EDIT: Crime without Punishment

The University of Virginia has suspended all of its fraternities as it investigates an alleged gang rape at the Pi Kappa Psi fraternity house in Fall 2012. The victim, dubbed “Jackie,” was a freshman when seven men from the fraternity raped her during a party, a story that was only recently documented in a Wednesday Rolling Stone magazine article. Her traumatic story has resulted in several other UVA students reporting their own tales of rape at the university.

UVA is one of the 86 schools U.S. President Barack Obama has demanded be investigated under Title IX claims of allegedly mishandling sexual assault claims. According to the Rolling Stone article, the school’s hush-hush attitude toward rape has perpetuated a sexual assault culture that can emotionally destroy those who are victimized.

“At UVA, rapes are kept quiet, both by students — who brush off sexual assaults as regrettable but inevitable casualties of their cherished party culture — and by an administration that critics say is less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal,” the article stated. “Some UVA women, so sickened by the university’s culture of hidden sexual violence, have taken to calling it ‘UVrApe.'”

Jackie’s rape may have happened in a fraternity, but that does not mean fraternities — and Greek Life in general — are the only institutions where rape happens. By suspending all fraternities on campus, UVA is ignoring the fact that rapes happen outside of fraternities as well, and that those cases of assault are equally as egregious as those that happen within Greek walls.

While fraternities are suspended, UVA President Teresa Sullivan wrote in a statement, the school will be gathering students, faculty, alumni and others to discern what steps they must take to prevent sexual assault and violence.

“There are individuals in our community who know what happened that night, and I am calling on them to come forward to the police to report the facts,” Sullivan said. “Only you can shed light on the truth, and it is your responsibility to do so. Alongside this investigation, we as a community must also do a systematic evaluation of our culture to ensure that one of our founding principles — the pursuit of truth — remains a pillar on which we can stand. There is no greater threat to honor than secrecy and indifference.”

The fact that this rape was reported to the school in 2012 but is only being investigated now that it has been featured in Rolling Stone is evidence enough that UVA has a problem handling rape culture. Many of the people involved in the rape may not even be on campus anymore, and it is doubtful any of them will be willing to turn themselves over to authorities two years after the fact. But UVA is not alone in bungling its sexual assault responses.

Like UVA, Boston University is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly mishandling campus rape reports. This semester, BU has amped up its willingness to talk about solving the prevailing campus rape culture.

BU announced through BUToday on Friday that all current faculty and staff will now be required to take an online course about dealing with sexual assault incidents. The program is scheduled to begin for students at the start of spring semester. Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said in the announcement that he is hoping the course will “serve as a reminder, in addition to the introduction freshmen receive at orientation, of BU’s reporting process and disciplinary actions taken in case of sexual misconduct.”

While acknowledging that BU has a problem is a step in the right direction — albeit a forced one, as the U.S. government acknowledged BU’s rape culture first — this course will likely be ineffective. Most students will probably not invest the time and energy necessary to learning something from such a course, and as with AlcoholEdu, which freshman are required to take before they come to BU to learn about the dangers of alcohol, students will continue to do exactly as they please, as long as there are no repercussions.

But repercussions in the form of sufficient punishment must occur in order to bring real change to the country’s prevailing sexual assault problems. BU has not been successful in informing its students how to report rape and what will result from that report, and authorities have been even less effective in instituting real punishments to rapists. If there appears to be no punishment for committing sexual assault, people will continue to violate others in tragic ways and continue to get away with it. Of course, there are resources on campus advertised to students such as Student Health Services and the Sexual Assault Response & Prevention Center, but there needs to be a clear process of how students can report rape and how to help people they know affected by it. Some of the mystery resides in what exactly are the proper steps and what are the consequences or repercussions of them.

The recent national conversations surrounding rape culture are a movement toward finding sustainable solutions, but until real changes are seen, the culture on campuses will continue to exist. Sexual assault can happen in any institution, and all cases deserve to be properly addressed and handled efficiently.