An air of competition coated the Senate floor last Wednesday during a hearing of a resolution regarding the expansion of Fraternity and Sorority Life.   We began to feel uncomfortable with the air the conversation took.  The words “Greek life is under attack” were uttered.  I felt that the issue at hand, the resolution, was construed by some as an attack on Greek Life by independents.  This perspective needs to disappear—the issue at hand was not a matter of independents against Greek life, but a matter of the campus community against sexual violence.

The proposed resolution was very problematic.  The debate involved discussion on whether or not preventing new Greek houses from joining the Interfraternity and Panhellenic Councils would help stop potential sexual violence, or whether or not it would exacerbate the issue.  There was also an issue with the wording of the resolution, as imposing restrictions on only new fraternities and not sororities would be a violation of Title IX. Because of these, the resolution was tabled, pending revision. But the motivation behind the resolution, a desire to prevent further sexual violence, was sound, and was pertinent to the real issue at hand.

That issue at hand is sexual violence. It is one that gained the spotlight at our university after a public incident last year.  It continues to plague our campus.

Many groups have worked on the issues surrounding sexual violence for a long time.  These groups include our Organization Against Sexual Assault, Take Back The Night, Sexual Wellness Advocacy Team, Safe Ride, the Women’s and Men’s Center, and many more. In light of last spring’s events, several new groups came into being as well, including the University Senate Task Force for Sexual Assault Prevention and Survivor Support, the Fraternity and Sorority Life Task Force, and others.

However, it is not enough.  This campus needs every student, staff member, faculty, and administrator to take a hard stance against sexual violence, and for all of these parties to work tirelessly to eradicate the heinous crime from our campus.

What cannot happen is for this campus to let the proposed resolution divide Greek students and independents in efforts to fight the problem.  It is absolutely paramount that, regardless of the outcome of the resolution, everybody on this campus continues to put every effort into fighting the problem and supporting each other.

We plead the campus community to do their best to help fight this problem.  It is important to educate yourselves about healthy relationships and consent.  It is important to learn prevention skills such as bystander intervention.  And it is absolutely vital to learn how to support survivors and how to foster an environment at this school where people feel comfortable and safe enough to report sexual violence so justice can be served.  Many of these groups offer education on these issues, and several departments offer classes that can inform you as well.  In addition, many of these groups are hard at work and require volunteer support. And for those of you reading this who feel enterprising, new groups are always welcome.

Awareness is only the first step; in order to fight the problem, we must all rise together against sexual violence in order to make this campus into the place we all deserve.

Signed,
William Iversen
Senate Seat 11: Business and Economics
Independent, Safe Ride Dispatcher

Hao Tan
Senate Seat 16: Life Sciences
FSL Member

At 3:00 p.m on Friday Feb. 3, the Divest UO Campaign, in association with the student group Climate Justice League and 350 Eugene,  held a rally outside of Johnson Hall. The rally called on the University of Oregon Interim President Scott Coltrane to support students and faculty on agreeing to sell the university’s investments with fossil fuel extraction companies.

This rally was held along with many other events across 48 countries in honor of Global Divestment Days.

Global Divestment Days is happening today and tomorrow, bringing awareness to the divestment (the sale of, and or the opposite of investment) of fossil fuels, and the effects of climate change on our planet.

“As students, the future means a lot to all of us,” Kaia Hazard, UO student and organizer for the Divest UO campaign said. “It’s on our minds, you know, in college, so we’re investing our time, our money and our effort to a secure meaningful future for ourselves.”

Seventy-three percent of UO students support divestment, and this week Divest UO has collected over 1,300 signatures in favor of the divestment of fossil fuels at the UO.

“Divestment is important to me because I care about the health of this world that has given so much to me,” Hazard said. “It would be immoral to do anything but work towards divesting our most powerful institutions from fossil fuels.”

According to Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, who spoke at the rally, students and youth play a crucial role, and she encourages them to remain informed and engaged about this issue.

