Lula Burke, Editor-in-Chief—
Kathryn Hubbard was decorating her room for her final year at Denison when she saw a notification on her phone: Denison’s Annual Security Report for 2022. This single email foreshadowed the rest of her time on campus.
“I came back to scary statistics and a frightening reality. I immediately talked to the rest of my club members about how high the numbers were,” she said.
Hubbard ’23 is the president of SHARE, the campus organization for Sexual Harassment/Assault Resources and Education. In September of 2022, she and her group received the report in their email inboxes, just as every other Denison student did.
The report, which is compiled in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy, showed a noticeably higher number of reported rapes and incidents of stalking compared to other Ohio liberal arts schools of similar size. According to the report, Denison had 15 reported cases of rape in 2021, up from 10 in 2020 and six in 2019. This is the highest number of reported rapes in at least 10 years of Clery Report data. Comparatively, Kenyon had seven reported cases of rape in 2021.
Oberlin reported two.
President Adam Weinberg said that making comparisons with Clery data can be difficult, and the numbers seen on the reports can have several meanings. No matter the 2021 data, Weinberg said, creating a culture of sexual respect is critical for the future of Clery reports and the Denison community as a whole.
“We should strive to become a campus where no sexual assault takes place,” Weinberg said. “As a community, I would encourage us to stay attentive to Clery data and make as much use of it as we can, but I would encourage us to focus more on creating a culture of sexual respect that prevents sexual assault from ever happening on our campus.”
The Clery numbers reflect reported cases only. David Rose, the Director of Campus Safety, noted that this fact creates uncertainty about the actual numbers on college campuses. According to Rose, the numbers don’t accurately represent the true number of incidents on campus.
“The Clery report tells us only that we saw an increase in reported incidents of sexual assault. We know from other national data, unfortunately, that most campus sexual assaults go unreported,” he said. “The question then is: Does our data show an increase in the total incidents of sexual assault reports on Denison’s campus? Or is it telling us that more people are reporting?”
That question is difficult to answer. The fact is, there were 15 rapes reported in 2021.
According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network and 2020 research by the U.S. Department of Justice, 20% of female student victims aged 18 to 24 report assaults to law enforcement. Does this apply to Denison? Is there any way to know?
From her perspective as a student who works one-on-one with survivors as a peer mentor, Hubbard said there are many possible reasons that the rise in cases might not have been simply an increase in reporting.
“We see other schools our size not experiencing the same uptick. We’ve tripled in recent years. There are complicating factors. … Maybe people felt more comfortable (filing a report),” she said. “But I truly don’t think that’s the case.”
Justin Brown, the new Director of Civil Rights and Title IX, acknowledged that 15 is a large number of rapes for a campus of about 2,300 students. He said he hopes to work with Hubbard and other departments on campus to help students be safe on campus and feel comfortable with reporting if an assault occurs.
His take on the numbers is that they must be contextualized by other reports, assessments, and sources. The Clery report is one piece of data that the university can use to assess safety on the campus. He said the focus should also be on working proactively rather than retroactively.
“Fifteen is a large number. We would want that number to be 0. But these are overall small numbers, so they can fluctuate from one year to the next with no real explanation. The numbers can also have multiple explanations,” he said. “What we try to rely on is a variety of different sources of information.”
These “multiple explanations” could be: Increased reporting of sexual crimes, increased frequency of sexual crimes, and the results of a growing student population.
Rose said that the creation of the dedicated Title IX office at Denison and the presence of more mental health counselors at Hoaglin Wellness Center could mean that the higher numbers reflect more reporting.
Laura Dunn, the founder and director of SurvJustice, said that “schools with higher rates [of sexual assault in their Annual Security Reports] are actually doing a better job of encouraging reporting and addressing the issue.” Dunn is a survivor of assault who created SurvJustice as a nonprofit in Raleigh, N.C., that pursues justice for all survivors of sexual violence through legal assistance, policy advocacy, and institutional training.
The increased reporting might signal a sense of trust between students and administrators.
“The data strongly suggest that students are feeling more comfortable coming forward to report sexual assault on campus, making it more likely this year’s numbers are a reflection of a stronger reporting culture rather than a higher total number of actual assaults,” Rose said.
However, part of Hubbard’s concern was the lack of a permanent Title IX Coordinator after the previous director, Stephanie Jackson, left the role near the end of 2021. Two interim directors existed between then and October 2022, when Brown filled the role. However, for those interim months, Hubbard and other students were not impressed. Though the 15 reports in 2021 happened with a permanent Title IX director in place, those numbers might look different in the next report.
“[Joe Hall, the former interim Title IX Director] functioned primarily remotely, didn’t have a picture on MyDenison, and wasn’t really present on any website except for a little bit about his experience. The Title IX coordinator is so important. We needed a face and a name for someone so vital in the community,” Hubbard said. “When survivors experience what they do, it’s really hard to know where to go if resources aren’t in front of your face, especially if they are literally factually incorrect [regarding Jackson’s name in class syllabi]. There won’t be as much trust or reporting in general, given how daunting reporting is.”
