According to a 2020 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50% of women and 30% of men have experienced sexual violence. Marginalized groups are at an even higher risk for sexual assault, including people of color. For instance, Native Americans are twice as likely to experience rape or sexual assault compared to all races, and approximately 60% of Black girls experience sexual abuse by age 18.
LGBTQ+ people are also at an increased risk. A 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault. For LGBTQ+ women, those statistics are even more staggering, with lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women more than five times more likely than non-LBT women to experience sexual assault.
Young people are also at higher risk for sexual assault, with people most at-risk between the ages 12 and 34. On college campuses, where most students are ages 18 to 22, sexual assaults account for 43% of total on-campus crimes, with approximately eight forcible sex offenses per 10,000 students, according to data analyzed by the American Psychological Association (APA). By graduation, 26% of female undergraduate students report experiencing sexual assault, according to a 2020 study.
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Sewanee’s C.P.R. in Action Initiative
To mitigate sexual assault on campus, Sewanee: The University of the South, established the C.P.R. in Action Initiative in 2021. The initiative is a comprehensive program that integrates three key components — Compliance, Prevention, and Resources — to address sexual violence and improve the overall safety and well-being of all students, with an emphasis on those who are disproportionately impacted, particularly students of color and LGBTQ+ students.
“The C.P.R. framework helps us to categorize the components that fit into the mission of DEI. That mission is to build a community enriched by our diversity and centered around equity, justice, mutual respect, and shared responsibility,” Dr. Rachel Fredericks, Sewanee’s Director of Inclusive Excellence, told Campus Safety. “The program was ultimately created to support that mission and respond to our data and the day-to-day conversations with students about feeling safe.”
C.P.R. in Action is the recipient of the 2024 Clery Center Campus Safety Impact Award. The award, now in its second yard, highlights a program or initiative that demonstrates innovation, collaboration, and equity in enhancing campus safety. For Sewanee, equity and inclusion significantly informed the creation and implementation of the program (2:57).
“The establishment of the initiative was actually a response to our data. Our data showed that the sexual and racial climate on our campus intersected, and so 30% of our complainants of color had respondents who were not of color,” Dr. Sylvia Gray, Sewanee’s Senior Director of Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX, told Campus Safety. “Seventy-five to 100-plus of our students engage in an annual retreat called the Posse Plus Retreat. Posse is a separate initiative that helps to recruit students of color to our campus. Students who’ve attended that retreat have consistently voiced concerns about sexual harm on our campus with the majority of those attendees, as I said, being students of color. Our racial climate survey showed that we could really stand to improve the ways in which students of color feel safe on and off campus through cross-racial interaction.”
The Impact of C.P.R. in Action at Sewanee
While measuring the impact of an initiative aimed at mitigating violence can be difficult since one can never truly know how many incidents were prevented as a direct result, Sewanee has seen some significant improvements since C.P.R. in Action was first launched. To raise awareness and motivate students to report incidents of sexual misconduct, hate crimes, and other discrimination, the team launched an “In Short Report” swag campaign (8:16).
“Once we established our EEO office and pressed into the importance of reporting, discrimination reports increased from five to 30,” Fredericks said. Sexual misconduct reports also remain steady with a decrease in sexual violence towards students of color, dropping from 36% to 10%.
Using student feedback, the group also developed culturally-specific programs that foster an open dialogue on topics such as sexual misconduct, race, and belonging. One program is the Student Title IX Committee (STIX), which offers peer-to-peer campus trainings through a certification process. Nearly half of Sewanee’s Greek organizations have started the STIX certification training, says Fredericks, which will get them an annual acknowledgment of being Title IX and racial healing certified.
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The team is able to measure its success through evaluations of its various program offerings, which have an average score of 4.5 out of five and an average attendance of 55 students (9:23). In the past year, C.P.R. hosted 35 programs and is on target to do 50 this year. More students also participated in Sewanee’s 2024 climate survey than in years’ prior.
“The hope is that we continue to be able to keep a pulse on the safety of all our students but also those who are disproportionately impacted with safety as it pertains to sexual identity and as well as the way in which they engage around racial issues on our campus,” said Gray.
During the interview, Fredericks and Gray also shared:
- Who was involved in creating the C.P.R. in Action Initiative (5:26)
- Direct feedback received from students and faculty about the initiative (12:01)
- Advice for campuses looking to mitigate sexual violence on campus (15:24)
