Sexual assault has become a major issue on college campuses, and it might be much more common than people think.
“Rape is the most commonly reported violent crime reported on college campuses. like, 1 in 5 women in America will be raped in their lifetime,” said President of the Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention program Beth Ann Hamilton.
Hamilton is the President of the Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention Program, also known as SACI, and she knows firsthand how big of an issue sexual assault is on college campuses.
“Working as a SACI advocate you see that all the time, you’re on call for crisis line, you get like sometimes like 3 or 4 calls a day.”
The Office of Civil Rights, or OCR, released a report in September identifying issues with Michigan State’s handling of sexual assault cases. one of those new requirements is a sexual assault training course for greek life.
Trace Camacho is the Director of Greek Life at MSU, and was notified earlier this year about the new policy. he met with members of the greek councils to come up with their own training version that was specific to greek life.
“We were already developing a program,” said Camacho. “so when the ocr recommendations came out, the resolution agreement said we have to do a training for fraternities and sororities. and we said we already have started something so let’s just do that”
Not every chapter has their own chapter house, or the same amount of members, therefore students requested a more case based training, tailored to their specific chapters.
“Every chapter at Michigan State is different, so one canned presentation isn’t really going to appeal to everybody,” said interfraternal council president Geoff Sabourin.
Even with the implementation of these new training programs, the university is still facing more lawsuits, and even further revisions to how the university handles sexual assault could be on the horizon.