By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
There’s a national movement underway encouraging college campuses to better prevent and better respond to gender-based violence, whether it’s dating violence, sexual assault or stalking.
It’s being lead by the White House, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Justice and victims of such crimes on college campuses, according to Dr. Curt Brungardt, director of the Fort Hays State University Center for Civic Leadership.
“We’ve been proactive at Fort Hays State, thanks to folks in Student Affairs and Academic Affairs,” said Brungardt. “Still, FHSU needs to do a better job of preventing these types of crimes on our campus and we need to do a better job of responding when those crimes do take place.
“We’ve created a coalition of faculty, staff and students called the ‘Campus SAFE Initiative’ to look at ourselves. Are we doing what we can to prevent these kinds of crimes among our students? What can we do to better respond to these issues?
“I couldn’t be happier to be part of a proactive campus in this area, rather than being forced by the feds as some campuses in Kansas are,” Brungardt pointed out.
Washburn University in Topeka is one of several across the nation under federal investigation for the handling of sexual violence complaints.
Last week, Washburn President Jerry Farley signed a pledge to help stop sexual crimes on campus. Farley said the school does not have a rampant sexual violence problem, but it is important to ensure that students are safe.
Brungardt said there are two federal laws that “encourage colleges to do a better job of this — the 1972 Title IX Act ensures everyone has an equal opportunity for an education and, if someone is a victim of gender-based violence, they’re not getting an equal opportunity to get an education. The 2013 Campus Save Act requires college campuses to do prevention work on these things, and now the feds are starting to enforce that.”
“One in five women will be sexually assaulted during their college experience in this country. Every year, 100,000 Kansas women will be victims of domestic violence, and every 13 days a woman will die as a result of domestic violence in Kansas. Those numbers are alarming:”
“FHSU wants to be ahead of that, and we want to do it for the right reasons. We want to be sure we’re providing adequate prevention activities for all our students, as well as our staff, and when these crimes to take place, that services are available for victims, and the perpetrators are held accountable,” Brungardt said. “Domestic violence and sexual assault is a serious social disease that needs to be addressed. We’re doing better than we were a decade ago, but we have a long way to go, “