NEW LONDON, Conn. ― At Connecticut College, as at a growing number of campuses nationwide, students are encouraged to speak up if they hear remarks celebrating or condoning sexual aggression against women. In one training scenario, male students ask a peer if he really means it when he boasts of such conduct.
So when news broke that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, had bragged of groping women and then trivialized it as “locker room talk,” it felt to some students like a repudiation of their efforts.
“It’s shocking that someone of that status thinks that that’s OK,” said Greg Liautaud, a senior who works with the college’s sexual assault prevention office. “It does make the work harder, because our goal here is to shift culture.”
Trump’s caught-on-tape remarks about kissing women and grabbing their genitals are resonating deeply on campuses across the U.S. where sexual assault has been a long-standing problem. Many worried the comments, coupled with an apology that diminished their severity, could hinder efforts to educate youth when society too often brushes off abusive behavior as “boys being boys” or puts the blame on the victim.
At Connecticut College, the director of sexual violence prevention said the presidential contender’s remarks likely would become fodder for small group discussions, as happened after a videotape surfaced of Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice hitting his fiancee.
“I hope that it doesn’t set us back,” Darcie Folsom said. “I hope it pushes us forward everywhere to know more work needs to be done.”
The federal government, citing estimates that 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted while in college, has stepped up pressure on higher education institutions to improve their response to allegations of assault. More than 200 schools are under sexual violence investigations by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights; noncompliance could lead to loss of federal funding.
