A N AT I O N A L PA C E M A K E R AWA R D N E W S PA P E R
n o i t i d E l a i c Spe Sexual Assault on campus theswcsun.com
April 2017
Volume 60, Issue 7/Special Edition
Campus sexual assault one year later: 'A Sick Cultural Norm' continues to worsen
One year ago the Southwestern College Sun published a controversial 16-page special edition focused on campus sexual assault – including assault on our campus. We sent two journalists to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to cover a powerful anti-assault rally featuring Vice President Joe Biden and rock superstar Lady Gaga. We reported that one in five women are sexually assaulted at their colleges and 1 in 16 men. One year later we asked ourselves if the situation in America and at Southwestern College has improved. The answer is a resounding no. Sexual assault in our nation and on our campus is actually worse. The election of Donald Trump, a documented misogynist, as the President of the United States, has made a bad situation for women even more tenuous. Just this month he embraced serial sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly while threatening Planned Parenthood with defunding. Across Trump Country “Daddy Donald” is saying through his words and actions that sexual assault is okay. He is part of the reason that now one in four college women are assaulted and one in 10 men are victims of rape. At SWC, impossible as it may sound, the situation is much worse. A stunning lawsuit by a former student worker in the SWC Campus Police Department accuses three male employees of systemic sexual harassment over a two-year period, culminating in an attempted gang rape of the woman by police employees inside SWCPD headquarters. Even more stunning is her description of how the situation was mishandled by campus police chief Michael Cash. According to the lawsuit brief, she
reported the harassment and misogynistic behavior to Cash, who then violated her confidence and told the defendants. They were not investigated or punished. A second young woman who used to work in the SWCPD said she is planning to file a similar sexual harassment suit. Certainly the men accused have the right to due process and are innocent until proven guilty, but matters continue to trend badly for Cash and the SWCPD. Trust is dribbling away. One would think our campus police would learn from past mistakes such as promising escorts for threatened women but not showing up, refusing to open the door to the police department after hours when a rape victim desperately pounded on it, failing to keep accurate crime reports, questioning the way sexual assault victims were dressed and openly laughing off published accounts of sexual assaults in meetings of college administrators. They learned nothing. Our sexual assault issue was inspired by a lesson we learned from Cash, Dean Mia McClellan and some high-ranking college administrators -- it is too easy for authorities to blow off sexual assault if women will not come forward and if they will not allow the news media to use their names and images. So we put out a call for women to come forward and they did. Courageous and proud young women shed to the taboos of shame and the cloaks of silence draped over them for years. They came forward, they told their painful stories, they signed their names and they stood for photographs. As the voices of these rape victims rose, Cash and McClellan fell suddenly silent. The mocking and disrespecting of sexual assault victims stopped, at least out in the open. Cash is on administrative leave and McClellan was shuffled away to a job where she supposedly cannot hurt students anymore. Why they still work here at all is a mystery and a large of part the reason that Southwestern College is so dysfunctional. Behavior that enables rape culture and sexual assault should not be tolerated. Administrators who re-traumatized sexual assault victims should not be tolerated. Administrators who are too lazy or too disinterested to assist sexual assault victims should not be tolerated. People like Cash and McClellan who have consistently demonstrated these behaviors should be terminated and made a public example of. A symbolic head on a pike on the college lawn would send a clear message to other would-be sexual misconduct enablers that this institution is changing. Otherwise, the problem rolls along for another year, another decade, another generation. SWC is, of course, not the only campus with a sexual assault problem. Women suffer sexual abuse at colleges and universities across the nation. Amy Ziering, the producer of “The Hunting Ground,” the Academy Award-nominated documentary which rattled America with its stark look at sexual assault and rape on our nation’s college and university campuses, summed it up best. “Colleges are target-rich environments for predators with weak enforcement mechanisms,” she said. “The message to victims is clear, even if you speak up you are not going to win.” Our new college president Dr. Kindred Murillo, Governing Board President Tim Nader and Trustee Nora Vargas have all said forcefully that the culture at Southwestern College needs to change. That is a tall order that will require bold strokes, including the termination of employees who contribute to rape culture by ignoring sexual harassment complaints, insulting victims, laughing off “boys will be boys” behavior, protecting predatory employees, pushing aside complaints out of laziness, falsifying crime data and sweeping problems under the proverbial rug. New board policies on sexual misconduct are a very promising start. Sexual assault needs to move up to the top part of the agenda along with accreditation, construction and finance. Our college has taken its eye off the ball. While our leaders (and lawyers) are wrestling with racial tension among squabbling employees, upheaval in our campus technology and other self-inflicted wounds, concerns of students – particularly young females – are being treated as secondary issues. We hate to restate the obvious, but this college is here to serve students. It is a place of teaching and learning. Everything else should take a backseat. Title IX says that women have the right to equal access to public education. They do not have equal access if they are not safe. Changing a college’s culture will not be easy. Ours took half a century to develop and fester. But change can happen. Our governing board proved that in 2011 when it forcefully and decisively changed the corrupt culture of the college’s purchasing, bidding and awarding of contracts following the South Bay Corruption Scandal. Trustees Norma Hernandez and Nader were part of that board. Trustees Vargas, Roberto Alcantar and Griselda Delgado ran for the board promising to continue the process of cleaning up this institution. We need bold strokes again. We need to make some big changes. We need to rid the college of people who have old fashioned ideas about sexual assault and sexual misconduct just as we had to rid the college of people who had old fashioned ideas about pay-for-play, intimidation and silencing free speech. In 2011 Mrs. Hernandez declared in a loud, clear voice that “The pay-for-play era at Southwestern College is over.” It was her “Ich bin ein Berliner” moment. We need a board member to say “The sexual assault era at Southwestern College is over.” A year has gone by and we are waiting. The Editorial Board Southwestern College Sun
Sexual Assault by the Numbers — A Growing Problem 1 IN 4
WOMEN ARE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED WHILE IN COLLEGE
1 IN 10
RAPE VICTIMS ARE MALE
88%
OF SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIMS ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES DO NOT REPORT
Statistics from The Hunting Ground and RAINN