Young women are rightfully fed up with how college and university administrators handle sexual assault, and there is no better example than the protests currently happening at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Last week, a 17-year-old freshman girl was raped, beaten, and left on the front lawn of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house by a 19-year-old male student. The fraternity, also known as Fiji, has a history of sexual assault on the campus well known to both the students and administrators. In 2017, Fiji was given a multi-year suspension following an investigation that concluded the fraternity had engaged in misconduct that “included reckless alcohol use, hazing and inappropriate sexually based behavior, including a pattern of sexually harassing conduct.”
This incident comes at a time of year on college campuses known as the “Red Zone,” the first weeks of the fall semester when campus sexual assaults are most likely to occur. More than 50% of all of the sexual assaults that will occur during the school year happen between when students arrive on campus and Thanksgiving break. Freshman and transfer students are most likely to be victimized during this time because of their inexperience with college life and campus party culture and an absence of a tight-knit social circle who will watch out for them.
Tracey Vitchers
This year was already predicted by experts to be a “Double Red Zone” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Institutions of higher education reopening after a year of remote learning will be welcoming a new class of freshmen to campus. These freshmen are also joined by students who are academically sophomores, but are socially freshmen because they “zoomed” their first year of study remotely. Combine two classes of students who are new to campus with returning juniors and seniors anxious to make up for lost time partying with friends, and colleges have a crisis of sexual assault on their hands.
The Double Red Zone prediction is terrifyingly becoming a reality on college campuses, as exemplified by what’s going on at the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus. It’s also sparking a resurgence of on-campus anti-sexual assault activism in a post-pandemic world. Thousands of students have shown up at the #ShutDownFiji protests at University of Nebraska Lincoln. What feels different this time is that not only are the young women on campus organizing in support of the survivor, they are also demanding accountability from both the institution and men on campus for the prevention of sexual assault. A post on the @ShutDownFiji Instagram page reads, “We want to emphasize that the #shutdownfiji movement is an attempt to hold UNL accountable for their culpability in the sexual assaults that have happened at Fiji over the last four years.”
Their demands speak to the failure of most colleges and universities to hold themselves and their campus community accountable for facing tough truths about what it will take to end campus sexual assault. If University of Nebraska Lincoln and other institutions truly want to prevent campus sexual violence, they can begin by engaging young men in preventing sexual violence and to holding those who perpetrate violence accountable for their actions.
