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Editorial: UT lets down the students

The University of Toledo has to change the way it handles sexual assault.

IC Editorial Board

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Imagine that you’ve just gone through something so horrific that it consumes every second of your day. The whole world looks different, and no matter what, your attention is derailed by unwanted memories. You’re struggling with what to do — even if you were forced to relive this awful experience, who would listen? Is it worth the risk, knowing they might be too busy for you? Or worse, might not believe you at all? You worry to yourself, with a sickening feeling of doubt, that you might be called a liar, or you might be dismissed altogether.

You’ve just imagined the life of a rape victim at the University of Toledo.

No one deserves to be alone after a traumatic event in their life, especially one of a sexual nature. The second that a rape victim feels like they are not free to seek help, something is already wrong. It isn’t the victim’s job to have an exhaustive knowledge on what to do next. The responsibility is with others — in this case, the university — to make it known, without question, that any sexual assault victim has a safe haven.

And when it comes to fulfilling this responsibility, we believe our university has failed.

As if it wasn’t enough for the survivor who filed the Title IX charges to speak out while trying to recover from the rape, she was submitted to the taxing, lengthy process of being interrogated by Kevin West, Title IX investigator. Instead of interviewing her in a fair manner, West mishandled the case according to his own description of events.

Several times, the survivor was asked details concerning her previous relationship with the accused assailant; these details were not only irrelevant, but served to imply that past experiences nullify the absolute right to say no to sex at any time. To top it all off, he attempted to discredit her as being inconsistent, while the perpetrator was not; ignoring, of course, the fact that the survivor was interviewed three times, and the accused, once.

The survivor has already beaten the odds in speaking out; not all survivors are able to do the same. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in four college women will be raped, but only five percent of these rapes will be reported. The obstacles in her path that she was forced to overcome in order to have her voice heard are not only a testament to her bravery, but a failing on the part of the university.

The survivor herself stated that she did not find the advocates at the university helpful to her and was forced to seek outside help at the YWCA and the University of Cincinnati counseling center.

In the past, UT had a resource that was more beneficial: an official coordinator for the Sexual Assault Education and Prevention Program, whose full-time job was specifically to handle all things related to the program. When the previous coordinator left, no one was hired to take her place, and many of her duties fell to overtaxed staff members who already had full-time jobs.

An advocate loses their effectiveness when they cannot devote 100 percent of their time to those who are seeking their help. Instead of shoving the duties from person to person, a full-time coordinator and advocate needs to be reinstated.

We could speak about how the punishment assigned to the perpetrator cannot, in any sense of the word, be qualified as fair or just in comparison to his crime. However, to do so would be once again drawing attention to the punishment, which you can read about in any number of articles recently published on the case.

The punishment is only a symptom of an already diseased process; the point is that there is a survivor who tried to reach out to the university, and the university failed them. The point is that the university’s system is broken, and needs to be repaired.

The new changes in our administration present the university with an opportunity and a responsibility. Interim President Nagi Naganathan, along with every single employee, has a chance to make improvements to the way sexual assault is handled here on campus, to examine the university’s policies and make the necessary reforms to ensure that sexual assault prevention is a priority, not an afterthought.

Considering the way this case was mishandled, it’s easy to respond with anger, and to direct it at those who were deeply involved in the case. However, people like Kevin West are not the only ones to blame. They are not anomalies, but examples of the true victims of this case. They are victims of a society that encourages the idea that it is easier to ignore and dismiss sexual assault than to face it as the monstrosity that it is, and to take steps to change it.

Instead of pointing fingers and buying into the tactics society uses to sweep the true issue of sexual assault under the rug, we should focus on the person whose voice matters most: the survivor.

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