For the first time in the University’s history, UNM will be conducting surveys on sexual assault.
This week, the Office of Equal Opportunity at UNM will begin its first Campus Climate Survey in order to assess the student population’s exposure to the risk of sexual misconduct and measure students’ knowledge of the university’s policies and resources.
University President Bob Frank said the surveys, which will be sent via email to 10,000 randomly selected students, will have questions that gather information to help the administration improve intervention, prevention and response to sexual misconduct.
“It’s really important for us to have an understanding of what students know about the resources that are on campus, what types of issues students are facing, what types of needs and the challenges that students are experiencing,” he said. “This is a way for us to find out from a lot of students what’s going on.”
Heather Cowan, Title IX coordinator at the Office of Equal Opportunity, said that, starting today, randomly selected graduates and undergraduates will receive the anonymous surveys through a company called Sound Rocket, which UNM contracted with because they can guarantee scientific validity and anonymity. This is the first time surveys of this kind have been used at UNM.
“It’s a really good idea for us to implement our own survey,” Cowan said. “We wanted to look at what is actually going on in terms of sexual misconduct for our students.”
Cowan said there will also be drawings for everyone who participates in the survey for gift cards, UNM bookstore gift certificates, UNM clothing, etc.
The survey covers a broad spectrum of topics, all related to sexual misconduct, she said.
Cowan said the survey will include questions to assess whether UNM students are aware of what sexual misconduct means, what instances of sexual violence are, if they feel comfortable reporting it, where to report it to and if they are aware of UNM policies and procedures regarding sexual assault or misconduct.
Sexual misconduct resource centers LoboRESPECT and the LoboRESPECT advocacy center are helping with marketing the initial survey and will be putting out their own secondary survey “so that, if students really want their voice to be heard but they’re not selected to participate in the big survey, they can still fill out this smaller survey,” she said.
Lisa Lindquist, director of the LoboRESPECT Advocacy Center, said an important aspect of this campus climate survey will focus on resource awareness.
She said it will assess whether students know where to seek resources and what’s available to them. It will also assess whether or not they have been getting the programs and training that they need to prevent sexual misconduct.
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“Most importantly, we’re doing it so we can inform ourselves about how we can better educate our community,” Lindquist said, “about how to ultimately prevent sexual assault.”
As an advocacy center, she said a lot of students don’t realize that LoboRESPECT is a confidential and anonymous reporting location, with a 24/7 crisis hotline for students to report something.
“The biggest thing is to know that the university really does have a lot of wonderful resources for students who are dealing with a number of crisis situations,” she said. “There’s a lot of great people on this campus who really do want to help students be successful and get from point A to point B when they’re dealing with a traumatic life situation.”
Cowan said the outcome will be to understand what the prevalence of sexual misconduct on UNM campus is and to gauge whether students know what consent is and if they are actively seeking or providing it.
“We’re trying to educate our students that we have, what we call, a positive or affirmative consent policy,” she said. “Which means that a lack of ‘no’ or silence does not equal consent to sexual activity. We’re really looking for all parties involved in every stage of sexual activity to provide some kind of affirmative consent.”
Cowan said they will use the data to shape UNM’s prevention efforts in coming years and see where are they doing a good job and what could use improvement.
Cowan said current information on the prevalence of sexual assault on the UNM campus and related matters just does not exist, something this survey aims to remedy. She hopes it will show how UNM ranks against other school in these matters.
“We have limited resources at UNM, so if we have data to inform us, then we can use our limited resources and actually target those resources to what our students actually need, versus us guessing at what we think students might need,” she said.
In the long run, Cowan said it’s not just about resources but also making sure UNM is benchmarking what they’re doing and making very informed decisions.
“Decisions that are grounded in data and in science so we can actually move forward with effective strategies,” she said.
Matthew Reisen is the news editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
