CU Boulder survey: More victims disclosing sexual assaults

Annie Mehl, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.
·4 min read

Nov. 29—The University of Colorado Boulder's latest sexual misconduct survey found that among students who have been sexually assaulted, more are telling others about it — a positive finding that officials hope the campus' new sexual misconduct task force can further bolster.

"The task force is really going to be focused on understanding the sexual misconduct survey data and what recommendations and actions underlie really shifting the culture for our campus," said Teresa Wroe, CU Boulder assistant vice chancellor of prevention education for the OIEC and deputy Title IX Coordinator. "We need to have people understand and really connect efforts around (student) retention and the reduction of harm, including things like sexual assault."

Wroe serves as a co-chair on the task force, which started this summer.

Since the release of CU Boulder's 2021 sexual misconduct survey in September, the task force has started digging into data and is beginning to examine the practices it could implement to address and prevent the crime on campus. Officials with the campus declined to share updates at this time on specific practices the task force is currently evaluating but provided insight earlier this fall on how the survey will guide the task force's work.

Andrew Sorensen, a spokesperson for CU Boulder, said the campus' sexual misconduct task force said the task force will provide periodic updates to the campus about its progress.

A key piece of data the task force will continue studying and learning from is the increase in undergraduate and graduates students who said they told someone they had been sexually assaulted, according to the survey. For all student groups, the most common person they told was a roommate or friend.

In 2015 — the last time the survey was conducted — 67% of undergraduate women who had been sexually assaulted said they told someone about it, compared to 87% in 2021. In 2015, 48% of undergraduate men who had been sexually assaulted said they told someone, compared to 79% in 2021; 59% of graduate women said they told someone in 2015, compared to 79% in 2021; and 44% of graduate men in 2015 said they told someone, compared to 67% in 2021.

Llen Pomeroy, CU Boulder associate vice chancellor of the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance and Title IX coordinator, said the increase in students reporting sexual assault to anyone — whether it be roommates, friends or on or off-campus resources — was a critical finding and may be linked to the campus' ongoing awareness campaign and the implementation of CU Boulder's Don't Ignore It website following the 2015 survey.

Jessica Ladd-Webert, CU Boulder director of the Office of Victim Assistance and a task force co-chair, added "the Office of Victims Assistance has continued to increase our supporting survivors presentation, which talks about the impact of trauma and how to support a survivor when they do tell you because we know that they're going to tell a friend first if they're going to tell anyone, and how a friend responds impacts if they tell anyone else (and) if they report (the assault)."

New questions on the impact of being sexually assaulted were added to the 2021 survey. Those findings will also be examined by campus officials and the task force to see how resources can be expanded to help students' mental and social wellbeing which in turn affects retention rates, said Julie Volckens, CU Boulder director of assessment for the OIEC.

"We saw, No.1, (an) impact to mental health, (an) impact to social relationships (and an) impact to sexual and romantic relationships," Volckens said. "That's important information for us and how we respond."

According to the survey, the following data include the most prevalent effects students reported after being sexually assaulted.

* For undergraduate women, 82% said being sexually assaulted affected their mental health; 72% said it affected their intimate relationships; and 62% said it affected their social relationships.

* For undergraduate men, 57% said being sexually assaulted affected their mental health; 49% said it affected their intimate relationships; and 47% said it affected their social relationships.

* For graduate women, 79% of graduate women said being sexually assaulted affected their mental health; 68% said it caused them to be less productive in their academic work; and 63% said it affected their social/intimate relationships,

* For graduate men, 75% said being sexually assaulted affected their intimate relationships; 62% said it affected their mental health; and 50% said it affected their social relationships.

"We knew this, and this data does confirm it does impact our students' mental and social wellbeing, and we want to have resources to help them with those impacts and have a broad approach to prevent this issue from happening in the first place and help students be successful," Ladd-Webert said.