Dye Releases Sexual Offense Task Force Report
By John Byrne

After more than a semester of weekly meetings, the President’s Task Force on Sexual Ethics and Education has produced a new report, which offers suggestions on how sexual assault education can better serve the community and reduce rape on campus. The task force was charged with improving the situation of sexual assault education on campus after a series of alleged rapes during the fall semester of 2001. Dye accepted the report’s findings in May.
Tenets of the report’s recommendations included expanded campus education, integration of orientation and first year seminars into the education process, faculty advisor training and year-round campus programming.
The recommendations also include a new element: that of mandating student counseling for drug and alcohol violations. While asessments by the Counseling Center have beenone of several common sanctions doled out by the student Judicial Board for such violations, this could mark the first time such action is mandated.
The issues of alcohol and rape rankled the Sexual Assault Support Team, a student organization which maintains an anonymous hotline for sexual assault survivors and anyone with questions. Their problem lies with the idea of placing blame for sexual assault on drugs and alcohol, rather than assuring quality sexual offense education.
The report made no mention of disagreement on this issue. It said, “We recommend that the task force work with the judicial coordinator [Associate Dean of Students Bill Stackman] to establish mandatory counseling for infractions of the college’s drug and alcohol policy.”
“Such counseling should include the role of drugs and alcohol in exacerbating sexual assault,” it added.
However, the Task Force did not reach consensus on the issue of mandatory education, citing the already demanding and time-intensive nature of the College.
Yet even in the report, significant differences of opinion emerge.
“It has been noted time and again, by students and faculty alike, that voluntary programs reach only a small fraction of the people who need the information most,” the report read.
It did, though, suggest that mandatory education during orientation and the freshmen seminars would likely be the most successful. Some of these have already been implemented in the new orientation program, with seminars to be integrated in subsequent years.
Lori Morgan Flood, who last year ran the Wellness Center and temporarily assumed a sexual assault educator position, has been tapped to permanently lead health and sexual assault education on campus.
She will still run the Wellness Center, though her new title is Health Promotion Coordinator.
“She is devoting a lot of time to sex education,” College President Nancy Dye said. “She’s also working with peer educators and peer educator programs.”
The first new program on campus has been “The Date,” a new element of orientation, which replaces “Sex at 7:30.” The new performance is scriptedby an outsider, and according to Dye, “leaves nothing to chance.” The play’s previous incarnation was scripted by Oberlin students.
The play, directed and performed by current students, was written by Robert Ferguson, head of the University of Kentucky’s Counseling Center, and has been used by numerous schools across the nation for similar purposes.
“‘The Date’ is about one of those ambiguous situations that you can run into if you don’t know know what consent is and you don’t practice it,” “Date” director Aaron Mucciolo ’02 said. “It’s about rape prevention above all else.”
While Oberlin does not have more reported sexual assaults than its peers, in relation to the size of its student body, the number of reported assaults, which remains in question, was far higher than usual. In a fall 2001 poll conducted by Student Senate, 40 percent of 1,404 students polled felt that the Dye administration did an inadequate job of educating and administering the sexual assault policy.
In addition, Assistant to the President for Equity Concerns and Sexual Offense Policy Administrator Camille Hamlin Mitchell, has long been a convenient target for complaints about the rape adjudication process.
“It is clear that a sizable number of students who voted do not believe they know enough about the issues, processes or policy concerning sexual offense at Oberlin,” the report stated.
Troubling to the Task Force, and to many Oberlin students, has often been the vague nature of consent for sexual acts as stated in the College’s sexual offense policy.
“Although the official sexual offense policy states ‘all interactions between students must be consensual,’ it also notes that the term consent cannot be defined with enough precision to make a definition meaningful,” declares the report.
Led by Dye’s senior assistant Diana Roose, the task force was made up of students, faculty, staff and administrators.
The task force will continue to meet during the 2002-03 academic year, and students, faculty, staff and administrators alike are encouraged to voice their feelings on the issue of sexual assault at Oberlin. Student members of the task force who are now abroad or have graduated may be replaced by the President, but this issue has not yet been settled, according to the report. Three students, who have graduated or are abroad, served on the committee. They were selected by the President.

Faculty serving were: Brian Alegant, Associate Professor of Conservatory Music Theory; Chris Howell, Professor of Politics; Wendy Kozol, Associate Professor and Director of Women’s Studies; and Joyce McClure, Assistant Professor of Religion.

The staff included: Yeworkwha Belachew, College omsbudsperson; Lori Morgan Flood, Health Promotion Coordinator; Kim LaFond, Associate Dean and Director of Residential Life & Services; Camille Hamlin Mitchell, Sexual Offense Policy Administator and Assistant to the President for Equity Concerns; Jane Wildman, Women’s Soccer and Softball Coach.

The report was circulated and revised repeatedly by all members of the task force, the President’s Office said.