Support Team Hopeful After Panel Forum

To the Editors:

On Sunday, April 7 a panel forum was held to discuss sexual violence at Oberlin. The speakers on the panel included sexual offense policy administrator Camille Hamlin-Mitchell, President Nancy Dye, Chief of Security Bob Jones, Ananda Timpane representing the Women’s Resource Center, Benjamin Joffe-Walt representing Men Can Stop Rape, and myself, Becky Hempel, representing the Sexual Assault Support Team.
Students submitted questions ahead of time for the panelists to answer, and senate selected which panelists would receive which questions. The format itself was received somewhat negatively, since the audience was not allowed the opportunity to respond to answers made by the panelist or ask further questions if they felt a panelist had not sufficiently answered a question.

Despite our frustration with the format, SAST left the forum with hope, born from the ground that had been broken in bringing students and administration together to address issues of sexual violence, and in the assurances administration had given students that they are committed to ending sexual violence on this campus and willing to listen to student ideas.
The panel was presented as step one in a long process aimed at addressing sexual violence on this campus. Following the panel discussion, a debriefing meeting involving the panelists only was supposed to have been scheduled, but has yet to take place. The reason I was given was that Nancy Dye’s schedule has not allowed for a one hour lunch meeting for the purpose of debriefing and following through with the actions discussed on the panel.

Seeing as the debriefing has yet to take place and the end of the semester is quickly approaching, I wanted to take the opportunity to summarize SAST’s concluding remarks regarding the forum, as well as what our expectations for the future are.
Students and administration seem to have reached common ground on some basic understandings at Oberlin: Sexual Violence is a problem and education is one of the most effective approaches at an answer. We look forward to a point in time when a two-way discussion can take place between students and administrators about what the most effective ways to educate about sexual violence at Oberlin could be.

We would like to see Oberlin become a community that holds perpetrators of sexual violence accountable for their actions, as this is the first step in ending sexual violence. To do this, we need to, as a community, view rape and sexual violence as the violent crimes that they are, and NOT as sexual misunderstandings.

In terms of concrete ways that the administration can work with students to approach these goals, there are many. A Permanent Professional Educator on Sexual Violence, as was once mandated by the policy before President Dye’s term began at Oberlin, would be a good start. Completing a national search to find a qualified individual to fill this position would ensure that education about sexual violence at Oberlin was top notch, as education is reputed to be in so many other areas. This individual would be able to complete further trainings of groups on campus including ResLife, Safety and Security and the Deans, as well as take the onus off students, who up until this semester have done all of the educational work on sexual violence at Oberlin.

Also this would give Oberlin the opportunity to institute a mandatory educational program that would reach all students, sending the message of community wide accountability and also reaching individuals who need the education and would not attend nonobligatory workshops.

On top of an Educator Position being created and added to the sexual offense policy, a Consent-Based Policy (a policy that defines consent explicitly), like the one submitted by the Sexual Offense Review Committee last spring and currently lost in the shuffle, would be a step towards eliminating sexual violence at Oberlin. Instituting a consent based policy would eliminate the margin of variance in definition that often allows for Oberlin to fail to hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes.
Above and beyond these changes that the administration could choose to implement next semester, it is necessary that Oberlin commit to maintaining any progress that we make. This means backing any of these changes with the funding and institutional support that they deserve so that they do not disappear, like the Sexual Assault Prevention Interns (of Spring 2001-Fall 2001) did.
What we choose to do with our time is of the essence and clearly displays where our priorities lie. Follow-through is vital to maintain the fragile progress we have made in beginning these discussions, and I hope that the panel members and Oberlin community will prioritize and commit to addressing sexual violence on our campus.
We look forward to, and very much expect to work with administration next semester in following up on the goals for ending sexual violence that they expressed sharing with us.

–Becky Hempel
College junior
SAST