Sexual assault and sexual violence on college campuses has been an issue for a long time, but it is now at the forefront of the national focus. While university administrators and federal lawmakers say they're trying to do what they think is best for the victims of sexual assault, some feel that's not always the case.
Kelsey Burns is the presentation coordinator for the relationship and sexual violence prevention center at MU. She says she was assaulted her first year as a student but did not report the incident. She now works to better educate the MU community about sexual violence.
This interview has been condensed and edited for content and clarity.
I sat down with Burns and asked what steps need to be taken to continue to bring this issue to peoples attention.
Burns: I think that universities, not just Mizzou and not specifically Mizzou, but across the nation, universities a lot of times want to push these issues under the rug versus publicly discussing them. And that’s tough because of course there’s survivor confidentially and stuff like that, so there is two sides to that. And so when you have people coming into and environment then, that already you see on television has a history of pushing these things under the rug, giving victims a really hard time, always kind of not treating perpetrators as criminals, but as people whose futures might be ruined, you’ll already instill a lot of these ideals and reasons why people aren’t going to report when it actually happens to them.
Hoffman: But it seems that even with most people on campus aware of the new Title IX regulations existence and the continued discussion about sexual violence on campus, we aren’t necessarily seeing a decline in the numbers, in fact there were two Clerly releases from the beginning of the month. Does that concern you?
Burns: I think something important for people to keep in mind when it comes to Celery releases when they happen often, is a lot of people see it and are like, oh my god, things are getting worse, we’re seeing all these reports. When in actuality, I don’t enjoy seeing Celery releases, but it means that they were reported. These have always been happening, they’re not happening more or less then they have been for the past ten years. The difference is that people are reporting because things are changing, culture is changing, this is being talked about much more than it was in past years.
Hoffman: Well then what do you think is the biggest hurdle left in trying to curb sexual violence on campus?
Burns: I do feel that there are steps being taken in the right direction. Nothing’s perfect, nothing is gonna be perfect for a while, it’s a very hard topic to cover all your bases in. I’m confident that there is administration that cares about this, I am not confident that everybody is on the same page and has the same end goals for what they want this issue, the end solution to look like.
Hoffman: Could you explain what different groups goals are?
Burns: Yeah, I mean there’s always gonna be different opinions depending on what field you’re working in and what you’re studying and stuff like that and as far as administration goes, what field you’re working in. I’m on the sexual assault task force and it’s a really, really great place where we can all discuss this and talk about this stuff from people from all different areas. You know students like myself who are advocates and educators and then people from the woman’s center, RSVP. We have someone from ROTC, you know we have people from MSA, it’s a really good group. You can see how it’s hard with people who are in administration, people who are in student government and people that are working in advocacy all kind of struggle finding a middle ground where they can make the same goal happen. So you know people who are in student government or administration a lot of time think events, think how can we get people to think about this. They think social media campaigns which are all effective and important and need to happen. But there needs to be work also towards changing a culture, which events can do and social media can do. So definitely more needs to be done, I just wish I had that answer and maybe I would have told people about it. Sorry if that’s not super clear.
