During her freshman year, Boston University student Sarah Merriman was a victim of anattempted sexual assault by a man she knew, she said in a hearing on campus sexual assault policies Tuesday.
Merriman, a College of Arts and Sciences junior, testified at Boston City Hall with city council members that the current system to help victims on college campuses is “broken.”
“I’m one of the few people that actively deal with sexual assault on campus,” said Merriman, who is active in the BU Women’s Resource Center. “There are a handful of people that are dedicated to it but not a lot. So one of us needed to come and voice our dissatisfaction with how sexual assault is being handled on campus.”
Boston Police Department representatives Deputy Kelly Nee, Captain Mark Hayes and Lieutenant George Juliano said that at large universities like BU and Northeastern University, the campus police departments are given full autonomy on issues of sexual assault on campus. The BPD can only intervene on issues of homicide.
Despite this, a little more than 1,000 cases of sexual assault involving college-aged people get reported every year to the city’s police, according to the BPD.
“It takes an incredible amount of self-motivation to seek help on a university campus, as this issue is unsavory,” said Merriman.
The hearing, which was hosted by the City Council’s Committee on Women and Healthy Communities, was chaired by City Councilor At-Large Ayanna Pressley.
Pressley, who herself was a victim of sexual assault during her college career at BU, said that men need to work in concert with women in order to change a “culture that is far too tolerant when it comes to sexual violence.”
“Behavior is learned. What is appropriate, what is healthy and what is not,” Pressley said. “Sexual violence is not bad behavior, assaulting a woman isn’t the result of mixed signals, raping a girl in your dorm room isn’t a youthful indiscretion. What we are talking about is a crime, punishable for up to 20 years in prison.”
Pressley said that sexual assault is a violation of civil rights, as the Obama administration has highlighted.
“We all want the same thing, and that is to ensure the safety of our students,” Pressley said. “To be clear, I consider our colleges and universities partners in the work to prevent sexual violence and to hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable. I do not consider them the enemy. The enemies are the offenders and perpetrators of these vile acts.”
City Councilor At-Large Felix Arroyo, who was a sponsor of the hearing, said that it is important to examine the facts on sexual assault on college campuses.
“According to the campus sexual violence study department report, one in five undergraduate women and one in sixteen undergraduate men experienced an attempted or completed sexual assault in college,” Arroyo said. “Sexual assault is a crime that cannot be tolerated and simply because it is on a college campus does not mean it could be tolerated there.”
Arroyo said that sexual assault is not solely a woman’s issue, but also an issue with men, as they are connected to women through their social and familial relationships.
“Being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or being young, does not give you permission to become [an offender],” Arroyo said. “So it isn’t simply ‘no means no’… only ‘yes means yes.’”
Darby Ruggeri, who spoke at the hearing, said that she was assaulted on her campus at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and that her offender had confessed his act to the college administration.
She expressed distaste, however, that her administration had only imposed probation on him, still allowing him to take part in the university’s community. She said she feels uncomfortable and unsafe with his presence on campus.
But Merriman said that at the very least, the hearing represented a move toward safer college environments.
“I feel like we’re really taking a step in the right direction and people are not going to feel so victimized anymore.”
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