Recently, students have become frustrated with comments made by Chancellor Wrighton about a Student Union resolution calling for the creation of an Office for the Prevention of Sexual and Relationship Assault. The goal of this office would be to coordinate all campus resources toward providing effective responses to sexual assault incidents on campus.
The controversy centers on remarks made by Chancellor Wrighton during a Chancellor’s Forum for students. When asked to comment on the student proposal to create a University sexual assault coordinator, Wrighton responded by noting that the proposal is one of many student resolutions and implementing the recommendations for all of them would raise tuition by as much as 20 percent.
“We need to ask ourselves, ‘where do we want to make our investments?'” said Wrighton.
While we understand that cost concerns should certainly inform this debate, we believe that given the circumstances, the Chancellor’s comments were inappropriate. For starters, the tone of the Chancellor’s remarks suggests that students haven’t fully considered whether a University sexual assault coordinator is a worthwhile investment. But we believe that this assessment is patently false. The Student Union resolution calling for the creation of an Office for the Prevention of Sexual and Relationship Assault is not just any resolution-it was unanimously passed by the Student Union Senate and endorsed by the Student Union executive without veto.
Several University groups including CORE, SARAH, One in Four and the Committee on Sexual Assault also support the resolution. Clearly, student support for the proposed changes is substantial.
But setting aside the popularity of the Student Union resolution, we would also like to point out that Washington University needs a campus-wide sexual assault coordinator. In 2004, the Committee on Sexual Assault Survey revealed that more than one in five women and one in 10 men are survivors of attempted or completed sexual assault before graduating from Washington University. As if these figures weren’t concerning enough, the sexual assault and robbery of a student in Myers residence hall by a stranger last year should surely prove that sexual assault is a campus-wide issue requiring a campus-wide response.
In our opinion, the value of making an investment in creating an Office for the Prevention of Sexual and Relationship Assault should not be in question. Jami Ake, dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and a co-chair of the Committee on Sexual Assault, has stated that the committee wants to provide a coordinated University response to every sexual assault.
“We could do a better job at making resources visible, because a lot of the time you don’t know what resources there are until you need them,” said Ake.
Working toward implementing at least some of the Student Union resolution’s recommendations would certainly go a long way towards achieving this.
We believe that the Chancellor should reconsider the remarks he made to students. His attempts to use the possibility of massive tuition increases to dissuade supporters of the student resolution were completely inappropriate. And against the backdrop of the recent $900 million endowment growth, his comments represent nothing less than a thinly veiled contempt for the opinion of Washington University students. When the vast majority of students believe that something is absolutely necessary, every effort should be made to make it possible. We call on Chancellor Wrighton to do whatever is necessary to work toward creating an Office for the Prevention of Sexual and Relationship Assault.
As Arts & Sciences Dean James McLeod said, combatting sexual assault is “not just an individual’s problem, this is our problem.”