Dear Provost Thorp,

We are writing to you today, during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, as students concerned about the epidemic of sexual and relationship violence affecting the Washington University community. We know that you have tackled serious issues of university compliance related to sexual assault in your recent tenure at the University of North Carolina, and we hope to see continued progress on all facets of this topic under your leadership.

Washington University has made significant strides in creating a safer campus and especially one more supportive of survivors, but there is far more to do before we have a violence-free community. One of the biggest successes in recent years was the hiring—albeit years after many of our peer institutions—of Kim Webb, a staff member dedicated to sexual assault and community health services. Our students deserve more, though; with one in four female students, and significant numbers of male students, experiencing attempted or completed rape in her tenure, surely this issue merits a fully funded and staffed office in order to meet prevention and support services goals. In addition to Webb’s appointment, we also applaud the recent updates to the judicial system in order to make the University Title IX compliant. However, we call on all university administrators to make all facets of the University’s response to sexual assault more transparent. Students should have had a say in the changes to the judicial process and in all other efforts relevant to their safety at this school. The administration must be accountable to students as stakeholders in this community, and that means rendering decision-making processes transparent and open to comment and review. Finally, we call on the University to expend the staff time and resources necessary to identify emerging best practices in the field of sexual assault prevention; all of the support services we have, while vital, do nothing to stem the tide of sexual assault in the first place.

We look forward to working closely with you on this topic in the coming months. Sexual assault and relationship violence have no place in this, or any, community.

Sincerely,

Lauren Weiss, on behalf of CARE (a coalition of SARAH, CORE, VAWA, Help to Heal and Half the Sky), Anna Applebaum and Jacqui Germain.