rockin'robin
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WASHINGTON — It was months into her freshman year here at Gallaudet University before Melissa decided to try alcohol.
As the nation’s only liberal-arts institution specifically designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, Gallaudet is undoubtedly unique. But when it comes to drinking, this small school is like so many other campuses across the country: Alcohol is near ubiquitous to the social scene.
One night in the fall of 2011, Melissa, whose name and some identifying features have been changed to protect her identity, decided she wanted to see what it felt like to be drunk. At a small gathering in a friend’s dorm room, she took one shot of vodka. The next thing Melissa knew, she says, her classmate John’s hands were all over her.
“He kept groping my genitals and rubbing himself against me, and I kept pushing him away, but he kept doing it over and over,” she remembers. Melissa felt violated and angry. (John — whose name and some identifying features have also been changed — declined to comment, except to say that the accusations against him were “overturned.”)
From the day they met, just a few months earlier, Melissa felt uncomfortable around John. She barely knew him, but he was already telling her about the classmates he wanted to sleep with, she says. She tried to shrug off his remarks, but it became more difficult as John began fixating on her.
“He would sneak up behind me, grab me, and ask, ‘Guess who?’” Melissa says.
John didn’t need to cover her eyes, because Melissa is blind. She never saw him coming.
According to Melissa, John often exploited her blindness. At times, he would wave his hands in front of her face, she says, or steal her cane. He’d give it back eventually, telling her he was just playing around, but Melissa was left feeling vulnerable and stranded.
He was “taking advantage of my disability,” Melissa says.
Over the last two years, American universities have come under intense, unprecedented scrutiny for how they handle sexual assault, stalking, and domestic or dating violence.
It’s an issue that has been elevated by the president’s bully pulpit and by the hundreds of students who have charged that their institutions violated Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. To date, at least 95 schools are under federal investigation on charges that they failed to address these issues adequately.
But under this unprecedented national spotlight, there has been virtually no public attention paid to how universities handle reports of sexual violence from the millions of students with disabilities around the country, who make up an estimated 11 percent of the U.S. undergraduate population.
Nationally, research has shown that individuals with disabilities experience sexual assault at significantly higher rates than the general population and that they also face critical gaps in services when they seek help for abuse. At the same time, experts say, schools have yet to adequately assess or address the issue on their campuses.
As a renowned university with a significant population of students with disabilities, Gallaudet offers a rare portrait of the challenges students with disabilities can face when it comes to sexual assault and what happens when they report it.
Al Jazeera America’s six-month investigation into sexual violence at Gallaudet — which included interviews with a dozen current or former students who say they were sexually assaulted, senior Gallaudet administrators, Title IX and disability experts, and an analysis of the university’s judicial board actions — reveals that even a school explicitly designed for students with disabilities can struggle in dealing with sexual assault.
More specifically, it uncovers troubling allegations from students who said their disabilities made them targets for sexual assault; that their experiences reporting that abuse were complicated by factors like disability, race and sexual identity; and that in some cases, sexual assault was even the cause of a disability, such as depression. Their stories, experts say, offer a window into the dire need for all universities to do a better job of tackling sexual assault among students with disabilities, and into the possible legal ramifications of their inaction.
(This is a very long article...but very informative!...Read more....)
http://america.aljazeera.com/articl...exual-assault-students-with-disabilities.html
As the nation’s only liberal-arts institution specifically designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, Gallaudet is undoubtedly unique. But when it comes to drinking, this small school is like so many other campuses across the country: Alcohol is near ubiquitous to the social scene.
One night in the fall of 2011, Melissa, whose name and some identifying features have been changed to protect her identity, decided she wanted to see what it felt like to be drunk. At a small gathering in a friend’s dorm room, she took one shot of vodka. The next thing Melissa knew, she says, her classmate John’s hands were all over her.
“He kept groping my genitals and rubbing himself against me, and I kept pushing him away, but he kept doing it over and over,” she remembers. Melissa felt violated and angry. (John — whose name and some identifying features have also been changed — declined to comment, except to say that the accusations against him were “overturned.”)
From the day they met, just a few months earlier, Melissa felt uncomfortable around John. She barely knew him, but he was already telling her about the classmates he wanted to sleep with, she says. She tried to shrug off his remarks, but it became more difficult as John began fixating on her.
“He would sneak up behind me, grab me, and ask, ‘Guess who?’” Melissa says.
John didn’t need to cover her eyes, because Melissa is blind. She never saw him coming.
According to Melissa, John often exploited her blindness. At times, he would wave his hands in front of her face, she says, or steal her cane. He’d give it back eventually, telling her he was just playing around, but Melissa was left feeling vulnerable and stranded.
He was “taking advantage of my disability,” Melissa says.
Over the last two years, American universities have come under intense, unprecedented scrutiny for how they handle sexual assault, stalking, and domestic or dating violence.
It’s an issue that has been elevated by the president’s bully pulpit and by the hundreds of students who have charged that their institutions violated Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. To date, at least 95 schools are under federal investigation on charges that they failed to address these issues adequately.
But under this unprecedented national spotlight, there has been virtually no public attention paid to how universities handle reports of sexual violence from the millions of students with disabilities around the country, who make up an estimated 11 percent of the U.S. undergraduate population.
Nationally, research has shown that individuals with disabilities experience sexual assault at significantly higher rates than the general population and that they also face critical gaps in services when they seek help for abuse. At the same time, experts say, schools have yet to adequately assess or address the issue on their campuses.
As a renowned university with a significant population of students with disabilities, Gallaudet offers a rare portrait of the challenges students with disabilities can face when it comes to sexual assault and what happens when they report it.
Al Jazeera America’s six-month investigation into sexual violence at Gallaudet — which included interviews with a dozen current or former students who say they were sexually assaulted, senior Gallaudet administrators, Title IX and disability experts, and an analysis of the university’s judicial board actions — reveals that even a school explicitly designed for students with disabilities can struggle in dealing with sexual assault.
More specifically, it uncovers troubling allegations from students who said their disabilities made them targets for sexual assault; that their experiences reporting that abuse were complicated by factors like disability, race and sexual identity; and that in some cases, sexual assault was even the cause of a disability, such as depression. Their stories, experts say, offer a window into the dire need for all universities to do a better job of tackling sexual assault among students with disabilities, and into the possible legal ramifications of their inaction.
(This is a very long article...but very informative!...Read more....)
http://america.aljazeera.com/articl...exual-assault-students-with-disabilities.html