The controversy about the Safe Campus Act 2015 has been increasing. Student Senate joined the opposition to the bill with their resolution against it Monday.
The Safe Campus Act is a bill introduced by U.S. Representative Matt Salmon (R-Arizona) that would prevent college universities from investigating sexual assault accusations or taking judicial actions until the assault is reported to the police. No other student misconducts, such as theft or physical violence, are held to the same rule of reporting to the police.
Rachel Ehlermann, one of the student senators who brought forward the resolution said the bill would take away the rights of sexual assault survivors if it passed.
“The Safe Campus Act had the intention of protecting students on campus, and basically what it says is that whenever a student comes forward with a case of sexual assault, the administration has to report it to the police, and that gives the police 30 days of exclusive jurisdiction over the issue, which has been trivial in the last few years because no one really has known how to tackle the issue of sexual assault,” Ehlermann said.
The Safe Campus Act has received a large amount of backlash from other college campuses, such as UC Berkeley, several US senators and organizations that work with sexual assault survivors. A group of 220 advocacy groups sent a letter to House of Representative members to oppose the bill, according to a Huffington Post article.
“What really makes the act problematic is, for example, let’s say an individual accused someone of sexual assaulting them and did not report to the police, but they were in the same classroom together or anything, we as a university could put immediate protections in for the comfort of the person who claims the assault has happened,” Tom Coy, director of student activities and Student Senate advisor, said.
Coy said the bill becomes problematic because it prevents the university from assisting students with these methods.
Ehlermann said concerns arose because the act would take away the purpose of Title IX, the legislation which in part requires universities to investigate all sexual assault accusations.
“We want to support students, that is what Student Senate does, we’re the body of the people,” Ehlermann said. “We want to help our constituents, and we feel that by opposing this act, we are supporting them and supporting their safety and their mental health as a whole.”
Handler said there was a balanced discussion during general assembly Monday on the positives and negatives of the Safe Campus Act.
“People [were] asking, ‘Well, we’ve heard these negatives about it, so what are the positives?’ So [we] introduced why some people felt it was positive,” Coy said. “The perception or some of the things being put out there by the people who are supportive is that at some universities the judicial affairs offices aren’t equipped to hold a strong investigation and there’s not a guarantee of due process, and they are saying universities are not equipped to deal with a sexual assault [case].”
Ehlermann said another aspect to the issue is the North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) and National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) support the Safe Campus Act, but many individual branches do not.
“I think that a lot of these smaller NPC groups within each college campus are disheartened by the fact that they are supporting this act, and I think a lot of it has to do, too, with bigger state schools where they have more members and more issues,” Ehlermann said. “But at a smaller school like Bradley, that’s not helpful and that’s really detrimental to a student’s mental health when you don’t get help from the administration.”
Ehlermann agreed there needs to be more training on proper procedure when dealing with sexual assault.
“I think the intentions of the Safe Campus Act are supposed to be good, but unless you are a victim of sexual assault, you wouldn’t realize all of the mental repercussions that would have on someone of going straight to the police and getting all of that attention and going to court and going through that, it’s emotionally straining,” Ehlermann said.
Student Body President Sarah Handler said Senate is involved in this issue because it is relevant both to college campuses and students. Its “Braver Together” campaign released a few weeks ago also made a commitment to advocate for survivors and work to prevent sexual assault on college campuses.
“Our ‘Braver Together’ campaign is about making sure that we are a safe campus and not only actively prevent sexual assault, but respond appropriately when it does occur,” Handler said. “Part of responding appropriately is making sure that survivors have as many tools and as many options as possible, so making sure this doesn’t pass is important to guarantee that.”
Coy said student senators are going to move forward by notifying senators and congress members from the local area.
“Student Senate really wanted to protect the rights of survivors of sexual assault, that they can go to the university without having to take legal action,” Coy said “They can go to the university and receive counseling and made aware of services and they can think about what are next steps without having to go to the level of pressing charges if for some reason they don’t want to go down that path. I think a little bit of what Student Senate was trying to do was to defend the rights of survivors of sexual assault.”
