were received from Harvard at 53.2 percent university-wide. Of these, undergraduate respondents constituted 57.4 percent. There were 31 percent of senior undergraduate females at the school who said that they had undergone some form of "nonconsensual sexual contact" in their tenure.

Harvard is going through an "investigation into its Title IX compliance".

Harvard's President Drew G. Faust said that the results seem to be "deeply disturbing," according to The Harvard Crimson.

"The prevalence of such behavior runs counter to our most fundamental values. It threatens individual students, our learning environment and our sense of community," said Yale University President Peter Salovey, while finding the results "extremely disturbing," according to The Washington Post.

However, many of the academics are rather critical about the survey. "If you take this data literally, it would suggest a violent crime rate at most campuses higher than in any city in the country. Which I think is somewhat dubious. We're talking about college students at elite institutions here. They understand what sexual assault is," said K.C. Johnson, a professor of history at a Brooklyn College who tracks college sexual assault and due-process issues, reports The Washington Post.

The survey was the first that differentiated between types of attacks and situations, even as it enabled comparisons across the institutes. "Providing this level of detail is fairly unique among the campus climate surveys." It was done "mostly by the request of the universities, to try to differentiate between incidents clearly quite different in nature," said David Cantor, vice president of Westat.