Waverly Hart
News Editor
In a campus email on Nov. 1, President Sarah Bolton released the results of a survey last year of College students that asked about their experience and response to incidents of sexual assault and harassment.
Last spring, students were asked to complete the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) Consortium Campus Climate Survey. The survey, which garnered a 24 percent response rate among Wooster students, asked respondents to agree or disagree with statements about sexual assault on campus, whether they thought their peers would intervene when witnessing sexual misconduct and how seriously campus officials would take a report of sexual misconduct. Additionally, the survey asked about students’ own experiences with unwanted sexual contact.
The collective Wooster students’ responses were compared to the responses of about 33,000 other students from 75 different small institutions. The results indicated that at least 74 of the survey’s respondents had experienced sexual assault during their time at Wooster.
“While the survey results include a great deal of information that will be crucial in improving student safety, they also lay out a profoundly troubling picture of harms taking place here,” President Sarah Bolton wrote in an email to students.
According to Lori Makin-Byrd, the College’s Title IX coordinator, there were four differences between The College of Wooster and other schools that were particularly concerning. For Makin-Byrd, the results of the survey have raised more questions than answers.
For example, the survey found that, compared to other institutions, more Wooster students disagree with the fact that their peers would intervene if they witnessed a sexual assault than at peer institutions. Another startling statistic is that only 53 percent of women in the 2017 class at Wooster believed campus officials would take their report seriously, compared to the 70 percent at other schools.
Based on the results of the survey, Makin-Byrd raised four questions:
“1. Why are Wooster students, particularly women, less likely to believe that a report would be taken seriously and that action would be taken?
2. Why do Wooster students, particularly women, believe that other students would not intervene?… Why do our students not intervene to help other students when they are present during an assault?
3. Why are Wooster students, regardless of gender, more likely to