Campus News

New program combats sexual assaults on campus

Striving to combat sexual violence on campus and adhere to federal mandates, UH has implemented a new sexual misconduct awareness program called Salutations.

Salutations is an online training program that aims to teach students how to recognize, prevent and report sexual violence on campus.

“We wanted to create something that uniquely fit the culture of UH, that included our students and issues that are pertinent to our campus,” Richard Baker, the UH System Associate Vice Chancellor for Equal Opportunity Services, said.

Its name, Salutations, is a play off its definition – a gesture of respect, homage or polite recognition, especially one made to or by a person when arriving or departing.

Salutations features UH students discussing what is considered sexual misconduct and how to report it. One of the students featured is English literature senior Jonni Powers.

“I jumped at the chance to be involved,” Powers said. “ I think this program is a long time coming.”

Completion of Salutations is required by all new UH students — freshmen, transfers or new graduate students — before completing their first semester at UH. Powers believes this requirement doesn’t go far enough.

“One of the only problems with Salutations is that it’s only for new students and not all students,” Powers said.

The program was incorporated by UH to comply with new federal standards addressing sexual assaults on college campuses and the reporting of those assaults.

In 2013, Congress passed an amendment, the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.

According to the Clery Center, the SaVE Act will update the Clery Act by focusing on four areas: transparency in annual campus crime statistic reports, accountability in clarification of institutional disciplinary procedures, education by instructing universities to provide programming for students and employees and collaboration between the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services.

LGBT Resource Center Director Lorraine Schroeder thinks that UH’s response to adhering to the new federal mandate has been far better than other universities.

“There are a lot of schools who are only doing the minimum requirement in complying with the federal mandate, and UH has taken a more proactive stance in its response to preventing sexual violence on campus,” Schroeder said.

[email protected]

8 Comments

  • This is just another program to make those in the Administration feel important and safer in their positions.

    And just like with White Cops shooting Black Men out of bounds of the law, you would think that sexual assaults are a weekly occurrence on campus; when a search of the DC’s own archives only yielded one story on an actual sexual assault suspect in the past 7 years, on 9/13/14.

    That’s not to say that sexual assault doesn’t happen on campus on occasion, but it doesn’t happen at the rate that young Black kids are shot on the streets of Chicago on a weekly basis.

    The only real solution to problem is for Vice Chancellor Baker to issue a chastity belt to all young women on campus who rate 6.5 to 10 on a beauty scale of 10. As far as the key, well VC Baker would have control. That would cut down on the vast majority on instances of sexual assault on campus, and don’t worry Jonni, you will always be safe from sexual assault.

    • Well it’s widely believed that the large majority of sexual assault goes unreported. If you look at last years campus crime report the number of reported sexual assaults went up like two-fold I think, but that number is inflated because the methods by which people are made aware of and can report sexual assault has become a focus on campus. TDC actually did a decent article on this over the summer when the report was released. And speaking of summer, your cursory search must not have been too good if the last reported assault on this site was from 2014. Just this summer some dude broke into a girl’s dorm and exposed himself to her wielding a knife. Weird, I know, but that definitely counts as sexual assault.

      • Organite … Merry Chrismahanukwanzakah!!!

        In the DC’s search engine I typed “sexual assault suspect,” which returned the single article. I also searched under “rape suspect” as well, and came up with the same result and the Sep. 2014 single piece.

        I just wish that the young women on campus realize that they have the power to play hard to get. The true “right to choose” happens way before any fetus is savagely aborted, but in the young woman’s way she conducts herself in a relationship however long or short it is.

        —–

        Oh, this is so funny I have to share it with you. I was at my Vietnamese alterations guy’s shop, since he was fixing a shirt that was slightly ripped. He’s been here since ’75, and has put his children through Texas A&M and Texas.

        Before I left the shop he asked in his best English “u lik Tomb.”

        “Tomb?” I said.

        It when on a few seconds ” Tomb, Tomb.” Finally he got his tablet, and pointed to a picture.

        “Oh, Trump. Donald Trump. Yes, Yes, I like.” I said.

        “No Clinten,” he said, “No Clinten,” as I made a thumbs down gesture on the way out of the shop and joined in on the chant.

        It was so cool, a Vietnamese guy who speaks barely 10 words of English is voting Donald Trump.

        Anyway Organite … Merry Christmas, and I hope you find that perfect Safe-Space off campus during your holiday.

        • Well it’s hard to “play hard to get” when you’re being raped. I mean I figure saying no and/or kicking and screaming is a pretty solid answer, but you know, I just don’t think that message gets across to a lot of the testosterone and alcohol infused frat boys. Oh and we don’t have to talk about date rape since I’m sure she was asking for it anyway. And why let these harlots abort a product of rape? It was obviously god’s will to give this woman a child, and who are we to intervene in god’s plan?

          Anyway, I hope you make it through the holidays without burning yourself fire bombing an abortion clinic or dying of paranoid fear that every woman wearing a hijab is going to pull out a gun and shoot you.

          Happy Saturnalia!

          • Organite … are you are polytheists?

            And the solution to what you said … have those women … stay away from “alcohol infused frat boys.” Women do have “the right to choose” to stay far from or go near drunken frat boys.

            And sure, in cases of reported rape beyond the parameters I laid down, if a woman wants an abortion, sure.

            And with Muslim women in hijabs; it’s not guns … it’s KNIVES. Check out Liveleak.com … search “Israel knife.”

            Mele Kalikimaka Organite.

            • Ahh, classic victim blaming.

              And, I don’t divulge my religious beliefs because they are mine to have and no one else’s business to know.

              • Organite … go back to your long winter-break sleep.

                I have not seen one SocDem offer up one solution to anything written in this tripe for a elecpapr.

                Stop trying to make me tin hats, and make a New Years Resolution to solve some problems. The SocDem Utopia does not exist, and never did.

                Once you realize that the American people survived 200+ years without today’s SocDems, you might have a better outlook on life.

                Life is not fair … I don’t know if it was ever designed to be, but trying to artificially create fairness in today’s American soviet, it’s killing the country. I just hope you don’t have to find out the hard way.
                .

                • And Right-wingers offer solutions no better.
                  Unregulated capitalism has caused every massive collapse this country has ever seen.
                  For the first 200 years of this country there was no such thing as the middle class and you likely would have been one of the peasants working 100+ hours a week to support your family on a meagerly wage that would have been dying of some disease.
                  Codgers who can’t seem to keep from projecting their religious right convictions onto others in tyrannical form still oppress people different from them and deny science because they fear it will remove power from them.
                  Everything wrong with this country can be traced back to how historically right-wing this country is.
                  That doesn’t mean the hard left is any better, but we need to find a good balance. And the US is still way too far to the right to be considered balanced.

Leave a Comment