“This divestment movement is very, very important,” University of Oregon Professor of sociology and environmental studies Kari Norgaard said. “It’s a very exciting movement, it’s centrally important for many reasons. It’s important because the fossil fuel industry is not only producing fossil fuels, which we know we need to keep in the ground, but because the fossil fuel industry has captured our political institutions and this is a way of saying no and reclaiming our democracy.”

The city of Eugene adopted a climate recovery ordinance in July, putting the city’s green-house gas goals into law.

After the rally ended, a group of people marched toward the Ford Alumni Center to try to gain the foundations attention.  Two students also planned on going to Johnson Hall to try to get a meeting with Coltrane. They were turned away by a University employee, who told the duo that Coltrane could potentially talk to the group in a week.

“We’ve got your back,” Mayor Piercy said. “The city is committed to leading by example and playing our part to ensure a livable future for our community. Fossil fuel divestment is not only smart and ethical, but it’s also a necessary step for the telling of others to act to the benefit of our climate and global community. We live here together.”

Dear Interim President Coltrane,

In your January 8, 2015 email to the UO community, “A message from Interim President Coltrane on sexual assault lawsuit”, you indicated that you welcome feedback from the campus on your progress. I agree with the open letter provided here by OASA (http://dailyemerald.com/2015/01/15/letter-to-president-coltrane-from-the-uo-organization-against-sexual-assault/). I would like to express my additional concerns.

The purported shared goal of UO and its constituents is two-fold: 1. to prevent the experience of sexual violence and 2. to respond appropriately when such violence does occur.

Up to this point, with inclusion of the email you delivered January 8, the UO has both refused to acknowledge any culpability for both the reported distress by the student described in the email and the magnitude of the problem of sexual violence on this campus.

Case and point:

You have taken the time to write a disparaging email about a current lawsuit from a current student.

I am confused as to how the email you sent on January 8—a one-sided, punitive response to a lawsuit in which a student alleges institutional failures to prevent and respond appropriately to sexual violence—is consistent with your public position that the university must improve prevention and response efforts. Instead, your email is likely to both discourage students from reporting sexual violence and punish those students who do identify problems within the system.

These institutional failures cannot continue to be publicly denied as research is showing that approximately 20 students are sexually assaulted each and every week on this campus. How, in good conscience, can you as Interim President, continue to publicly forcefully defend the practices at UO? Approximately 20 new incidents of sexual violence a week cannot possibly be indicative of a safe campus, therefore, our shared goals are far from being met. Any statement that infers otherwise is irresponsible and inaccurate.

I am additionally disgusted by the scope of your January 8 email: how can you possibly both disparage a student while pledging support for that same student in one email?

It is disgraceful and shameful.

Since May 2014, I have received UO’s public responses about sexual violence. Time and again, I have given you and your colleagues the benefit of the doubt: I have told myself, “They just do not understand how sexual violence works.” Your last public email to the campus community suggests to me that I was wrong. I now believe you do know how this works. With the results from Dr. Freyd and colleagues’ campus climate survey alone, you must have some insight of how your leadership affects the institutional culture of sexual violence on this campus. If you remain unaware, there are a plethora of resources on this campus—not the least of which are the as-yet un-acted upon recommendations of the Committee on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence—to inform you of how sharing the email you sent on January 8 could be both particularly damaging and antithetical to the shared goals mentioned above.

In an effort to mitigate the harm you have caused through this email, I request that you apologize for this public communication to:

1. the student in question- for behavior that stands in direct contrast to making our campus a safe place for all members of our community, including those who cite problems in the system;

2. other students on campus who have been victims of sexual violence- for publicly creating an additional deterrent to coming forward following sexual assault and treating those who do as lesser members of our community;

3. the UO community- for betraying the trust and dependence we have in this institution with messages that foster an institutional culture of silence and punishment that undoubtedly hinders the campus-wide efforts to address sexual violence.

At the very least, I plead to your humanity that if nothing else, you cease to continue to betray the UO community and its members with these public statements of mindless defense of a system that is clearly broken.