From Hubbard’s point of view, protocol put in place by Jackson was somewhat abandoned when the role was left to the interim director. Hubbard said that there was less supplementary programming, less regular maintenance on student organizations and Greek life, and less in-person training for first-year students.
“For example, the sexual respect chairs for Greek organizations fell to each organization. They used to go through a two-part training to report back to their chapters. That just fell away,” she said.
Brown acknowledged this, and is actively working to put permanent protocols in place.
“I can only speak for myself and moving forward, but I would say that I take it to be my responsibility to keep adequate documentation, have very clear policies and formal procedures, but also internal protocols in place so that it is very easy for someone, even in a temporary basis, seamlessly transition during the wait for a more permanent person,” Brown said.
Given this lapse, Hubbard is “worried about the next annual report,” which would span the time when the permanent Title IX position was not filled. Hubbard, along with many others, has questions.
“I mean…why was there no in-person training for the freshmen? Why were sororities and fraternities not forced to have sexual respect chairs during that lapse? Balls were dropped, but these are very serious situations that can ruin someones’ life,” she said.
“You see other schools with similar vibes, that have 10 fewer [rape] cases than we do. We’ve tripled in the past few years,” she said. “I don’t know if people are just now feeling comfortable enough to report or what, but I can’t stand the idea that something so horrible is so preventable.”
For now, for administrators and students alike, the reasons for the higher numbers remain somewhat of a mystery.
“I will happily revisit that conversation once I have a more complete picture and more recent data,” Brown said. “We don’t want to just look at numbers either – we know much more than just the numeral that’s in the report. We want to look at all of that.”
Additionally, Hubbard said she was shocked and upset that there had been no communication on behalf of Denison’s administration with her organization or other students about the numbers in the report. Hubbard also said that there should have been more of a discussion about the numbers in the report on campus.
Halle Nelson, a communication specialist at the National Sexual Violence Research Center, said that the claim that higher numbers signal higher rates of reportage must be backed by clear evidence of sexual assault prevention courses, management of community values, and other administrative protocols put in place to actively prevent assault.
“If the university administration is interpreting the reports as an increase in reports by students as opposed to an increase in incidents, then it’s also important for them to publicly discuss what else may have been done behind the scenes,” she said. “What are they doing regarding this issue and what may have changed in their processes, protocols, and programs? What preventative actions on their part, do they feel, prompts them to believe that their campus community deals with the same or similar amount of campus assaults as years previous to this most recent report?”
Confusion on this point among members of the campus community was explained by Dr. Bethany Backes, an assistant professor in the Violence Against Women Faculty Cluster Initiative at the University of Central Florida. She said that “it is hard to compare to other schools unless their reporting procedures and requirements are the same as Denison,” though “having listening sessions with students and digging deeper into the incident reports may be helpful,” suggesting that there could be a trend in the situations surrounding certain incidents. This could help guide Denison’s future directions for “intervention, education, and response,” she said.
Overall, these experts seem to agree that the response to such reports should include information about victim’s services, public discussions for the future of protocols, and a clear description of the numbers in the Clery report from campus officials.
Hubbard said that she is hopeful for the work that can be done between her organization and Brown, who has shown interest in collaborating with student organizations to lower the true numbers of crimes on campus. Her work educates students on sexual respect, assists survivors in their mental health and pursuance of legal action and collaborates with Title IX and Campus Safety to make the campus a safe space.
“He’s been very communicative that balls were dropped. I came into my first meeting with him extremely angry. I was having the worst semester, because I had had so many unproductive meetings and it just felt like [administrators] didn’t care. Once we met with him, I felt a lot better,” she said.
SHARE and Brown, as well as other student organizations, such as the Denison Coalition for Sexual Respect and Denisonians for Planned Parenthood, and other campus offices, such as the Hoaglin Wellness Center and the Center for Belonging and Inclusion, are making concrete plans to address these sexual crimes, no matter how many there may be.
“We’re working on a project together developing and piloting a peer facility bystander intervention program. I want to support these groups in any way I can, and just know what they’re doing. I hope to seek out the gaps in overall programming and see, okay, maybe we need to do some more, say, gender identity programming,” Brown said. “If something is falling by the wayside, we want to make sure there are programs offered in that specific area.”
Hubbard emphasized the importance of Brown “just coming to [student-led] events.”
“We’ve been doing things differently, a little more proactively, especially around the whole orientation thing. He’s come to a lot of our events just to try to get to know the community. He wants to also incorporate our Helping-Hands training into Denison life as well,” she said, referencing support for survivors and advice for bystanders.
According to Rose, the campus’s main approach is education. Students and employees of the university are required to complete training, whether online or in person, and organizations on campus host a variety of events to educate students on topics such as sexual health and survivor support.
No matter the numbers on the annual report, Hubbard urges students to get Helping Hands training, and “keep an eye out for each other.”
Those who need support regarding a sexual assault can contact the Wellness Center at (740) 587-6200, reach out to Justin Brown at [email protected], or message SHARE at [email protected].