Northwestern University student's editorial on rape on campus

This is an editorial from a Northwestern University antirape advocate, Debra Marx, about how people react indifferently to sexual assault prevention on campus. An excerpt is below.

Megan Chuhran of Porchlight[Counseling Services] told me people would come up to her table, and once they saw that she dealt with sexual assault, they would move on. Shari Nivasch from Evanston Victim Services said people were not interested in talking to her, though she had important information to provide to students.

This taught me something very sad about the NU community. Students do not want to hear about rape and sexual assault. However, there is also no dialogue about how to have mutual and healthy sex. National studies of sexual assault on college campuses reveal that 2.8 percent of college women experience a completed or attempted rape in an academic school year (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000).

The study implied that at a school of NU's size and gender make-up (approximately 4,170 undergraduate women), 116 NU undergraduate women will experience completed or attempted penetration against their will (vaginal, oral or anal intercourse) this academic year. National statistics also report 15.5 percent of college women experience some form of sexual victimization (using physical or non-physical force) in an academic year. The vast majority of these rapes occur between people who know each other, most commonly a classmate or friend, less commonly but still notable, a boyfriend or acquaintance (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000). And of these, many college students do not know that these incidents are rapes because they do not fully understand how consent works [or in some cases, what it means].