Last Wednesday, the Office of the Provost emailed the student body a link to a survey sponsored by the Provost’s office and the senior vice president for students and enrollment, entitled the “Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Violence.” This board endorses this survey as a positive step toward informed and meaningful action to combat sexual violence at Brandeis and urges the entire student body to participate before the survey ends tomorrow. Only through an expansive sample size of  meaningful data can the University’s climate be accurately understood and thoughtfully responded to.

The survey comes after both students and faculty petitioned the University to not only increase its resources for sexual assault survivors but to take preventative action on the issue: Brandeis Students Against Sexual Violence urged the administration to “be proactive in their approach to ending sexual violence at Brandeis, not simply begrudgingly reactive” in their report card on University policies in November, and the University Advisory Committee’s Subcommittee on Sexual Violence specifically advocated for “a serious survey of our campus to determine the incidence [of sexual assault]” in their report in June 2014.

This survey represents precisely the type of proactive action students and staff have urged for. While the current campus resources are invaluable, preventative policies against sexual violence must first begin with objective data indicating how prevalent such violence is on campus and what risk factors unique to Brandeis must be targeted by such policies. The 2014 White House Task Force to Prevent Students From Sexual Assault lists as its very first recommendation to “identify opportunities to better understand the nature of sexual violence on your campus,” and specifically lists student surveys as a useful means to gather this information. 

Additionally, the Brandeis climate survey took noteworthy lessons from a similar survey conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—evidenced in an Oct. 27, 2014 New York Times article, the MIT survey was notable for gathering data not only on the prevalence of sexual assault but also on students’ understanding of sexual assault. The survey found that while 17 percent of female MIT students had described experiences constituting rape or sexual assault, only 11 percent used these terms to classify their own experiences. 

A key part of prevention is educating students on recognizing sexual violence. To aid survivors, the University community must destigmatize the experience of being a survivor so that those most in need of resources are not afraid to seek them. We applaud the University for constructing a survey that gathers data on these key topics so that common gaps in understanding of sexual assault can be identified and corrected at Brandeis.

Finally, we commend the choice to release the results of the survey in aggregate to the public. Data on the prevalence of sexual assault is beneficial information for both administrators developing formalized policies and student activists addressing the issue from within the community. Clear communication between both parties is critical to successful action.

This board applauds the University’s choice to gather data on the prevalence of sexual assault within the student bodyand urges the administration to consider thoughtful policies which respond to the specific findings of the survey. Only by understanding how prevalent sexual assault is at Brandeis specifically, where and why it happens can begin to prevent it.