Last Wednesday, students were asked in a campus-wide email to fill out an anonymous survey regarding sexual violence on campus. The email, sent by Provost Lisa Lynch and Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel, described the campus climate survey as “the appropriate tool to assess the Brandeis culture in this area [of sexual misconduct].”

In an email to the Justice, Lynch wrote that the climate survey is similar to surveys administered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Yale University and Boston University and was developed with guidance from the First Report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault that was issued in April 2014.

The survey was anonymous so no administrators would be able to identify individual student responses. It also included trigger warnings for sexual assault and asked students to define their gender identity.

The main part of the survey covered a wide range of questions related to sexual assault in the Brandeis community, including asking for student definitions of what constitutes consent, what constitutes rape or sexual assault and how well they believe the University handles such incidents. The survey also asked students willing to do so to detail their own experiences with sexual misconduct on campus: either personal experiences or witnessed incidents, such as harassment, stalking, sexual assault and incidents of bystander intervention.

According to Lynch, a campus-wide task force comprised of faculty, staff and students has been working for the past year to evaluate the University’s policies, response and prevention efforts in relation to sexual assault and misconduct on the Brandeis campus. The results of this climate survey will provide the administration with “community perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes relevant to sexual violence,” wrote Lynch. The anonymity and confidentiality of the survey will also “provide more information regarding incident rates” than the University currently has available to them.

According to Lynch, the administration will use the results to “better evaluate and tailor prevention and response efforts.”

Sheila McMahon, the University’s sexual assault services and prevention specialist, also shared in an email to the Justice that in addition to providing data on the rate and extent of sexual violence in the community, the survey will also “help [the administration] understand barriers to helping (i.e. why don’t people always step in to help in situations that require a pro-social bystander’s intervention?) and barriers to reporting” on sexual misconduct.

McMahon wrote that the specific changes this survey hopes to shape include “campus educational efforts,” such as “programs and public service awareness campaigns” to address the specific concerns students may bring up in their survey responses.

“We really want to better understand what prevents our students from coming forward for help in the aftermath of a sexual assault or experiences of dating violence, domestic violence, stalking, or sexual harassment,” McMahon wrote.

Lynch also wrote that the results of the anonymous survey will be shared with the entire Brandeis community.

“We must do all that we can to prevent sexual violence from occurring and support those who have experienced it,” Lynch wrote.

“This survey is just one of many ways we are working to improve our support for survivors of sexual assault.”