Jasmine Aquino: Perpetrators of sexual assault require more than suspension

Consequences for sexual assault incidents within the University of California have been as silent as my attacker was when I said “Never mind, I don’t want to do this. Stop.”

If I have learned anything in this last year at UCLA, it is that sexual assault is still prevalent within the UCLA community.

The University’s continuous lack of promotion for real deterrence and compliance creates a space more suffocating than the situation my attacker pinned me in.

Currently, sexual assault survivors have UC President Janet Napolitano’s Task Force on Preventing and Responding to Sexual Violence and Sexual Assault working toward ensuring student conduct policies are clear. Counseling and Psychological Services and Campus Assault Resources & Education also provide support for survivors.

But the people using these services are the victims, after an attack and continuously from then on. The blame in the situation is not on the victim, but the attacker.

Kathleen Salvaty, UCLA’s Title IX officer, said that the steps her office considers for prevention are on a case-by-case basis. “Are we doing enough?” she asked.

The answer is no. Prevention is not the end-all, be-all of sexual assault policy. Attackers need to be held accountable for their actions to actually learn from their actions. The university, and specifically the Dean of Students Office, needs to develop the kinds of sanctions that will help educate the accused.

Title IX co-sponsors Sexual Assault Awareness Month with the USAC general representative office and other campus organizations, but the problem is not lack of awareness. As my fellow columnists Julia McCarthy and Keshav Tadimeti mentioned, while sexual assault awareness campaigns are important in disseminating information regarding sexual assault prevention, the real problem is a lack of effective deterrence. Offenders are not discouraged from continuing their paths.

Survivors of sexual assault have two reporting options: Title IX and UCPD. The two departments work together to keep the campus safe from sexual assault, though the former investigates violations of student conduct while the latter investigates the criminality of the assault.

As of January 1, the UC implemented a system-wide procedure that guides sexual assault survivors to report their incidents for investigation. The report procedure no longer handles instances of sexual assault like other conduct violations, like plagiarism and alcohol violations. Such violations are accompanied with workshops, exercises and other resources that help the accused gain a better understanding of their actions and the consequences.

Title IX does not administer sanctions. Rather, they take their findings to the Dean of Students, who can then administer a sanction ranging from a minimum two-year suspension unless there are exceptional circumstances. But these sanctions do not include the education portion.

And it’s sorely needed. This past year, the administration has failed to appropriately respond to sexual assault allegations toward a UCLA professor when Gabriel Piterberg was suspended last spring quarter without pay, only to eventually return and remain on campus as a professor. His time-out is over, but he can now go back to the way things were.

This event sets a precedent for students who are suspended on the basis of sexual assault and then can return to take classes, continue extracurriculars and remain who they were before.

While the sanctions currently set are appropriate, they can be improved by including a more engaging educational component to them. An attacker might feel bad during their suspension, but unless they take the time to sit down and really consider their actions with a facilitator, they will not change.

The obstacles set around holding my attacker accountable are like how I felt trapped between his arms. I am stuck in a position where I can either ignore what happened, or report my offender to the university so they can ignore what happened for two years.

One possible tool that can help is Callisto, an online reporting system for sexual assault survivors.

The tool offers survivors a platform to create an electronic timestamp document of their experience, and allows them to opt into a matching system which allows the report to be sent to the school or UCPD if someone else names the same perpetrator. The tool effectively identifies and helps stop repeat offenders once caught and set straight by a sanction. But the sanctions themselves need to be reconsidered in order for them to be effective against sexual assault incidents.

Currently, Salvaty is in conversation with Project Callisto to work out a possibility for implementing this tool across the entire UC system, a move forward to holding offenders accountable.

This a step in the right direction, and the university needs to continue reforming sanctions to better directly combat issues of rape culture through education as communities prepare for a new academic year.

Reporting my offender would be pointless if all that would change is a setting.

Simply suspending an attacker does not combat issues of sexual assault on campus. Time does not directly change someone, otherwise I would not walk around still troubled by a horrible experience from many months ago.