“What is our responsibility in preventing Sexual Assault?”

By: Michael Ayalon

 

According to the Bureau of Justice statistics, Sexual Assault rates since entering college are 21% for females and 7% for males. Over a lifetime, the statistics show 34% for females and 11% for males. It impacts both men and women in all neighborhoods and all communities, most of the time by someone they already know. It also affects people of all races, ethnicities, ages, and economic backgrounds. Both men and women can be sexual assailants, and it can also happen between people of the same sex.

 

I firmly believe that the Greeks can have a significant impact in reducing these numbers and changing the narrative by getting the resources they need to create a consent culture at their University, by developing bystander intervention techniques appropriate to their campus, and then using the leaders found in our fraternities and sororities to lead a peer to peer education approach for the entire University.

 

I know it’s easy to feel overwhelmed at first. Creating a consent culture on your campus starts by challenging the myths about sex and consent, as well as the stereotypes and pop culture influence on our members. We need to be able to communicate with our partners about the type of relationship we want and know how to protect ourselves from sexually transmitted diseases/pregnancy. We need to know our own personal beliefs and values, as well as our partner’s. We need to build confidence, self-esteem, and then teach our members about healthy relationships/healthy sexuality. 

 

If we see someone getting ready to create that sexist banner and hang it on the front of our chapter house, we need to look at the values of our organization and ask our members if this banner is really in line with the values of our organization. Within our campus culture, men and women can feel that sexual violence is just a fact of life if our verbal expressions reflect that attitude, which can then lead to physical expressions in the form of a sexual assault. We need to challenge sexist comments and jokes when we hear it or see it in our chapters.

 

I regularly talk about Sexual Assault Prevention on college campuses across the country and my favorite part is that watching the entire student body becoming actively engaged in the training process. With an increased sense of confidence in the use of the terms around sexual assault, by knowing what consent actually looks like on a college campus, by empowering students to intervene in difficult situations, and understanding how to respond to a disclosure, we can bring about positive changes in our culture through respect and concern for others. They are the critical foundation of our fraternal organizations. It’s the true definition of what it means to be a fraternity man or sorority woman.
It is time to develop the leadership qualities of our members to help students influence their peers and prevent these cases from ever occurring in the future. In the 2 minutes that it has taken you to read this article, someone in the United States has been sexually assaulted. It’s on us as fraternity and sorority members to do something about it.