Brock Turner’s crime took place on the Stanford University campus, where administrators were already under scrutiny for their handling of campus sexual assault. As Emily Bazelon wrote in 2014:
From 2005 to 2011, nine students were found responsible for sexual assault. One student was expelled, for violations involving multiple victims. The other eight received suspensions ranging from one quarter to eight quarters. The average sanction for sexual assault at Stanford is a four-quarter suspension. (Stanford confirmed those numbers.) And it’s definitely not just Stanford: In a yearlong investigation published in 2010, the Center for Public Integrity found that across the country, “students found ‘responsible’ for sexual assaults on campus often face little or no punishment from school judicial systems, while their victims’ lives are frequently turned upside down.”
Emily Bazelon, “Suspension Isn’t Enough,” Slate, June 2014.
How has reading about Chanel Miller’s story resonated for you as a student on the Middlebury College campus? What work does Middlebury have to do to better combat sexual assault and support survivors?
I think hearing Chanel speak, and getting an understanding of her raw emotions has given me a better sense of the toll it takes on a victim of sexual assault. It is clear that at college campuses across the country there is not enough enforcement when sexual assault takes place. One thing I believe that Middlebury College does really well is the teaching of the Green Dot Program. This was something that as first years we were all taught, but in my experience as an athlete, this was something that I saw every Fall of college. Green Dot provides students with a better understanding of how to act in the event that they see a situation where it looks as though sexual assault may take place. There are three D’s: direct, distract and delegate which are different ways to try and prevent a situation of sexual assault from occurring. As a team, we would go through exercises where we would be presented with situations, and we would have to find a method of deescalating them. This is something that I believe a lot of sports teams on campus take part in, and I think it’s a very helpful and effective way to limit sexual assault on campus. In my experience at Middlebury I have felt safe not only for myself, but for others on campus. This is not to say that sexual assault doesn’t occur on campus, but I have never witnessed it in person, and have never needed to step in to deescalate a situation. That being said, there is still definitely a lot of change that needs to be made going forward.