Instead of watching a Ducks sporting event (as you suggested in an email you sent on November 28, 2014 regarding the GTFF impending strike), I will instead mourn for all the students on this campus who continue to be punished into silence following being sexually assaulted.

Jennifer M. Gómez, M.S.
Department of Psychology
University of Oregon

Necessary seems like a strong word doesn’t it? Some people might not consider the “women’s only hours” at our university rec center discrimination, but is there a better word to use for denying service to a certain group of people based on their sex? This kind of blatant sexism demonizes masculinity while further marginalizing women. All students pay the same rec center price (through tuition), but are receiving a different level of service because of this policy.

“People are different in many brilliant ways. If we strive to make everything as fair as possible, we forget the fundamental lesson that life is not fair.” wrote Jessica Foster in her most recent opinion piece where she praises the gender segregation encouraged by this policy. Of course, her statement seems silly. “Women’s only hours” should be justified by more than just a “life isn’t fair”argument, right? I just watched Selma, a fantastic film about Martin Luther King Jr and the Civil Rights Movement. Imagine someone trying to tell the civil rights activists that the racial inequalities our nation faced were actually appropriate because they reminded us of “the fundamental lesson that life is not fair.”

I recently had the chance to sit down with the rec center staff and the people who design the operating policies for the facility to discuss the history and reasons behind the “women’s only” policies. Of course, the reasoning and intentions are not malicious by any means. The policy is a solution to a set of problems regarding women feeling uncomfortable or intimidated while working out and specific religious constraints that don’t allow women to workout or swim with males around. I’m not dismissing these issues, but I wonder if the solution our university has chosen is appropriate. Isn’t abolishing gender role expectations and stereotypes part of what third wave feminism is all about? As a university community, don’t we have a responsibility to ensure that our policies promote gender equality instead of furthering the divide?

While the “women’s only” policy isn’t uncommon on universities and is designed from a practical standpoint to allow for women to work out in a safe, comfortable environment, the unavoidable political statement that it makes seems to rest on promoting the idea that women are somehow unequal in that they need a special time to workout. As we explore the implications of this policy, suddenly we discover that this method regresses the achievements that our society has made in fighting for gender equality and fairness.

Do men not also face uncomfortable situations when working out at the gym? The “women’s only” policy rests on the assumption that intimidation, harassment, and self awareness only affect women­ and are only perpetrated by men. The reality is that all these issues happen on an individual level and for unique reasons strongly based on level of fitness and ability. Intruth, lots of people (from both genders) feel uncomfortable going to the gym. This type of insecurity can be overcome and combated in different ways, but designing inequitable policies around this problem is unjustifiable. Furthermore, the “women’s only” policies do not actually do anything to combat gym harassment, judging, self confidence issues, and creating a refined atmosphere for working out. Rather, this policy allows us to ignore these important issues by offering a work around. Maybe, instead of using gender segregation as a solution, we should focus on discouraging harassment and intimidation in our facilities? Is there really no way to create healthy, safe, sophisticated atmosphere within our student body without resulting to this?

I invite a campus discussion of the “women’s only” policies that we have in place, and I maintain that these policies hurt both genders. Policies designed around gender discrimination have no place on our campus.

This guest viewpoint was contributed by University of Oregon student Thomas Tullis.

By Hannah Steinkopf-Frank

Kim Marks loves to talk about sex. That’s why she decided to open As You Like It — The Pleasure Shop, Eugene’s first eco-friendly sex toy shop. As You Like It is not a sleazy, back alley sex toy shop. The store sells products that fit a wide range of sexual needs and desires.

“We are really here for everybody and every body,” Marks said.

After moving to Olympia, Washington in 1994 to attend Evergreen State College, Marks was surprised by the lack of gender-inclusive sex shops in the region. She studied forest ecology and worked as an environmental activist. She’s well-educated in the negative effects of various toxins to both the environment and to humans. In 2003, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

“The cancer made me a little more reflective about what we’re putting into our bodies and really made me think about, with my skills and background and interests, what I could do to help my community,” said Marks.

