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Northern Star Thursday, April 16, 2015

Volume 115, Issue 84

The Truth Shall Bear All Light

Since 1899

NIU seeks reform to prevent sex assault

www.NorthernStar.info Ryan Ocasio | Northern Star Photo Illustration

Kelly Bauer Editor in Chief T @BauerJournalism

DeKalb | NIU is changing its training and policies in an effort to improve how it prevents sexual assault and to better support survivors. NIU has already mandated online training for sexual assault awareness for incoming freshmen and transfer students. By May, a committee headed by Kristen Myers, director of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, will present a calendar to NIU President Doug Baker to show how and when more changes can be made. The changes will be based on recommendations from the Presidential Task Force on Violence Against Women Act, which spent the fall reviewing how NIU prevents and reacts to sexual assault and supports survivors. The task force recommended enhancing university advocacy services for victims, creating community-wide or audience-specific bystander intervention and awareness programming, and undertaking a campus climate survey, among other things. Myers’ implementation committee will seek to carry out these recommendations so it will become “unthinkable” for sexual assault to take place at NIU, Myers said. “That’s our beautiful, utopian goal, is for NIU to be the ideal place for students to go ...,” Myers said. “One way to do that is to have it be unthinkable for these sorts of things to happen. Of course, that’s a 10-year goal.”

Sexual assault at NIU NIU Police have seen reports of sexual assault rise every year since 2011: There were six in 2011, 11 in 2012, 12 in 2013 and 16 in 2014. Chief Tom Phillips said he doesn’t think the rising number of reports necessarily means more sexual assaults are happening, but the increase might be a sign more people feel comfortable reporting their assaults since sexual assault is considered underreported. The NIU Police Department is one of several agencies that responds to reports of sexual assault. Police can investigate reports of

Sexual assault reports at NIU On campus

Non-campus

Residential facilities

Total

2011

Five

One

Five

Six

2012

11

None

Nine

11

2013

10

Two

Eight

12

2014

11

Five

10

16

sexual assault and gather evidence if a victim seeks to press charges, and those accused of sexually assaulting a person can also face disciplinary action through NIU. Community members can also report sexual assault to Victim Advocacy Services and Title IX coordinator Karen Baker. Mary Ellen Schaid, executive director of Safe Passage, said Safe Passage is also trying to strengthen its relationship with the NIU community. Safe Passage provides services to victims of domestic and sexual violence and its employees act as advocates for survivors of sexual assault. Schaid is serving

Online

Inside

The Northern Star is the student-run news organization serving NIU and the surrounding community. Classifieds Puzzles

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Crime Opinion

4 8

Sports Scene

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Statistics provided by the NIU Police Department. Go to niu.edu/clery/ for more campus crime statistics.

on the implementation committee and said she is working to ensure the needs of victims stay at the forefront of everyone’s mind. “I would like to see a more clarified and cohesive process at NIU for students to know what their many options are,” Schaid said. “I would like to see a very strong collaboration between us and Northern so they will look to us for help when they have situations.” NIU has a list of resources for victims of sexual assault online at niu.edu/sexualviolenceresources/.

headed by Myers will see what changes NIU can make to its sexual assault prevention and education efforts while considering limitations to the university’s budget and resources. The implementation committee, which met for the second time Wednesday, will form six subcommittees at its next meeting in late April, Myers said. The subcommittees will “bring in people doing important work from units all around campus” to help the implementation committee decide what changes NIU needs Implementing change to make and how it can make them. The implementation committee The committee will then create a

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calendar with that information and give it to Baker. Some changes need to be made before July 1 to comply with the Violence Against Women Act, a national law to address and prevent physical and sexual violence against women. To comply with changes to the act made in 2013, the NIU Police Department will have to start providing statistics on the number of reported incidents of dating violence, domestic violence and stalking. Those statistics must be available in the department’s annual Clery Report. Other changes will have to be made before students return to campus for orientation. The calendar submitted to Baker will show what can be done now and what can be done in a year, Myers said. To go along with the calendar, the committee will submit to Baker a budget to pay for the resources it feels are necessary to implement its recommendations, Myers said.

Read Sexual assault | Page 4

Fraternities head to the trenches for charity with an annual round of Tugs on Monday. Read about the teams, check out the schedule and fill out a bracket on Page 3.


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