The University of Connecticut Women’s Center is observing Sexual Assault Awareness Month this April and will hold numerous events culminating in a “Take Back the Night” rally at the end of the month, according to The Daily Campus.
According to the Women’s Center website, Take Back the Night is a “decade long tradition, honoring victim-survivors of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence, stalking, and harassment.” The rally, which will take place April 24 at 7 p.m. in the Student Union ballroom, will include speakers, a march and “a candlelight vigil in honor of those who did not make it.” This year’s theme, “It Takes a Village,” intends to highlight “the importance of community when it comes to healing from a sexual assault,” according to the event description.
The Daily Campus Editorial Board acknowledges the importance of this event, events like it and of being vigilant of sexual violence in our culture more broadly. Campus sexual assault is an endemic form of violence, especially in Greek Life. According to data compiled by RAINN, among undergraduates, “26.4% of females and 6.8% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation.” As the Editorial Board has discussed at length, UConn is no exception from this trend. However, while we have strongly emphasized the need for administrative action to prevent sexual violence and provide recourse for victim-survivors of sexual violence, we have not been as vocal about the persistence of sexual violence in campus culture.
Of course, there are still a myriad of ways in which the UConn administration excuses sexual harassment and assault. On April 15, The Daily Campus reported that the lead investigator of the UConn Police Department Special Victims Unit (SVU), Marc Hanna, had been demoted for inappropriately touching UCPD personnel. The internal UCPD investigation reported that numerous employees were “forced to modify their behavior in order to avoid having… Hanna touch them or be alone in his presence.” UConn continuing to keep such an individual on their payroll shows the degree to which they will tolerate dangerous people if it does not threaten their image. It also shows a systemic double standard that police enjoy. We ask the following question: If this behavior would be considered unacceptable by UConn faculty and staff, how is it tolerable from an officer in charge a division responsible for interpersonal violence and sexual assault?
This is unacceptable, and the Editorial Board roundly condemns the continued presence of Hanna on our campus and demands stronger accountability for the heretofore unaccountable UCPD.
At the same time, the lack of public outcry from the UConn community speaks to collective ambivalence and complacency in the face of violence that affects our friends and classmates routinely. Although UConn students and faculty have rallied behind victim-survivors of sexual assault, battling rape culture is a daily process that requires us to have difficult conversations with our community members and hold people in our social circles accountable for harm. Overall, UConn needs to be militant and proactive about ending sexual violence rather than passive and reactive.
Organizations such as UConn Revolution Against Rape (RAR) and Greeks Against Sexual Assault (GASA), run in partnership with the Women’s Center, provide students an opportunity to take their declarations of support for victim-survivors and turn it into action. The Editorial Board recognizes the importance of growing and maintaining these organizations so that combating sexual violence can become a more animated political issue at UConn.
The UConn administration is not off the hook for the systemic factors of sexual violence, but many of those systemic factors are exacerbated by excusing harm in our everyday life — the same is true of other forms of systemic oppression such as racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and more. Combating sexual violence must become an everyday practice at UConn.