Marks realized that she could her environmental activism work and create a sex positive space by opening up her own sex toy shop. In 2012, she started As You Like It as an online store.

The journey to opening a physical shop turned out to be more difficult. Marks went through seven landlords before finding one who would rent to her. She had similar challenges getting bank loans.

“There are a lot of biases, and it’s not that what I’m offering is unsafe, it’s that there are a lot of people who are not comfortable talking about sex,” Marks said. “It costs more money to insure this type of business than a gun shop because my products are ‘unsafe.’”

Ironically, that is exactly the mission of As You Like It. For Marks, educating customers about how to have a healthy sex life is just as important as selling them a new vegan flogger or locally made glass butt plug. That’s why Marks made the decision to hire a staff with a background in sex education.

“If there is something you are wanting in your sex life and not getting, if you walk in not knowing what any of these things do, you’re not going to pick the right thing,” said Janet Hardy, the founder of Greenery Press, an internationally acclaimed publisher of alternative sexuality books. Hardy is working with Marks to provide monthly classes on everything from how to find your G-spot to sexual boundary setting.

“I think my experience as a therapist and communicating with people and being really comfortable talking about sexual health creates an environment where people can feel settled in and excited, rather than shy,” said Oblio Stroyman, a sales associate who has been a relationship therapist for eight years.

For Marks, there is no separation between providing a body positive and a body safe store. Education and giving back to the community are huge parts of that mission. In a society where rape culture is a prevalent issue and sex is still taboo, Marks hopes to change the dialogue around sex because, as she says, it should be “as you like it.”

To The Men of Oregon past, present and future,

I signed my letter of intent to enroll at the University of Oregon in September of my senior year of high school. It was the only school I applied to. I toured campus during spring break of my junior year of high school and within five minutes I knew that this is where I wanted to spend my collegiate years. Not only does U of O have great academics, but great sports as well. Especially football. I grew up in a football family. I have been attending Raider games since I was in 4th grade. Football has always had a special place in my heart. I’m not ashamed to admit that one of my main criteria for the college I would be attending was that the school had to have a football team.

I spent Saturday nights in the fall of 2010 glued to the television watching Chip Kelly lead the team to our first appearance in the National Championship. I remember watching Darron Thomas throw touch down pass after touch town pass in a blow out game against Stanford. I remember watching LaMichael James run circles around USC. I remember watching the student section at Autzen be completely filled despite the cold weather and rain. You, The Men of Oregon, sold me on the school. The flashy uniforms, the speed, the excitement. The entire community coming together to support something so much bigger than themselves. I could not wait to be apart of that.

Although I was still about nine months away from walking onto the University of Oregon as an official student, the 2011 National Championship hurt. To lose by a field goal. What a way to go out. To get so close and come up short. But what a statement we made. To the entire country. That was only the beginning. People couldn’t ignore us anymore. Although I was disappointed in the loss, it only made me that much more excited to be in Eugene come fall for the 2011/2012 season.

The 2011/2012 season concluded with an upset loss to USC. The consolation prize: a trip to the Rose Bowl, which is nothing to complain about. DeAnthony Thomas was able to showcase his speed to the nation. Kiko Alonso recovered a fumble that shifted the momentum in our favor. I didn’t realize that Chip Kelly could jump that high. Wisconsin was unable to get the snap off in time and ran the clock out. Oregon won 45-38. In the words of Chip: It had been 95 years since you could say, Oregon Ducks, Rose Bowl Champions. The 2012/2013 season ended with an upset loss to Stanford at home. We would have gone to the National Championship most likely for a third year in a row if it weren’t for back to back November losses. And by the looks of how Notre Dame played against Alabama, I have full confidence to this day that we would have beaten them too. We ended the season with a win in the Fiesta Bowl. To be honest, I think DeAnthony won it for us during the first play of the game. The 2013/2014 season was a tough one. Marcus Mariota was the front runner for the Heisman and then he got hurt during our win against UCLA. We ended the season losing to both Stanford and another upset loss to a different opponent: Arizona.

