Incoming UO students should be required to take full courses on sexual ethics if significant changes to prevailing attitudes about rape and sexual misconduct are to change, speakers told a special review panel Tuesday.
The President’s Review Panel held its second on-campus listening session Sept. 16. The forum was centered on how the university responds to cases of sexual misconduct and followed an August session that focused on ways to prevent sexual misconduct.
At the Tuesday event, two UO professors with expertise in sexual ethics and the response to misconduct said changing young people’s perceptions and attitudes about those issues will require more than what the university currently provides. They said mandatory courses that run a full term or more are needed to help students who are just beginning to wrestle with notions of their own sexual identity.
Philosophy professor and department head Bonnie Mann, who teaches a course on the philosophy of love and sex, said students are eager to learn more about sexual responsibility. She said full courses that give students a forum where they can work through social, cultural and personal aspects of sexual behavior would find a ready audience.
“I think students are hungry for that kind of training,” Mann said. “They’re hungry for a forum where they can talk about it because they’re swimming in an overwhelming culture.”
Anthropology professor Lynn Stephen, director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, also spoke in favor of mandatory courses. She said attitudes and culture often become so ingrained they are taken for granted, and changing them requires a sustained and vigorous approach.
Stephen shared her own story of sexual harassment and assault, telling the panel she was raped as a 15-year-old high school sophomore and was sexually harassed and assaulted as an undergraduate and graduate student. She said even survivors of sexual assault sometimes have a hard time addressing the issue head-on.
“People don’t voluntarily come to terms with this, either as a survivor or a perpetrator or even someone who simply doesn’t see these kinds of relationships,” Stephen said. “We have to work to make them visible.”
Another speaker urged the panel to find ways to involve more of the university’s top male administrators in violence prevention efforts. Jon Davies, a retired UO senior counselor and co-founder of the ASUO Men’s Center, said he rarely saw leading administrators at the center's events and said they should be more visible in anti-violence efforts to help set a positive example.
“It’s very, very difficult to do work with men on this campus when the men who are most powerful and visible are not there,” he said.
About 30 people attended the forum and three signed up to speak, a drop from the first session. But more than 100 people have submitted written comments through the panel’s website, and panel members have conducted dozens of interviews with students, faculty and staff during three two-day sessions on campus.
Two more listening sessions will be held after students return to campus. Those sessions will both be held in early October.
The President’s Review Panel on sexual misconduct is part of the university’s effort to become a leader in addressing the problem of sexual assault among college students both on and off campus. The eight-member panel is made up of experts in law, higher education and sexual assault prevention.
―By Greg Bolt, Public Affairs Communications