Kate Harding, a prominent writer on the topic of sexual assault, has come to Cornell for sexual assault awareness week. During our Rose dinner conversation we discussed rape culture and the factors that contribute to rape culture.

Given that Ms. Harding has visited college campuses across the country, one student asked whether she finds that certain type of campuses “breed” rape culture more than others. Ms. Harding responded that she finds the same amount and culture across all the campuses she has visited. I wonder if this is supported by data.

I was also curious but did not get the opportunity to ask whether Ms. Harding observes major differences in the way that college administrations address the issue. Until recently, everything was kept quiet as acknowledging the problem would damage the schools’ reputation. However, now that the matter is so prominent in popular media, and that many more cases are being brought to light, colleges have been forced to at least acknowledge the problem. Most prominent colleges have taken the step of requiring freshman to participate in consent training. However, it is still not in their interest to make a big deal of the issue or to publicly admit to the magnitude of the problem with statistics for their own campuses because reputation and application statistics play such a key role in higher education. To fully address sexual assault, colleges would have to be transparent about the ways they have mishandled cases to protect themselves and they would have to crack down on student offenders who they have protected (including varsity athletes). As a result, while schools are taking small steps toward addressing sexual assault, they are far from introducing absolute transparency.

While university administration action is important in responding to assault that has already occurred, I do not think it can prevent assault or change the culture that enables assault to happen so frequently. For example, as we discussed with Ms. Harding, American culture surrounds young people with the idea that men should always be macho and dominant. To lessen the amount of sexual assault requires changing an entire culture, and that requires educating and influencing children much younger than college-age students.