And now, just as quickly as those seasons have come and gone, so has the 2014/2015 season. But this year was different. We beat Michigan State in typical Oregon fashion: second half team style. Probably Mark Helfrich’s best win since taking over as head coach. But then we lost to Arizona. Again. Most people thought we were done. Fans thought we were done. I even thought we were done. No Heisman. No playoff. But you all believed. Believed in each other. Believed in yourselves. Believed in the O. Believed in Mark and what you all could do post Chip Kelly era. We came back and we beat UCLA. Whether you guys were looking to make a statement or not, one was made and it was heard loud and clear all over CFB. We are Oregon and we are not going to let one game affect us. We beat Stanford, finally proving that we are physical. We beat Utah, despite injuries. We were able to redeem ourselves in the PAC12 Championship Game and routed Arizona, proving that this was the team we had been all along. You guys fought your way back to the top despite facing adversity and injury after injury and earned a spot in the first ever College Football Playoff. And in between the PAC12 Championship and the Rose Bowl, Oregon had its first Heisman trophy winner. Marcus, the entire U of O community could never repay you for all that you have given to this school. Your speech brought me, and almost everyone else watching, to tears. The way you carry yourself both on AND off the field is truly special. Thank you. And then, three weeks later, despite losing All-American corner back, Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, we made a complete mockery of the defending national champions. We were able to bring home some nice hardware and won the 101st Rose Bowl Game. But this time the Rose Bowl wasn’t a consolation. It was only another step towards the ultimate goal: bringing Oregon its first National Championship Title.

I write this paragraph with a heavy heart because we all know how it ended. People in Eugene were not celebrating last night. The vibe on campus today is not a happy one. We were not able to finally be National Champions. But. We ARE 2015 Rose Bowl Champions. We may or may not win the Rose Bowl next year, but we will ALWAYS have a Heisman trophy winner forever cemented into our history. How fitting that #8 wins the 80th Heisman trophy and his home zip code is 808. It was destiny. We may have lost the National Championship, but last night was just a reminder that there is hope. We will one day win the title. Whether it’s next year, or in fifty years, our program is headed in the right direction.

This was my last football season as an undergraduate here at Oregon. I did not miss one regular season game at Autzen stadium and that’s something I am damn proud of. I officially attended my last undergraduate football game. I sat in the student section for the last time in my life. And several of you on the team will never play at Autzen again either. But you guys leave behind a legacy and a positive one at that. You all are a part of Oregon Football history. Thank you guys for the exciting Saturday nights in the fall under the lights in the cold and rain. Thank you guys for your hard work and determination. Thank you guys for leaving your all out there on the field game after game. My friend said that the hardest thing is being an Oregon fan. But the best thing is being an Oregon fan. Win or lose, I am now and forever will be, proud to be a duck. And you guys should be, too. I know deep in my heart that one day we will win a National Title, and I cannot wait for that day. Thank you, Men of Oregon. For everything. You guys are champions. Because champions believe in themselves before anyone else does. And you guys believe. And you always have. And you always will. Because you, are The Men of Oregon.

This guest viewpoint was contributed by U of O Senior Sophie Hodges

Dear Interim President Coltrane,

We are the Organization Against Sexual Assault (OASA), a student-led group at the University of Oregon dedicated to the prevention and education of sexual assault, advocacy for survivors of sexual violence, and creating a safe environment for everyone on campus. We are reaching out in response to your email to the campus community on Jan. 8 about the upcoming sexual assault lawsuit against the University of Oregon, filed by a current student. In this email, you informed the campus community about the litigation and about your disagreement with the allegations.

As a group striving to prevent sexual assault on campus and supporting survivors of sexual violence, we are happy to read that the university is committed to making our campus a safe place for all students, and is responding to the problem of sexual violence on our campus. We also deeply respect the right of the university to defend itself against accusations brought forward against it. However, we ask you to reconsider whether this email was the right avenue for this defense.

