Assault victim resources: a lukewarm hotline?

You're at a party when you realize you've had too much to drink. You head for the door, where a guy you know sees you leaving and offers to walk you home. He walks you to your door. You fumble with the key, have trouble standing up. He takes your key and helps you inside your room. He lays you down on the bed and starts taking off your clothes. You want to push him away, but you're so drunk you can barely move. He rapes you.

CHIP LOCKWOOD/YH Without a dedicated rape and assault counseling center, Yale students make due with a plecemeal support system for victims.

A recent Justice Department study estimates that 1.7 percent of U.S. college women were raped during the 1996-97 school year, with an additional 1.1 percent being victims of attempted rape.

Yale students are at as much risk as students at other colleges. But compared to other Ivy League schools, Yale offers far fewer rape-specific resources to its students. At Brown, for example, a different dean is on call each day, available to students who need to talk about any problems. There are also undergraduate women peer counselors who deal with gender-specific problems. Harvard has a hotline and drop-in center coordinated and staffed by peer counselors available seven days a week. There is also a staff advisor or social worker on-call 24 hours a day.

Yale's confidential sexual assault hotline, called CONSENT, operates from 9 p.m. to midnight, Sunday through Wednesday. The Yale Women's Center distributes pamphlets and acts as an umbrella organization and referral service. It is currently sponsoring Take Back the Night, which, according to Eliza Park, ES '01, one of its coordinators, "seeks to foster awareness, but more importantly, activism, about violence against women. "We're holding a march, a rally, and a vigil, including personal anonymous survivor testimonies to be read out loud," Park said. According to Stephanie Schmid, TC '02, a Take Back the Night coordinator and current member of the Yale College Sexual Harassment Grievance Board, of which Park is also a member, "Aside from our initial introductory meeting, the Board has not been convened once this year."

The Yale Sexual Assault Peer Educators have had difficulty in launching their organization and have definitely not established a presence on campus. Schmid and Paige Herwig, TC '02, have been trying to create a Yale sexual assault crisis center, which would provide student-to-student advocacy for victims at Yale. They have been advocating the use of trained student volunteers available at all hours to support victimized students, give advice, and help obtain medical attention.

CAYTE PUSHKAREVA/YH

Under pressure from Schmid and Herwig, the Yale College Council (YCC) has unanimously passed the Yale Sexual Assault/Rape Reform Resolution. This resolution calls for Yale to review its current resources and policies regarding sexual assault and to create a student-run Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Center. It also supports the creation of a student-run victim advocacy program aimed at furnishing Yale students with a "first responder" on call to assist survivors with police, hospitals, counseling, and University disciplinary proceedings.

Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg said she has not heard of any resolution by the YCC regarding rape resources at Yale, nor has she spoken recently with the YCC as a whole. But responding to students who decry Yale's lack of resources, she said, "I don't know what they think is deficient about what we do here. We have systems in place to deal with people who have been assaulted. We are not oblivious to the needs of victims of assault." Trachtenberg added, "All of these things are very personal; all of these people respond differently to different situations. There is no absolute formula for something like this. These things must be handled in an individual and personal way."

A Yale junior who asked to remain anonymous was assaulted one summer while participating in an Association of Yale Alumni Fellowship program. When she returned to Yale in the fall, she sought counseling. She recalls the experience as less than comforting: "Mental Health was cold, sterile, and impersonal," she remembered. "How could anyone bare the deepest pain in their soul on the third floor of DUH? This person had no idea what it meant to be raped, how I felt, how scared I was."

"[Mental Health] didn't have a specific rape crisis counselor for me to talk to, and I eventually just stopped going," she continued. "It was easier to sleep in on Friday mornings and talk to my roommates than it was to walk up Hillhouse and not feel any warmth. What I needed most was human contact that wasn't painful; someone to tell me that everything was going to be okay, and I never got that there."

Although the YCC resolution passed, there is currently no Rape Crisis center, no victim advocacy program, and no "first responder" on call at Yale.

"As a member of the Sexual Harassment Grievance Board, I feel that we are severely under-utilized, either because the Administration does not feel a need to convene the entire board, which includes students, or because people do not approach the board in the first place," Park said. "In general, it's a highly bureaucratized system. And should you be sexually harassed or raped, there is no clear path to take. You can go to health services, but it's not known if there's a specific number you should call."

"For those who think that rape doesn't occur at Yale," Park added, "they should come and listen to what these testimonies [read at Take Back the Night events] have to say. We usually get so many that we end up having to continue during the march and breakout session afterwards." There is currently no specific procedure that rape victims at Yale are encouraged to follow; while there are a variety of options (go to health services, tell your freshman counselor, call the police), there is currently no one specifically available to counsel rape victims or inform them of their rights. Nor is anyone designated to accompany a victim to the police, to counseling, to the hospital, or to disciplinary proceedings.

Faculty and administrators, however, have another facet of the story to tell. Peter Parker, professor of physics and astronomy and member of the Sexual Harassment Grievance Board, offers some perspective on the situation. "The Board has not had a large number of meetings...four or five, I would say," he said. "We have met once or twice as an entire board." He addressed the issue of sensitivity to rape victims, explaining that "some of [the victims] want to talk to undergrads, some of them do not...we try to make it less of an overwhelming situation, so that instead of having to tell her story to six or seven of us, the complainant can speak to a smaller group of two or three."

As for the resources Yale offers to rape survivors, Parker said, "I don't even know all the resources available...We're sort of doing a different side of it here [on the board]. That's not what this board does."

According to the Campus Report Card, a pamphlet put together by Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services (CONSACCS) to assess the response to sexual assault on Connecticut campuses, Yale offers only four out of seven identifiable victim services. There is no women's health clinic at Yale, no 24-hour campus support services to the victims of violence, and no counseling services specific to rape survivors.

In this respect, Yale Ranks below Trinity College, Quinnipiac College, and Sacred Heart University. Connecticut's four-year campuses (including Yale) are earning an "F" in terms various resources for sexual assault victims.

Laura Cordes, the CONNSACS Healthcare Outreach coordinator, spoke at Yale on Mon., Feb. 26 about what survivors and their friends should know about rape. Cordes mentioned the Connecticut College Consortium Against Sexual Assault; a group to which Yale pays dues, but whose meetings Yale representatives seldom attend. Parker responded, "Sometimes it is a question of not being able to find someone who is able to go—but people are encouraged." He had never heard of the Consortium.

The campus-wide efforts of people such as Schmid, Herwig, Park, and others to raise awareness of this issue seem often to attract a self-selecting audience composed largely of women who are already aware of and concerned about rape. Events like Take Back the Night have a difficult time attracting more than three or four men to any one event, and most of the women in attendance at such events are already involved with the Women's Center in some way. Adam Rosenblatt, SY '00, tried to start a "men against sexual assault" group on campus two years ago. It failed after a year due to lack of interest.

The average age of both rapists and their victims is 18.5, which means that college freshmen are at highest risk. "Yale needs a 24-hour rape counseling hotline as well as some sort of unified system or center whose existence and function is known throughout the campus," Park said. "The stigma that is associated with rape, however, is something I feel that the Administration can do little to realistically change."

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