The Undergraduate Student Government senate passed a resolution Sunday night calling for the data from an upcoming sexual assault survey to be released to the University community.The survey is expected to be administered in October 2015.
The University is federally mandated to conduct a sexual assault survey following a resolution agreement signed with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights after it was found in violation of Title IX. More specifically, the University will have to provide the Office for Civil Rights with a “description of tools used for conducting a climate check” by Jan. 15 and then administer the survey by October.
The University’s leading candidate survey is a “sexual assault climate survey” sponsored by the Association of American Universities, a consortium of elite research universities that lobby on higher education issues of which it is a member, according to Dan Day, the University’s acting director of Communications. However, it is not committed to that course of action and is still in discussions with the AAU, he added.
At the center of the controversy lies a bill proposed bySenator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) that could require colleges to take sexual assault surveys developed by the federal government. The AAU issued a press release in mid-November announcing the creation of its own privately-sponsored survey and argued that it was “deeply concerned” by government efforts to federally mandate a sexual assault survey.
McCaskill's bill, called The Campus Accountability and Safety Act, was the subject of University-funded lobbying in the third quarter of 2014, according to congressional disclosure records. The records, however, do not disclose exactly what position the University took on the matter, although the bill as a wholewould require universities tosurvey students on sexual assault, impose new fines for failure to report sexual assault and increase sharing of information with local law enforcement agencies.
The University has conducted sexual climate surveys in the past and has compiled University-specific data. Last year,The Daily Princetonianpublishedan article on an internal 2008 survey specific to the University community that found that one in six female undergraduates experienced “non-consensual vaginal penetration” while on campus. The survey was developed by a professor specializing in sexual violence and asked 17 multiple-choice questions about how often students experienced different types of unwanted sexual acts.
In addition, the University regularly participates in the annualNational College Health Assessment, which includes questions regarding sexual assault and harassment. The University has not disclosed in the past the specific survey results regarding Princeton students, although the aggregate data from the survey is published online.
University President Christopher Eisgruber '83 said there was “a lot of misinformation floating around about the AAU survey right now,” in an email to USG president Shawon Jackson '15 that was obtained by The Daily Princetonian.
“To take just one example, your message below repeats statements impugning the caliber of the survey design team,” Eisgruber said. “Those accusations are indefensible, and I certainly hope that the USG would not act on them without first gathering information.The team is led by Dr. Sandra Martin of the University of North Carolina and Dr. Bonnie Fisher of the University of Cincinnati; they are both leaders in the field ... I can assure you that the survey they design would be scientifically valid and not 'too general' (it is being based on a model developed by the White House task force and piloted at Rutgers)”.
Eisgruber also said he hoped USG would not oppose the AAU survey.
“I hope that I can persuade the USG not to oppose the survey, or, at a minimum, to wait a few days until we and the AAU can supply more information about the planned survey,” he said. “The proposed AAU survey is almost certainly the best chance we have to collect data that both satisfies scientific criteria of reliability and also permits cross-institutional comparisons.As you know, getting good data on sexual assault is important and difficult.If this cooperative effort breaks down, I suspect that what we will get is a hodge-podge of surveys, some of which are institution-specific and so frustrate comparisons; some of which are driven by one political perspective or another; and some of which are not consistent with the best standards of social science.”
USG senators present at Sunday’s meeting expressed concern that the AAU survey was developed by administrators and professors who do not thoroughly understand sexual misconduct issues and who may tailor the survey to achieve favorable results. They noted that its questions may be too vague, that survey results would be released only in aggregate of all participating universities and that the University retains control over its individual campus data. Questions would not be tailored to the University community and thus would not be ideal for policymaking on campus, they said, and using the AAU survey could undermine congressional efforts led by McCaskill because the AAU would be able to convince Congress that such legislation is unnecessary.
The USG did not take a stance on whether the University should be a part of the AAU survey and postponed the issue until its Dec. 7 meeting in order to allow for student and administrator input. It did, however, call on the University to refrain from agreeing to take part in the AAU survey until the USG had time to study the issue further.
The University was supposed to make a commitment to the AAU by Monday, but Jackson told the attendees at the meeting that Eisgruber was confident he could secure an extension from the AAU.
The University would still be able to reap the benefits of the aggregate data without participating in the AAU survey itself, U-Councilor Dallas Nan ’16 noted, adding that the University needs data that is pertinent to the campus community.
“If [the results of the survey] are great, if they’re bad, if they’re middle-of-the-road, this is a really important issue that it doesn’t matter what the results are, it's just that people should know what they are," U-Councilor Mallory Banks ’16 said.
Jackson noted that Eisgruber was willing to make staff available to talk with students about their concerns about the survey.
A representative of the AAU expressed concern about the reporting burden placed on universities from the bill in an article published inThe Daily Pennsylvanianin October.
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