Winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence award
September 30, 2014
Fall, issue 4
Sexual misconduct task force created to educate students Rebekah Duntz Editor-in-Chief New federal laws have been mandated by the Department of Education to confront the issue of sexual violence on college campuses and address how college campuses are handling reported cases. Under Title IX, colleges and universities are required to investigate any reported cases of sexual violence. Title IX was created to make sure there is no sex discrimination in education. Changes have also been made to the Clery Act, which is a law that makes colleges and universities responsible for reporting crimes on an annual basis. Under the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act, a revision in the Clery Act now requires a breakdown of sexual assaults to include statistics on dating violence, domestic violence and stalking. New proposed laws, such as the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, are asking campuses to go a step further and provide training to faculty and staff, conduct a climate survey, and raise awareness within the campus community. To help Florida Tech adequately comply with these laws, a sexual misconduct task force was created in April 2014 to address the issue, educate students, raise awareness on campus and focus on prevention of sexual violence. The task force includes
representatives from students, Residence Life, Campus Security, CAPS, ROTC, and other departments on campus. “Nothing has really changed, except now it’s just a little more
As of right now, these programs are optional, not required. “If the Campus SaVE Act gets approved, what we’ll be required to do is offer it to new students and new faculty and staff
semester, sexual misconduct is any sexual activity without consent. This includes sexual and genderbased harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence and stalking.
in-depth,” said Kevin Graham, director of security. “When it comes down to it: it’s nothing that we haven’t already been doing.” As a part of education, Florida Tech has launched a poster campaign, stressing the importance of consent and listing phone numbers in case of an emergency. The posters can be seen on the back of bathroom stalls and on the side of buildings like the Student Union Building. Information on sexual misconduct is now included in orientation, University Experience courses and campus safety presentations. Several events designed to educate students are planned for this fall, including “Sex Ed Bootcamp.”
on an annual basis. So anyone that comes in new will be required to go through an educational program,” said Rodney Bowers, Dean of Students. The task force will also be conducting a climate survey to find out whether sexual violence is happening more frequently than it is being reported. “The whole purpose of the climate survey is so students can anonymously tell us whether they are victims of sexual assault on campus and they’re just simply not reporting it,” said Bowers. Sexual misconduct: what is it? According to the Student Handbook, which is sent out to all students at the beginning of every
It all comes down to consent. If a student attempts to coerce another unwilling student into sexual activity, it is a violation. If a student is incapacitated in any way with alcohol or drugs, that student is unable to give consent. Joni Oglesby, the Title IX Coordinator on the task force, said, “You need to check, and it needs to be a yes that a reasonable person would say. If that person is incapacitated, just walk away. Don’t do it. It’s so not worth it to the person who is committing the crime. And we know it’s not worth it for the person who is being assaulted.” Kendra Bartel, a pre-doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, thinks that it’s important to not let things escalate.
“The scary thing is that people let it get to that point, or they don’t realize that it’s more than that. Just someone bothering you can count as harassment, and harassment can lead to something more serious. Prevention is really important because then you don’t have to wait until it gets to that point,” said Bartel. Telling someone: how it works If a student has suffered from sexual violence, he or she has many options. The student will need emotional and psychological support, and so CAPS is a helpful resource. CAPS offers free counseling services, and all information is confidential. When CAPS reports an occurrence to Security, all patient information is redacted. If you live on campus, you have the option of telling a Residence Assistant what happened. ResLife spends a lot of time training and educating themselves on what to do and where to direct a student. “By the point when they’re coming to us, they kind of want to do something about it,” said Greg Connell, assistant director of Residence Life. From there, the complainant can choose to go through a formal or an informal process when reporting the incident.
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Thunderstorms test Florida Tech’s drainage system Noemi Redak Staff Writer The weather Florida Tech has experienced lately has put the campus drainage system to the test. On Tuesday, Sept. 23, the campus experienced one of the worst floods in the past few years. Many students were late to class because of the heavy storm and a few classes were canceled. Some got caught with their bikes in the middle of the flood. A car was towed away on University Boulevard because they got stuck in the water, and fish were swimming along the pathways in the Academic Quad. As usual, the
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Academic Quad and the Botanical Gardens were flooded with over one foot of water. Greg Tsark, the director of facilities gave an inside opinion regarding the situation of the flood: “FIT performed very well. The site with the lowest performance is the Academic Quad. It was built over 60 years ago, so we cannot expect it to perform as well as the rest of the campus. We do have projects to work on the drainage system there. The main issue is to keep the water out of the buildings.” The drainage system is designed to take all the water from the first day. This way, the earth becomes saturated and the drainage system truly is put to work from the second day only. Tsark mentioned that the drainage sys-
tem is not designed to perform perfectly after a situation like the one from a week ago, but that it will perform efficiently. Many students took advantage of the newly improvised pools of Florida Tech by taking a trip after the storm was over to see the results. When random students were asked about their opinions on the flooding, most of the students responded that it was fun, that they were late a few times, that the Botanical Gardens were interesting to walk into during the flood, and one student said, “I never saw it this bad!” How could the draining system be improved? Maybe a civil engineering Senior Design project photo property of The crimson can help in the future. v
Game review: The Forest
Students play in the rain in the Botanical Gardens.
softball helps OPINIONS....................... 2 rebuild home campus life................. 3
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sci/tech...................... 7