Sexual Assault on Campus: Insights from Research on College Student Social Life

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Sexual Assault on Campus Insights from Research
on College Student Social Life

• Prof. Elizabeth A. Armstrong
• Graduate Students Laura Hamilton, Evelyn Perry,
• Brian Sweeney, and Amanda Tanner
• Undergraduate Students Katie Bradley,
• Teresa Cummings, and Aimee Lipkis

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• How did an interest in the erotic curricula lead
  to a focus on sexual assault?

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Research Question

• Why do college campuses remain sexually dangerous
  places for women in spite of years of sexual
  assault prevention programming?

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Three Existing Explanations(and policy responses)

• Individual Characteristics
• Policy response Educate to change individual
  attitudes
• Group beliefs - Rape Culture
• Policy response Educate to change group
  attitudes
• Fraternities as Dangerous Context
• Policy response Education directed to Greek
  system, regulate Greek system

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Method

• Qualitative investigation of undergraduate
  student social life.
• Focus Groups 16 groups, 89 students
• Ethnographic observation and interviews floor
  of 1st year women in party dorm

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Peer Culture

• Concerns with status, belonging, popularity, and
  interest in playful, public sexual fun motivate
  student participation in dangerous party scenes.

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Peer Culture Status Belonging
You see these images of college that youre
supposed to go out and have fun and drink, drink
lots, party and meet guys. You are supposed to
hook up with guys, and both men and women try to
live up to that. I think a lot of it is girls
want to be accepted into their group and guys
want to be accepted into their groups.
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Peer Culture Sex as Public and Fun
Describing a Playboy party that was so fun, one
floor resident explained that, it was basically
an excuse for everyone to just dress in the
sluttiest little thing that they can pull off
without looking like complete trash. But it was
just so fun. You had an excuse to just let loose.
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Peer Culture Gender Sexual Expectations
But like I only like will kiss. I just like
kissing. I wont do anything else.
This guy that I was talking to for like ten/
fifteen minutes says, could you, um, come to the
bathroom with me and jerk me off? And Im like,
what! Im like, okay, like Ive known you for
like fifteen minutes but no.
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Social Organization

• The social organization of student life
  intensifies peer cultures and structures social
  options.

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Residence Life Intensifies Peer Cultures

• Students of similar age, race, sexual
  orientation, class, and appearance are clustered.
  

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Residence Life Patterns Gender Interaction

• Men and women mostly live on separate floors.
• Some residence halls have locked floors.
• Informal contact between female and male
  students occurs mainly in the eroticized and
  alcohol-fueled party scene

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Residence Life Push Factors

• Lack of Public Space
• Little communal space and dorm structure make
  spontaneous interactions unlikely
• Social Control
• Successful at reducing visible partying, but
  students experience dorms as not fun and leave
  to party

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Fraternity Parties Transportation
All those girls would stand out there at the
circle drive and just like, no joke, get into
these big black Suburbans driven by frat guys,
shoving themselves in there, wearing like
seriously no clothes, piled on top of each other.
This could be like some kidnapper taking you all
away to the woods and chopping you up and leaving
you there.
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Fraternity Parties Men Define Party Atmospheres

• Some Party Themes
• CEO/Secretary Ho
• School Teacher/Sexy Student
• Golf Pro/ Tennis Ho
• Doctor/Nurse parties
• Trophy wife and James Bond husband
• Pilot/Stewardess

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Fraternity Parties Men Control Alcohol

• Brothers serve themselves first, then women
  they are with, then other women, and then
  unaffiliated men.
• The promise of more or better alcohol is often
  used to lure women into private spaces.

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Womens Experiences

• One floor resident reported, Guys pressuring
  girls to drink who dont want to drink. Or not
  even who dont want to drink, but who just dont
  feel comfortable drinking with them. Sometimes
  boys are creepy and you dont want to sit and
  pound shots with them.

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Womens Experiences Party Rape

• Respondent A I didnt know what happened. I was
  scared and wanted to get the hell out of there.
  I didnt know who it was, so how am I supposed to
  go to the hospital and say someone mightve raped
  me? It could have been any one of the hundred
  guys that lived in the house. And I didnt even
  know if it happened for sure.
• Respondent B Its just so hard because you dont
  know how to deal with it because you dont want
  to turn in a frat because all hundred of those
  brothers
• Respondent A I think I was also at the point
  thinking like, you know, I just got to school, I
  dont want to start off on a bad note with
  anyone, and now it happened so long ago, I dont
  know who it was, its just one of those things
  that I kinda have to live with.

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Defining Party Rape

• Assault by acquaintance or in-network stranger
• Victims typically the most vulnerable
• Alcohol and sometimes date rape drugs used as
  weapons
• Often occurs off of home turf wake up in
  unfamiliar location
• Difficult to reconstruct what happened
• Rarely reported

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Why Do Women Continue to Participate?

• Some dont. They withdraw.
• You dont go to a bar the way you used to
  before knowing all of this, at least I dont.
  It kills your social life.

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Why Do Women Continue to Participate?

• Peer culture social organization work together
  to limit options for
• Meeting people, gaining status
• Experiencing an eroticized public scene
• Receiving gratifying male attention

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Status Agency in a Risky World

• Students are invested in this world.
• They take the bad with the good.
• Sexual risk is normalized.
• Women are assumed to be skilled at strategies to
  reduce risk.
• They are blamed when their strategies fail.

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Options for Student Affairs
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Changing the organization of student life

• Focus on cultivating community
• Provide more spaces amenable to socializing
• Enhance aesthetic properties
• Make residence halls more appealing to
  upper-level students

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Changing the organization of student life

• Increasing diversity within residence halls
• race and nationality
• social class
• geographic origin
• age
• marital status
• sexual orientation

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Mentoring

• More contact with upper-division students and
  adults
• More faculty involvement in student life

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Carefully reign in excess partying

• Punitive policies may backfire
• Students consume more hard alcohol in less safe
  ways.
• Drinking is pushed off campus to venues where
  administrators and women have less control.
• Men with access to alcohol have an increase in
  status and control.

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Implications for Sexuality Education
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Targeted education

• Education should
• target high-risk populations
• start early (orientation) and continue
• appeal to students motivations and interests
  (fun, partying, cross-gender interactions, sex)
• offer concrete suggestions for avoiding
  non-consensual sex
• come from credible sources

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Targeted education

• Lessons from our classrooms
• Students interests and motivations must be taken
  into account.
• Most students are not critical of gender and
  sexual arrangements.
• For the most part, the party scene is FUN.

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Targeted education

• Involve students in active learning about their
  social worlds and experiences.
• Have them do research and teaching.
• Helps to lead students into a critique of gender
  and sexual arrangements and party scene.
• Helps to bridge gap between living and learning,
  students and faculty.

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Social Organization Peer Culture Approach

• Point 2. Party rape is enabled by features of
  student peer cultures. Desire for FUN and
  concerns with status, belonging, popularity drive
  womens participation in dangerous party scenes.

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Social Organization Peer Culture Approach

• Point 1. Party Rape is enabled by the SOCIAL
  ORGANIZATION of student life.
• Greek life
• Residence life
• Etc.

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Social Organization Peer Culture Approach

• Point 3. Social Organization Peer Culture Work
  Together.
• Social Organization Intensifies Peer Culture.
• Peer Culture Reinforces Social Organization