UW Study shows 1 in 4 Students Experience Sexual Assault
The results of a University of Wyoming survey show that one in four students, or 27 percent, on the UW campus have experienced sexual assault.
The UW Sexual Misconduct Climate Survey was administered to students during the 2018 spring semester, with the intent of forming policy, programming and educational efforts across the university, the study reads.
Of the 27 percent who experienced sexual assault, 34 percent were women, 12.8 percent were men and 50 percent were gender non-conforming students.
21 percent of the UW student respondents said they had experienced attempted rape while at UW and 15 percent said they had experienced at least one instance of attempted rape.
The study says that these numbers are consistent with numbers reported at other comparable institutions.
“The rates of assault outlined above are unfortunately typical,” the study reads. “Accordingly, these numbers are not spuriously high or atypical, but rather, indicative of the pandemic of sexual violence among college students across the nation.”
The study said that the great majority of sexual assault survivors do not report their experiences to campus authorities, faculty or staff.
UW students perceptions of the university’s response to sexual assault and sexual assault victims –and how to improve them- was also detailed in the survey findings. The survey found that across all the respondents, UW was most commonly perceived to play a positive role in creating an environment where it was safe to talk about sexual misconduct. But there were differences in responses depending on whether a student had experienced rape.
“However, respondents who reported an experience of sexual misconduct while at UW (i.e., survivors), consistently reported that UW played less of a positive role in their experience than respondents who did not report an experience of sexual misconduct while at UW (i.e., hypothetical),” the study said.
Less than half of survivors who responded to the survey reported that UW allowed them to have a say in how their report was handled and less than 1 in 3 survivors indicated that someone at UW apologized for what happened to them.
The survey comes after a sexual assault on the UW campus in November 2017 rattled the UW community, prompting student walkouts and efforts by UW officials to discuss preventing sexual assault on campus.