The campus is plastered with black-and-white signs in anticipation of tonight’s Take Back the Night march, and they are as stark as the statistics they display: “86 percent of adolescent sexual assaults go unreported.” “As many as one in three girls and one in seven boys will be sexually abused at some point in their childhood.” “About 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy.”
Sexual violence will be at the forefront of students’ minds as they wind through Morningside Heights, fighting back by blowing whistles and screaming chants. But sexual assault happens year-round, and there are a number of resources available on campus to address the mental health issues that so often arise as a result.
“There’s still a stigma around being sexually assaulted,” said Karen Singleton, director of the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Program at Columbia. “There’s a lot of shame associated with it, embarrassment, fear of judgment, fear of losing one’s community, one’s friends.”
Six percent of female and 2.4 percent of male students at Barnard and Columbia who responded to the 2004 National College Health Assessment reported having been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, but Singleton called that a “minimizing number,” meaning that the assaults are underreported. The NCHA was distributed to students again last year, but that data is not yet available.
In an effort to overcome many survivors’ hesitance to seek help, SVPRP offers different ways for people to get support, from as offering accompaniment to the hospital or the police precinct, to organizing an event or workshop, to talking to a friend or roommate about the assault.
The program aims to “break the silence and work against the isolation” of being a survivor, Singleton said.
Nicole, CC ’09, whose name has been changed because she does not want to publicly reveal the details of her experience, sought counseling at Counseling and Psychological Services after a male friend entered her room while she was sleeping and attempted to sexually assault her in September.
“It was traumatizing ... because of the loss of control and the invasion of your space and personal self, quite literally,” she said.
She did not seek help until four months after the incident occurred.
“I felt like it wasn’t as bad as what could have happened to me, so I didn’t really think I needed any kind of treatment until it continued to bother me,” she said.
This feeling is common among survivors, and it is one SVPRP aims to challenge.
“You may feel like, ‘I should be able to get over this, I should be able to sleep, I should be able to move on with my life,’ but in reality, that’s not the way people respond to trauma,” Singleton said. “You really need assistance and care to move on and survive it.”
SVPRP maintains “a very close working relationship” with both CPS at Columbia and the Rosemary Furman Counseling Center at Barnard, according to Singleton, and every year Singleton and Anna Tekippe, program coordinator for the Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center, conduct trainings for CPS and Furman counselors on how to treat students who have been sexually assaulted.
When a student comes to SVPRP after being sexually assaulted, he or she is accompanied to the hospital or to the police if they choose to go. After that, SVPRP advocates usually recommend that a student contact CPS or Furman.
“Obviously, it’s never demanded ... but it’s very highly encouraged,” said SVPRP peer counselor Kendra Moore, CC ’09.
SVPRP will often contact CPS or Furman on the student’s behalf and request that the student see a counselor who specializes in sexual assault or trauma, Singleton said. “We can be the conduit so they [students] can see someone who’s a specialist,” she noted.
“Sexual violence is a permeating problem on college campuses, and I think it’s extremely taboo,” Moore said. “People won’t talk about it, don’t believe it’s happening here.”
To combat that perception, SVPRP hosts frequent workshops with campus groups to raise awareness about sexual violence.
“This isn’t a subject people really want to talk about, so it can be uncomfortable for people to participate,” Moore said of the workshops. “We really try to make it fun and engaging, as engaging as this subject can be.”
Rape Crisis Center peer counselor Saffiyah Madraswala, BC ’09, said that the center encourages survivors to participate in dialogues about their experiences.
“If people can’t talk about positive sexual experiences, think how difficult it is to talk about negative sexual experiences,” Madraswala said. “We really try to embody all these things that will in the long term allow people to have healthy, consensual relationships.”
Singleton said SVPRP’s campus visibility has increased recently, noting that while in the past, most of the students who sought help from the program had been referred, today many more come in on their own.
“Years ago you would never have someone walk into the Rape Crisis Center and say, ‘I’d like to have advocacy.’ People didn’t even know what advocacy meant,” she said.
As a result of a recent initiative to address violent student relationships, students are asked to answer questions screening for relationship violence when they make an appointment online with Health Services. If their answers indicate that they are in a violent relationship, they will be connected with appropriate resources.
“A lot of women who are in situations where their relationship is violent aren’t necessarily prone to report it,” Singleton said. “But if they’re asked, it gives the indication that there isn’t such a stigma attached to it.”
As with depression and other mental health concerns, people are most likely to disclose problems stemming from sexual assault to a primary care provider.
“Trauma manifests itself in so many ways,” Singleton said. “They [patients] might have headaches, sleeplessness, nightmares ... but actually they’ve been assaulted. If you’re not asking about that, you wouldn’t be able to identify them as such.”
Students who have been sexually assaulted can call SVPRP’s 24/7 advocacy hotline, and a peer advocate will accompany them to the hospital, to the police, or to other resources they request. Peer counselors are available every day from 7-11 p.m. via a separate hotline.
Maggie Astor can be reached at maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com