One year after sweeping changes in the College’s system of sexual assault education and response, a newly created office has organized 82 educational events and assisted 48 students with concerns about sexual assault, according to a progress report given at the Faculty meeting Tuesday.
The report outlines the implementation of the Committee to Address Sexual Assault at Harvard’s (CASAH) findings, including the creation the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (OSAPR) and the use of a single fact-finder to assist in Administrative Board investigations of sexual assault.
OSAPR has assisted 39 undergraduates with concerns about sexual assault, sexual harassment or relationship abuse, and has had an average of 4.2 contacts per undergraduate between when it was created in July 2003 and the end of March 2004, according to the office’s utilization statistics.
Of these 39 students, the report said 18 utilized the OSAPR for concerns about a sexual assault that occurred in the last three months, seven for sexual assaults in the last two years and five for sexual harassment by a professor, University officer or a person in the workplace. Others who have used the office’s resources include four for a childhood or adolescent abuse experience and five for physically or emotionally abusive relationships, according to the statistics.
OSAPR officials have also consulted 92 times with individuals, such as proctors, tutors and University Health Services (UHS) clinicians, who have been in contact with students dealing with sexual assault.
CASAH, chaired by Professor of International Health at the School of Public Health Jennifer Leaning ’68 who also presented the report Tuesday, stated in its April 2003 report that students needed better coordinated and more easily accessible services, recommending the creation of the single, central OSAPR as one remedy.
“I believe we have made excellent progress this year in accomplishing the steps laid out in the 2003 committee report, and think we have had the full support of the College and Faculty in doing so,” Leaning wrote in an e-mail. “The amount of work done by the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response has been prodigious.”
OSAPR has also been a “springboard” in promoting cooperation between student groups concerned with sexual violence and the administration, said Coalition Against Sexual Violence member Sarah B. Levit-Shore ’04.
“The office cares a lot about these issues and about involving students in decision making,” Levit-Shore said.
By providing 24-hour services and guaranteeing professional, individualized help in navigating the school’s resources, the centralized office has made a “critical difference” on campus, Levit-Shore said.
“There was a lot of negative feeling about the education and resources that existed for students on campus, and OSAPR’s presence has had a very positive effect on proactively changing this feeling,” Levit-Shore said.
The Leaning Committee convened after student and faculty outcry over a change to the College’s sexual assault policy that mandated the need for corroborating evidence before the Ad Board could investigate complaints.
CASAH also identified the need for greater use of an independent researcher to gather unbiased information for cases of sexual violence brought to the Ad Board—a policy which has been utilized this year.
“We have used fact finders in all cases of peer on peer violence that have come before the Ad Board this year,” Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 wrote in an e-mail. “The number of such cases is not large, but in each case I feel that the process served us well.”
The Ad Board also now holds formal “debriefing” sessions after the completion of cases to consider processes used to deal with the incidents and how they can be improved.
