Recent
Sexual Offenses Spark Investigation, Discussion
by Ariella Cohen
Two
incidents of sexual violence were reported to the Oberlin Police
this week. One awaits an Ohio state trial and the other is currently
under investigation by the College as well as Oberlin police.
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Womens
Resource Center: The student-initiated center provides
a number of services to the Oberlin campus. (photo by
Claire-Helene Mershon)
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On
Saturday Sept. 15 at approximately 2:48 a.m., the Oberlin Police
Department received a call from the College Office of Safety and
Security that several of their officers were in North Hall on Union
Street with a female who was reporting a sexual assault, stated
the police departments Incident Report. College security officials
transported the complainant to Oberlin Medical Centers Emergency
Room following the incident.
While rumors of the alleged attack have been circulating since Saturday,
the case is still under investigation and remains open.
Later in the week the Office of Safety and Security received a call
from a student reporting an abusive relationship. After appraising
the situation as a case of domestic violence, security called in
the Oberlin police. A warrant was issued for domestic violence and
the defendant will go on trial this week. He is being held on a
$25,000 bond. This incident was the third sexual offense reported
on Oberlins campus in 2001. Typically, security hears reports
of two or three sexual assaults yearly. In most cases both involved
parties attend the college and are often acquaintances, but many
acknowledged that unreported cases of sexual assault happen on the
campus yearly.
When people know that you are in SAST they talk to you, so
between hotline calls, friends and strangers confiding in us, we
know that sexual assaults have occurred, sophomore SAST leader
Jesse Carr said.
This semester Carr and senior Jennifer Katz teach the Sexual Assault
Support Team (SAST) ExCo. Throughout the semester, the ExCos
14 students will learn about sexual assault. Some will be trained
to counsel survivors over the anonymous 24-hour hotline that the
organization runs. While federal law requires the College to report
all cases of sexual assault to the city police, SAST provides confidential
support and treatment.
SAST, along with the college, the Lorain County Rape Crisis Center
and the police coordinate a sexual assault procedure bound not only
by federal law but also college policy. Immediately that chain of
events is set into motion.
When we go in and find that the case matches with descriptions
of sexual battery, or other offenses in Ohio Code then we go to
the police department because most likely there will be criminal
prosecution. But if the sexual offense falls into a gray area then
we would go not to the police department but to the college,
Director of Safety and Security Robert Jones said. Because of this
grey area where one persons word often collides
with anothers and hard evidence is rare, the later hearings
and trials that determine guilt in sexual assault cases have proven
difficult to arbitrate.
We are talking about human interaction here, not lab experiments.
When you have interpersonal relations it is obvious that you have
one perspective, the other party has a different view and you were
both there. When you bring in a third party they obviously have
a different perspective. Humans are different from science experiments,
the Administrator of the College Sexual Offense Policy Camille Hamlin
Mitchell said.
The policy itself more formally outlines the difficulties in judging
sexual offenses when it discusses the consent clause that mandates
all sexual interaction between students must be consensual.
The next paragraph goes onto detail that the term consent
can not be defined with enough precision to make a definition meaningful
for any and/or all situations.
Last revised in 1999 but reviewed yearly by the Colleges student,
faculty and staff officiated Sexual Offense Review Committee (SORC),
the Sexual Offense Policy and Procedures spends nearly five pages
of the College Rules and Regulations guide explaining how sexual
offenses are adjudicated within the College community. Also discussed
in the policy is the Colleges commitment to educating about
sexual offenses.
While the policy decrees training for the entire College community
on matters pertaining to sexual offenses, campus security officials
are not specifically trained to handle sexual offenses.
The College supports SAST, but not our mission of supporting
and educating the community. I think the College should hire someone
whose full time job is to educate the campus community about sexual
assault, Katz said.
And while this grievance arose in last Saturdays open dialouge
on sexual assault and has been an item of contention in the past,
workshops and other outlets to learn about the implementation of
the policy are increasingly facilitated by the College via Hamlin
Mitchell as well as SAST.
Students love to react when there is an incident but the tendency
is to then put sexual assault out of mind. The tendency needs to
be to educate ourselves all the time. People need to read the policy.
They clamor for more educational opportunities but when opportunities
are given people dont show, Hamlin Mitchell said.
Last Winter Term Hamlin Mitchells administrative branch, the
Office of Equity Concerns offered a sexual offense policy project
wherein students were given the opportunity to submit a comparative
critique of the current policy and create a program designed to
educate and outreach the larger campus community. The program did
not attract sufficient student interest and was not completed.
I think the administration in the last few years has been
looking for more ways to support survivors and they have made it
clear that they are looking for ways to change. However there is
a long way to go, Katz said.
Sexual Offense Policy Information sessions will be offered: 7:15-8:15
p.m. in Carnegie 211 on Sept. 24, Oct. 8, 17,31 and Nov. 7 and 14.
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