By Avery Boulware, Campus Carrier News Editor
The Berry Security and Fire Safety Report, released last week, reported an increase in reported forcible sexual offenses in campus residence halls, from three in 2014 to six in the last year. There was also a jump in reported sexual offenses on other campus property from five in 2014 to six in 2015.
There are several ways to interpret this data, one being that more reported incidents of sexual misconduct and assault means that students are more informed about how to report and deal with these sensitive issues.
Debbie Heida, dean of students, said the rise in reported incidents was anticipated because of the increase in sexual assault education.
“When you are doing a better job at making it more accessible for students to report and when you are doing more things to educate, there should be an increase,” Heida said. “I don’t see the increase as a bad thing. What I see is that several more students came forward.”
In the past few years, Berry has made several changes in the way students are able to report incidents of sexual misconduct. There are seven Title IX officers from a variety of backgrounds on campus. Students hired as first-year mentors or Resident Assistants have also gone through more training. Viking Code’s sexual assault policy has also been made more transparent.
Lt. Ryan Chelsey of the Berry Police Department spoke about the importance of knowing what Viking Code says about reporting sexual incidents.
“I encourage everybody to be familiar with that policy, and I encourage everybody to report,” he said. “I understand that it can be an invasive process, but I encourage everyone to report for their own safety and sense of closure and for the safety of the community in general.”
A significant part of Berry’s efforts to inform and expose students to this delicate topic is the ‘Can I Kiss You?’ presentation by speaker Mike Domitrz, first invited to Berry 13 years ago. Junior Jacquelyn Bruun, Peer Educator, has attended the seminar three times and has seen some changes since her freshman year.
“This year Dr. Domitrz was definitely blunter than usual,” Bruun said. “He didn’t skirt around the issues and it was a little bit less of entertainment and more of a serious chat. He definitely made some efforts to include different categories of people.”
Freshman Victoria Manning said her first experience attending the seminar was very informative.
“I think it’s great Berry is talking about something that impacts so many college students and that they were able to find somebody who was able to communicate it clearly in a way that isn’t dry,” Manning said.
This year, Domitrz included asexual and transgender people in his scenarios, which were new additions to his presentation.
“He makes people think,” Heida said. “He creates a healthy dialogue. There’s always a gap between that and behavior, and it’d be great if we could lessen that gap. But that’s the challenge of any educational program.”
This gap is something Berry is still working to close. Even though incidents of sexual misconduct are being reported, Heida believes that there are many more that do not see the light of day.
“It’s the hardest thing to come forward with,” she said. “There’s no way to make the process truly easy. I think we’ve made it easier, but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to make it easy.”
Berry administration is looking to incorporate a new software program called Everfi Haven into students’ sexual safety education. This program will hopefully offset the barrage of information that first-year students get during SOAR, Viking Venture and BCC 100 classes — after a student’s first semester, there is little to no reminder of what they have learned.
“You have control over what happens in BCC 100 and Viking Venture,” Heida said. “But once students are here and you need to reinforce the message, what’s the mechanism to say that every student has to do this? That’s the dilemma that we are still working through.”