As a sorority girl, I think police – not universities – should investigate rape

Read this before Biden comes to discuss sexual assault

About a week ago, The Tab wrote an article about the Safe Campus Act. It’s an act which, if passed, “would actually prohibit colleges and universities from investigating sexual assault cases or punishing sexual predators until the victim reports the crime to police,” according to The Huffington Post.

Reviews from the students were lukewarm at best, with the general consensus this act would do more harm than good, and the Greek life organizations lobbying for it were only doing it do cover their own asses.

In reality, I think people haven’t looked past the fact the frats, who are typically assumed to be the sole cause of sexual assault on campus, are lobbying for this law. And because “every single frat guy is a sexual assaulter or rapist,” this law must just be to help them.

The way I see it, the Act is genuinely trying to accomplish some good.

The largest point being contested is with the Safe Campus Act, victims will be required to report the rape to the police, instead of the university. Thus, the university will not be able to investigate any crimes such as these until the victim has filed a police report.

People are saying this means even fewer rapes and assaults will be reported than are reported currently, because talking to the police is scarier than talking to the university.

But let’s face it. Nothing, literally nothing, violates a person more than rape or sexual assault. Reporting the crime to anyone, even a close friend, is terrifying, and scary and awful. Reporting the crime to the police is no worse than reporting it to the university.

In fact, it might even be better, as universities don’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to dealing with reported rapes and sexual assaults, especially when it comes to punishing the offender.

In reality the best that can be hoped for is for the perpetrator to be suspended for a semester or a year. Maybe they’ll be expelled, but it doesn’t happen often.

Along with the poor handling, universities don’t want themselves to be thought of as a campus where sexual assaults and rapes occur, so they might be tempted to do as much as they can to either disprove the accusation, or keep it hush hush. If the university were removed from the reporting equation, the police could properly handle the matter in an unbiased fashion.

The second issue people have with this is Greek organizations are pushing for it. But Greek organizations aren’t pushing for the Safe Campus Act just to save their own asses.

They’re pushing for it because Greek organizations push for progress, and have a wide area of influence to bring attention to issues.

The sorority I happen to be a part of has over 180 chapters, spanning across the US and even in to Canada. We’re not pushing it to cover our butts. We’re pushing because we can bring international attention to a widespread issue that needs to be fixed somehow.

I spoke to some fellow members of Syracuse’s Greek Life about the Safe Campus  Act, and a lot of them didn’t know what I was talking about.

As much as the semi-recent Orange Alert is considered old news, when I asked some boys in a fraternity what they thought of the Safe Campus Act, they responded “What, like change Orange Alert?” or “Wait, is DPS going to actually tell us about the things that happen in the areas off campus?”

I finally found a girl in a sorority who knew what I was talking about, but she was unfortunately quite conflicted. “It’s really hard to know what to do,” she said, “Like I feel that the intention of the Safe Campus Act is great, because something definitely needs to be done, but I’m not sure that the police handle rape very well. Plus, there’s the victim blaming and the accusations of lying about the rape that crop up no matter who you tell.”

Rape is a hard thing to talk about. The best way of dealing with rape or sexual assault for one person may not be the best for another. All we can do is present both sides of thought, and hope together we can find the best solution for all.

An earlier version of this story contained an image of a fraternity house. There is no suggestion that the fraternity in question have anything to do with sexual assault.

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