While you have the authority and resources to distribute messages like this, the survivor does not have access to the same platform to defend her version of the story. You assured the recipients of the e-mail that this litigation does not “undermine the university’s on-going commitment to support the student,” however, we believe that actively reaching out to the whole campus community (to which she still belongs) to deny a survivor’s allegations does undermine said commitment. Such actions can contribute to secondary victimization, which is the re-traumatization of victims of violence by social service providers, and can further affect the safety of other survivors at the University of Oregon who want to report their experiences and/or take legal counsel against a system they feel contributed to their trauma.[1] Other survivors of sexual violence may fear their experiences will be treated in the same manner, and could easily feel discouraged from exercising their rights and seeking any support from the university. Thus, we are afraid that this email sends a message that is completely contrary to our common goal to make our campus a safe place for survivors of sexual violence.

We at OASA hope that this email did not set the precedent on how litigations involving sexual assault will be handled in the future. We ask for any upcoming messages to the community (about this lawsuit or other topics) to be written with the appropriate sensitivity toward the safety of all survivors and with explicit attention to avoid the secondary victimization of any UO student, staff or faculty.

We thank you for your time and are looking forward to your response and a constructive dialogue on how to make our campus safer for everyone.

Sincerely,

The UO Organization Against Sexual Assault

[1] https://mainweb-v.musc.edu/vawprevention/research/victimrape.shtml

We need to talk about Scott Coltrane. Our interim president has had his hands full since taking the position less than a year ago, with the GTF strike and a complete remodel of campus sexual assault prevention tactics. These issues affect the population at large, and staff and students have risen up to call for recognition of their rights in the face of political controversy. Throughout all of this, Interim President Coltrane has used the megaphone of campus email to voice his administration’s perspective on what has occurred. Other perspectives relied on Facebook and other limited forms of media to reach the public. These alternative perspectives did not have as direct a method of communication to students, but were heard anyway because of the sheer number of people affected.
        Now, however, Coltrane’s messages are getting personal. On Thursday, President Coltrane issued a campus-wide statement publicizing the “timeline of events” for last year’s controversial handling of a reported sexual assault by University of Oregon basketball players. Coltrane called into question private actions and inactions of a student during what is surely one of the most difficult times in her life. Subtly, Coltrane has defended his own lack of action by pointing the finger back at the survivor for not returning UOPD phone calls the day after she alleged to have been raped. Coltrane emphasized that the three accused students had been “suspended from the basketball team, and will no longer be participating in basketball at the University of Oregon,” without making note that this decision was made almost a month after NCAA basketball season ended.
        We need to seriously consider why Scott Coltrane chose to publicize this information. The most obvious reason is to inform those associated with the University of Oregon of the lawsuit. This is important in regards to the way that our money is spent, and the way that our school is represented to the public at large. We must remember that it is our money, the students and private entities that fund our university, that will be spent on defense counsel and, ultimately, in settling this lawsuit. This, presumably, is a good enough reason to keep us informed. Coltrane may believe that it is not the administration that is being sued, but us as a whole.
        This one-for-all attitude, however, comes too late. During the GTF strike, Coltrane’s emails called for the student body to polarize themselves against their teachers and peers. The result was the longest academic strike in Oregon’s history, under-the-table threats of replacement and deportation, and a deal that did not take into account the demand for maternity/paternity leave. Coltrane divided the campus population purposefully, hoping to fit his political needs. Now, he hopes to reunify with the purpose of destroying one student. We cannot let this happen.
        We need to talk about Scott Coltrane because he has been talking about us. As our representative, we need to demand that Coltrane give a bipartisan presentation of the issues at hand. This is not so much about this particular case as it is a presentation of the way that rape survivors should expect to be treated by campus administrators. We should expect better than to have our own representatives call the actions of a survivor into question for the mere purpose of saving face. We’re better than that.

–Diana Wildridge

The following guest viewpoint was contributed by John Bonine, a Professor of Law at the University of Oregon.

The Emerald published a story on December 11 asserting that the U.S. Department of Justice had just issued a report challenging statistics that one in five college women are sexually assaulted. The DOJ report was actually about something different.

But as the Emerald story was about the numbers of assaults, let’s look into that – regarding the DOJ report and the survey being planned by the Association of American Universities (AAU). Both have drawbacks.

First, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is about crime surveillance.  The interviewer is conducting a “crime” survey and asks about “rape.” But “rape” is a legal conclusion, not a factual description. Most sexual violence researchers instead use factual language to ask if anything has happened to the interviewee. The new DOJ report says:

“Unlike the NCVS, which uses terms like rape and unwanted sexual activity to identify victims of rape and sexual assault, [scientists’ surveys] use behaviorally specific questions to ascertain whether the respondent experienced rape or sexual assault.”

Asking a woman whether she was “raped” misses many actual rapes.  First, women are less likely to label what happened to them as rape when it was perpetrated on a date or by someone they know. (A well-known book on the topic of campus sexual assault was titled “I Never Called it Rape.”)

In the survey conducted at the University of Oregon this past September (by Professor Jennifer Freyd and her Ph.D. students Carly Smith and Marina Rosenthal), even though many UO students have been sexually penetrated without their consent, many of those did not self-label the event as “rape.” Words matter.

Second, the DOJ report itself notes that the NCVS “does not specifically ask about incidents in which the victim was unable to provide consent because of drug or alcohol consumption.”  But this has been explicitly sexual assault in the UO Student Conduct Code for 10 years. Here at UO in the September survey, many students who said they had been penetrated without consent also indicated that they were too intoxicated to stop the assault.

Third, the NCVS crime survey does not include such events as forced penetration of another person or sexual coercion, which includes nonphysical pressure to engage in sex. These, of course, are all sexual assaults.

Finally, the NCVS crime survey uses the “two-step” approach.  People are asked, initially face-to-face, whether they have been “attacked” (another loaded word) in various ways, including “rape, attempted rape or other types of sexual attack.” That question alone discourages many women who have been assaulted from answering yes, even though rape is what happened. A follow-up question asks whether the person has been “forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity.” If the answer is yes, a further “Crime Incident Report” is used. Again the person must agree to the word “rape” before the response is counted as such.

Other two-step methods can be even worse. Dr. Sarah Cook of Georgia State University has explained the problems with this in a widely known 2011 article. She notes that in one of her studies, Dr. Bonnie Fisher required a “yes” to these second-step questions before counting it as rape:

Was physical force actually used against you in this incident?

and

Were you threatened with physical force in this incident?

(Another researcher has characterized the two-step as asking: Were you raped? Are you really sure you were actually raped? Maybe you’re just confused.)

The AAU survey that Interim President Scott Coltrane has agreed to fund at UO is being designed by this same Bonnie Fisher.

The AAU survey methodology raises other problems as well.

First, such questions may “teach” students that rape and other sexual violence isn’t worth reporting – or even minimize the experience by questioning whether it was rape at all. This can be deeply harmful.

Second, the AAU plans to contact every student at the University of Oregon (a “census” approach) but will use only some of the responses for the survey and data analysis. Researchers in sexual violence have been unable to find examples of this approach being scientifically validated.

Third, this “census” approach runs a substantial risk of “contaminating the pool.” Students may be less willing to participate in subsequent surveys that have more scientific validity, concluding that “I’ve already answered one.”

Fourth, there is no indication that the AAU survey will have proper peer review.

The wording of surveys and the way they are administered may seem technical. But poorly designed surveys can retard, rather than advance, the creation of campus policies to decrease sexual violence.

The University of Oregon Senate called an emergency meeting on Wednesday afternoon, which will focus on the coming Board of Trustees’ agenda and an update from the Senate Academic Integrity Task Force.

Alex Wallachy is reporting live from the meeting. You can check out her coverage in real-time using the feed below or follow her on Twitter: @wall2wallachy.

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